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Percival, who took an interest in every thing which entertained his children, were looking on at this simple game. "Mr. Percival," said Belinda, "condescending to look at a game of jack-straws!" "Yes," said Lady Anne; "for he is of Dryden's opinion, that, if a straw can be made the instrument of happiness, he is a wise man who does not despise it." "Ah!
His angry eagerness to have questions settled resembles that of a judge in one of Dryden's plays the Amphitryon, we think who wishes to decide a cause after hearing only one party, and, when he has been at last compelled to listen to the statement of the defendant, flies into a passion, and exclaims, "There now, sir! See what you have done.
Dryden's strength turns in his work into something more fragile and delicate, polished with infinite care like lacquer, and wrought like filigree work to the last point of conscious and perfected art.
Charles Dryden, who was some time usher to pope Clement II. was a young gentleman of a very promising genius; and in the affair of his father's funeral, which I am about to relate, shewed himself a man of spirit and resolution. The day after Mr. Dryden's death, the dean of Westminster sent word to Mr.
Clough was right in choosing the so-called Dryden's translation as the basis of his work. Its style is not old enough to have become antiquated, while yet it possesses much of the savor and raciness of age.
The "first sprightly running" of Dryden's vintage was, it must be confessed, a little muddy, if not beery; but if his own soil did not produce grapes of the choicest flavor, he knew where they were to be had; and his product, like sound wine, grew better the longer it stood upon the lees.
Dryden had no constructive faculty; and in every one of his longer poems that required a plot, the plot is bad, always more or less inconsistent with itself, and rather hitched-on to the subject than combining with it. It is fair to say, however, before leaving this part of Dryden's literary work, that Horne Tooke thought "Don Sebastian" "the best play extant."
She had always combined a love of serious and poetical reading with her skill in fancy-work, and the neatly-bound copies of Dryden's 'Virgil, Hannah More's 'Sacred Dramas, Falconer's 'Shipwreck, Mason 'On Self-Knowledge, 'Rasselas, and Burke 'On the Sublime and Beautiful, which were the chief ornaments of the bookcase, were all inscribed with her name, and had been bought with her pocket-money when she was in her teens.
In the reading, at least, all Dryden's comic writing for the stage must be ranked with the latter class. He himself would fain make an exception of the "Spanish Friar," but I confess that I rather wonder at than envy those who can be amused by it.
About a hundred pounds a year were thus added to his income. The marriage is said not to have been a happy one, and perhaps it was not, for his wife was apparently a weak-minded woman; but the inference from the internal evidence of Dryden's plays, as of Shakespeare's, is very untrustworthy, ridicule of marriage having always been a common stock in trade of the comic writers.
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