wincle, near Oundle 1631[1], he had his
education in grammar learning, at Westminster-school, under the
famous Dr. Busby, and was from thence elected in 1650, a scholar of
Trinity-College in Cambridge.

We have no account of any extraordinary indications of genius given by
this great poet, while in his earlier days; and he is one instance how
little regard is to be paid to the figure a boy makes at school: Mr.
Dryden was turned of thirty before he introduced any play upon the
stage, and his first, called the Wild Gallants, met with a very
indifferent reception; so that if he had not been impelled by the force
of genius and propension, he had never again attempted the stage:
a circumstance which the lovers of dramatic poetry must ever have
regretted, as they would in this case have been deprived of one of the
greatest ornaments that ever adorned the profession.

The year before he left the university, he wrote a poem on the death of
lord Hastings, a performance, say some of his critics, very unworthy of
himself, and of the astonishing genius he afterwards discovered.

That Mr. Dryden had at this time no fixed principles, either in religion
or politics, is abundantly evident, from his heroic stanzas on Oliver
Cromwel, written after his funeral 1658; and immediately upon the
restoration he published Astraea Redux, a poem on the happy restoration
of Charles the IId; and the same year, his Panegyric to the king on his
coronation: In the former of these pieces, a remarkable distich has
expos'd our poet to the ridicule of the wits.

An horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we the tempest hear.

Which it must be owned is downright nonsense, and a contradiction in
terms: Amongst others captain Radcliff has ridiculed this blunder in the
following lines of his News from Hell.

Laureat who was both learn'd and florid,
Was damn'd long since for silence horrid:
Nor had there been such clutter made,
But that his silence did invade.
Invade, and so it might, that's clear;
But what did it invade? An ear!

In 1662 he addressed a poem to the lord chancellor Hyde, presented on
new-year's-day; and the same year published a satire on the Dutch. His
next piece, was his Annus Mirabilis, or the Year of Wonders, 1668, an
historical poem, which celebrated the duke of York's victory over the
Dutch. In the same year Mr. Dryden succeeded Sir William Davenant as
Poet Laureat, and was also made historiogr