tainly had been nobler if, like Milton, he had clung to
his party. Sir Walter Scott remarks, that Dryden never retracted the
praise he gave to Cromwell. In "Absalom and Achitophel" he sneers at
Richard as Ishbosheth, but says nothing against the deceased giant Saul.
It is clear, too, that at first his desertion of the Cromwell party was
a loss to the poet. He lost the chance of their favour, in case a
reaction should come, his situation as secretary, and the shelter of
Pickering's princely mansion. As might have been expected, his ancient
friends were indignant at the change, and not less so at the alteration
he thought proper at the same time to make in the spelling of his
name--from Driden to Dryden.

He went to reside in the obscure house of one Herringman, a bookseller,
in the New Exchange, and became for life a professional author. His
enemies afterwards reproached him bitterly for his mean circumstances at
this period of his life, and asserted that he was a mere drudge to
Herringman. He, at all events, did little in his own proper poetic
calling for two years. A poem on the Coronation of Charles, well fitted
to wipe away the stain of Cromwellism, and to attract upon the poet the
eye of that Rising-Sun, whose glory he sang with more zeal than truth; a
panegyric on the Lord Chancellor; and a satire on the Dutch; were all,
and are all short, and all savour of a vein somewhat hide-bound. He
planned, indeed, too, and partly wrote, one or more plays, and was
considered of consequence enough to be elected a member of the Royal
Society in 1662. Previous to this he had been introduced, through
Herringman, to Sir Robert Howard, son of the first Earl of Berkshire,
and a relation of Edward Howard, the author of "British Princes," and
the object of the witty wrath of Butler. Sir Robert, too, had a
poetical propensity, and Dryden and he became and continued intimate for
a number of years, the poet assisting the knight in his literary
compositions, particularly in a play entitled "The Indian Queen;" and
the latter inviting the former to the family seat at Charlton, where
Dryden met in an unlucky hour his future wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard,
the sister of Sir Robert. It was on the 1st of December 1663, in St
Swithin's, London, and with the consent of the Earl, who settled about
L60 a-year on his daughter, that this unhappy union took place. The lady
seems to have had absolutely none of the qualities which tend either to
command a