ing daily more numerous and powerful, a fact calculated; even in a mind lefs fanguine, to keep hope alive; his preeminence in literature was fo undifputed, that they who en deavoured to, wound did not, in their utmoft audacity, think of depofing him; and, above all, the Mufe, fo coy to the courtship of his contemporaries, continued, till the end of his days, to lavifh on him her moft fplendid favours. No poetry in the English language excels fome of that which Dryden produced in the laft five years of his life, when his body was enfeebled by ficknefs, and his mind might have been expected to be enervated and diffipated by care, anxiety, and regret.

Shortly after the Revolution, Dryden had tranflated fevefal fatires of Juvenal; and calling in the aid of his two fons, of Congreve, Creech, Tate, and others, he was enabled, in, 1692, to give a complete verfion both of that fatirift, and of Perfius. In this undertaking he himself bore a large fhare, tranflating the whole of Perfius, with the first, third, fixth, tenth, and fixteenth fatires of Juvenal. To this verfion is. prefixed the famous Effay on Satire, infcribed to the Earl of Dorfet and Middlefex.

In this part, and indeed throughout the tranflations, the author is not at all benefited, nor the reader enlightened by the care of the editor. If the tranflation of Dryden is faulty, no correction is attempted by Mr. Scott. Are his criticifms fhallow, obfcure, or erroneous? The editor beflows no pains in affording to the reader any thing more pro-. found, luminous, or correct. It might have been expected, that in fo large and expenfive an edition of Dryden's works, fome retrospective statement would have difplayed to the reader the merits and genius of thofe tranflators who preceded Dryden, and fome attempt would have been made to estimate those who, following his fteps, have endeavoured to naturalize the fame poems, with more correctness, and with equal fpirit. This fort of criticifm would have become a poet, who undertakes to perpetuate the fame of a poet; but Mr. Scott contents himfelf with what is more eafy, with biographical sketches of the perfons whom Dryden flatters in dedication, or reprehends in fatire, with long extracts from pamphlets in the Luttrel collection, and fhort obfervations on works which deferved and required a greater degree of exertion and attention.

Having briefly noticed fome minor poems of his author, particularly the elegy on the Countefs of Abingdon, entitled Eleonora," and the contributions to Tonfon's third mifcellany, Mr. Scott comes to the tranflation of Virgil.

On

On this fubject, he is not to blame for communicating nothing new in the way of anecdote, for, in all probability, nothing new remains to be told, but the objections already made to the want of critical exertion recur, even with increased force. We have in the life an amplification of the fpecimens given by former biographers of the criticifm and rival tranflation of Milbourne, together with notices of fome minor affailants, and prefixed to the work are lifts of the perfons who fubfcribed to the engravings, and for the better copies of the tranflation, but little further. This omiffion is the more to be regretted, as, in the few notes he has written on the preface to the Eneid, Mr. Scott has fhown that he could have dif cuffed and illuftrated the topics connected with Dryden's tranflation with great ability and ingenuity.

"While Dryden was engaged with his great translation," Mr. Scott proceeds," he found two months leifure to execute a profe verfion of Frefnoy's Art of Painting,' to which he added an ingenious preface, the work of twelve mornings, containing a parallel between that art and poetry; of which Mafon has faid, that though too fuperficial to ftand the test of strict criticism, yet it will always give pleasure to readers of tafte, even when it fails to convince their judgment. He alfo wrote a • Life of Lucian,” for a tranflation of his works, by Mr. Walter Moyle, Sir Henry, Shere, and other gentlemen of pretenfion to learning. This ver fion, although it did not appear till after his death, and although he executed no part of the tranflation, ftill retains the title of 'Dryden's Lucian."

It is hardly worth while to mention the cenfure which Dryden incurred by omitting to celebrate the death of Queen Mary, unless it be for the fake of correcting an inaccuracy of Mr. Scott, who places that event in December, 1695, instead

of 1694.

Virgil was hardly finifhed, when Dryden diftinguished himself by the immortal Ode to St. Cecilia, commonly called "Alexander's Feaft." The merits of this poem are fo generally known and acknowledged, that Mr. Scott could not hope to difclofe new beauties by research, or to enhance those already difcovered by amplification. The time which the poet employed in producing this unparalleled ode is variously ftated. In a letter of his own, he is reported to have faid he was employed almost a fortnight in compofing and correcting it; while a well-known anecdote reprefents him as having written it in one night. On this fubject, Mr. Scott has the following judicious obfervation :

"Thefe accounts are not fo contradictory as they may at first fight appear. It is poffible that Dryden may have completed, at one fitting, the whole ode, and yet have employed a fortnight, or much more, in correction. There is strong internal evidence to fhew, that the poem was, fpeaking with reference to its general ftructure, wrought off at once. A halt, or paufe, even of a day, would perhaps have injured that continuous flow of poetical lan guage and defcription, which argues the whole fcene to have arifen at once upon the author's imagination. It feems possible, more efpecially in lyrical poetry, to difcover where the author has paufed for any length of time; for the union of the parts is rarely fo perfect as not to fhew a different ftrain of thought and feeling. There may be fomething fanciful, however, in this reafoning, which I therefore abandon to the reader's mercy; only begging him to obferve, that we have no mode of estimating the exertions of a quality fo capricious as a poetic imagination; fo that it is very poffible, that the Ode to St. Cecilia may have been the work of twenty-four hours, whiift corrections and emendations, perhaps of no very great confequence, occupied the author as many days."

