in order to seek his fortune in England; but
it was his fate, upon his first arrival here, to engage in an employment
more formal, if possible, than his American education. Mr. Dennis, in
his Letters, vol. i. p. 48, has given us the best account of this poet,
and upon his authority the above, and the succeeding circumstances are
related. His necessity, when he first arrived in England, was extremely
urgent, and he was obliged to become a gentleman usher to an old
independent lady; but he soon grew as weary of that precise office, as
he had done before of the discipline of Nova Scotia. One would imagine
that an education, such as this, would be but an indifferent preparative
for a man to become a polite author, but such is the irresistable
force of genius, that neither this, nor his poverty, which was very
deplorable, could suppress his ambition: aspiring to reputation, and
distinction, rather than to fortune and power. His writings soon made
him known to the court and town, yet it was neither to the savour of the
court, nor to that of the earl of Rochester, that he was indebted to the
nomination the king made of him, for the writing the Masque of Calypso,
but to the malice of that noble lord, who designed by that preference to
mortify Mr. Dryden.

Upon the breaking out of the two parties, after the pretended discovery
of the Popish plot, the favour he was in at court, and the gaiety of
his temper, which inclined him to join with the fashion, engaged him to
embrace the Tory party. About that time he wrote the City Politicks, in
order to satirize and expose the Whigs: a comedy not without wit and
spirit, and which has obtained the approbation of those of contrary
principles, which is the highest evidence of merit; but after it was
ready for the stage, he met with great embarrassments in getting it
acted. Bennet lord Arlington (who was then lord chamberlain, was
secretly in the cause of the Whigs, who were at that time potent in
Parliament, in order to support himself against the power of lord
treasurer Danby, who was his declared enemy) used all his authority
to suppress it. One while it was prohibited on account of its being
dangerous; another while it was laid aside upon pretence of its being
flat and insipid; till Mr. Crowne, at last, was forced to have recourse
to the King himself, and engage him to lay his absolute commands on
the lord chamberlain to have it no longer delayed. This command he was
pleased to give in h