After occupying nine days in preparing for the prefs a fecond edition of Virgil, the poet, ftill obliged to seek for bread, meditated a new literary project, and his efforts were ftimulated by the approaching return of his fon, who was expected from Rome in ill health." If it pleafe God," he wrote to Tonfon, "that I muft die of over ftudy, I cannot fpend my life better than in preferving his." Quoting this paffage, Mr. Scott makes the following remark :

"It is affecting to read fuch a paffage in the life of fuch a man; yet the neceffities of the poet, like the afflictions of the vir tuous, fmooth the road to immortality. While Milton and Dryden were favoured by the rulers of the day, they were involved in the religious and political controverfies which raged around them. It is to hours of feclufion, neglect, and even penury, that we owe the Paradife Loft, the Virgil, and the Fables."

He thought of reviving a tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, called the Conqueit of China by the Tartars," and medi-" tated a tranflation of Homer; but neither of thefe projects being capable of immediate execution, he engaged, for an immediate fupply, in making thofe imitations of Boccacio and Chaucer, which have been fince called the "Fables;" and in Spring, 1699, he was in fuch forwardness, as to put into Tonfon's hands "feven thousand five hundred verfes, more or lefs," as the contract bears, being a partial delivery on account of ten thoufand verfes, which by that deed he agreed to furnish, for the fum of two hundred and fifty gui

neas,

neas, to be made up three hundred pounds upon publication of the fecond edition. On each of the pieces contained in the collection, Mr. Scott has made remarks, both in the volume where they are printed, and in the life of the author; a task the more neceffary to every perfon interefled in the fame of the poet, as the popular, though inconfiderate and, anjuft, criticifm of Hume had ftigmatized thefe poems as "ill-chosen tales, conveyed in an incorrect, though spirited version."

At the time of this publication, Dryden had to encounter a new host of affailants, who, when he had ceafed writing for the ftage, began to attack him for the obscenity, immorality, and profanenefs of fome paffages in his dramas. Jeremy Collier and Sir Richard Blackmore were the chiefs of this band; and in the preface to the Fables, the poet, too honeft to contend against conviction, and too much reformed to glory in the vices of his earlier days, acknowledges himself juflly cenfured by the former critic, and only blames him for having revelled with too much delight amid the wanton paffages which he has taken fuch pains to felect and expose. This good-humoured and not unjust reproof is neatly expreffed in the introduction to the tale of Cymon and Iphigenia:

"The world will think that what we loofely write,
Though now arraigned, he read with fome delight;
Becaufe he feems to chew the cud again,

When his broad comment makes the text too plain;
And teaches more in one explaining page,
Than all the double meanings of the stage.
What needs he paraphrafe on what we mean?
We were at worst but wanton; he's obfcene."

"Although this interpretation is invidious," Mr. Scott obferves," it might have been wished, that Collier, against whom the infinuation is directed, had been lefs coarfe, and fomewhat veiled the indecencies which he justly cenfures."

Blackmore, as he deferved lefs refpect, met lefs kindness. He had ftolen from Dryden hints for what he chose to call an epic poem, abufed him in the preface to that poem, and again libelled him in a fatire on Wit. On his head the poet let fall his full refentment; and the phyfician foon difcovered that the enemy he had excited was not enfeebled or rendered awkward by age, and that the arms he wielded had loft no portion of their keennefs, or their polifh. In the preface to the Fables, Blackmore, as a poet, is expofed with fatirical contempt; and in the epiftle to Mr. Driden, of Chesterton,

published with the Fables, his character, as a phyfician, is treated with equal feverity under the name of Maurus. The paffage is quoted by Mr. Scott, and concludes with these lines:

"Would't thou be foon difpatched, and perifh whole,

Truft Maurus with thy life, and Milbourne with thy foul."

"The end of Dryden's labours," Mr. Scott fays, "was now faft approaching; and, as his career began upon the ftage, it was in fome degree doomed to terminate there. It is true, he never recalled his refolution to write no more plays; but Vanburgh having, about this time, revifed and altered for the Drury-lane Theatre, Fletcher's lively comedy of The Pilgrim,' it was agreed that Dryden, or, as one account fays, his fon Charles, fhould have the profits of a third night, on condition of adding to the piece a Secular Mafque, adapted to the fuppofed termination of the feventeenth century; a Dialogue in the Mad-house between two difrafted Lovers; and a Prologue and Epilogue. The Secular Mafque contains a beautiful and fpirited delineation of the reigns of James I. Charles I. and Charles II. in which the influence of Diana, Mars, and Venus, are fuppofed to have refpectively predominated. Our author did not venture to affign a patron to the last years of the century, though the expulfion of Saturn might have given a hint for it. The Prologue and Epilogue to The Pilgrim' were written within twenty days of Dryden's death, and their spirit equals that of any of his fatirical compofitions. They afford us the lefs pleafing conviction, that even the laft fortnight of Dryden's life was occupied in repelling or retorting the venomed attacks of his literary foes. In the Prologue, he gives Blackmore a drubbing which would have annihilated any author of ordinary modefty; but the knight was as remarkable for his powers of endurance, as fome modern pugilifts are faid to be for the quality technically called bottom. After having been brayed in a mortar,' as Solomon expreffes it, by every wit of his time, Sir Richard not only furvived to commit new offences againft ink and paper, but had his faction, his ad. mirers, and his panegyrifts, among that numerous and fober class of readers, who think that genius confifts in good intention. In the Epilogue, Dryden attacks Collier, but with more courteous weapons it is rather a palliation than a defence of dramatic im morality, and contains nothing perfonally offenfive to Collier, Thus fo dearly was Dryden's pre-eminent reputation purchased, that even his laft hours were embittered with controverfy; and nature, over-watched and worn out, was, like a befieged garrifon, forced to obey the call to arms, and defend reputation even with the very laft exertion of the vital fpirit."

On the death and funeral of Dryden, Mr. Scott affords nothing beyond what the care of Mr. Malone had already collected;