Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/72

Dryden ment in London. Both Drydens and Pickerings had taken the popular side in the civil war. His grandfather, Sir Erasmus, had been imprisoned by Charles for refusing ‘loan money’ (, Dryden, pp. xvii, 329). His father was a justice of the peace for Northamptonshire, and is said to have been a ‘committee-man’ under the Commonwealth. His first cousin, Sir Gilbert Pickering (son of his father's sister by Sir John Pickering, eldest brother of his maternal grandfather), was one of the judges on the king's trial, though absent on the day of sentence. He was chamberlain to Cromwell and nominated a peer by him in 1658. Shadwell says (Medal of John Bayes) that Dryden began life as clerk to this cousin. Upon Cromwell's death (3 Sept. 1658) Dryden wrote his ‘Heroic Stanzas,’ which were published, with two other poems, by Edmund Waller and Sprat (afterwards bishop of Rochester). By an unlucky collocation his next publications were the ‘Astræa Redux,’ celebrating the Restoration, and a ‘Panegyric’ upon the king's coronation. A line in the poem on Cromwell (saying that he essayed

was afterwards interpreted to mean that the panegyrist of Charles had approved of the execution of Charles's father. The phrase clearly refers to Cromwell's energy in the war, nor can it be said that the poem shows puritan sympathies. It proves only that Dryden was quite willing to do poetical homage to the power which then seemed to be permanently established. The order which followed the Restoration was no doubt more congenial. Sir Gilbert Pickering, though he escaped punishment, except incapacitation for office, could no longer help his cousin.

Dryden now lodged with Herringman, a bookseller in the New Exchange, for whom, according to later and improbable scandal, he worked as a hack-writer. Herringman published his books until 1679. Here he became acquainted with Sir Robert Howard, a younger son of the royalist Earl of Berkshire. A poem by Dryden is prefixed to a volume published in 1660 by Howard, to whom he acknowledged many obligations in the preface to his ‘Annus Mirabilis.’ On 1 Dec. 1663 Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard, his friend's sister (see SHARPE'S Peerage, under ‘Howard, Earl of Suffolk,’ and BELL, p. 24). The marriage was at St. Swithin's, London, and the consent of the parents is noted on the license, though Lady Elizabeth was then about twenty-five. She was the object of some scandals, well or ill founded; it was said that Dryden had been bullied into the marriage by her brothers (Dryden's Satire to his Muse, attributed to Lord Somers, though disavowed by him and reprinted in ‘Supplement to Works of Minor Poets,’ 1750, pt. ii.); and a letter written by her to the second Earl of Chesterfield (, Letters, 1829, p. 95) shows questionable intimacy with a dissolute nobleman. A small estate in Wiltshire was settled upon them by her father (see Dedication to ‘Cleomenes’). The lady's intellect and temper were apparently not good; her husband was treated as an inferior by her social equals, and neither his character nor the conditions of his life afford a presumption for his strict fidelity. Scandal connected his name with that of an actress, Ann Reeve (, Epistle to the Tories). An old gentleman, who gave his recollections to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for 1745 (p. 99), professed to have eaten tarts with Dryden's ‘Madam Reeve’ at the Mulberry Garden. Our knowledge, however, is very imperfect, and it is certain that both Dryden and his wife were warmly attached to their children.

Dryden was already making his way. On 26 Nov. 1662 he had been elected a member of the Royal Society. In his epistle to Walter Charleton he speaks of Bacon, Gilbert, Boyle, and Harvey. A more congenial employment was provided by the opening of the two theatres—the King's, directed by Killigrew, and the Duke's, directed by D'Avenant. Dryden had begun and laid aside a play with a royalist moral, of which the Duke of Guise was the hero. His first acted play, the ‘Wild Gallant,’ was performed at the King's Theatre in February 1663, and failed. A poem to Lady Castlemaine acknowledges the favour shown to the author by the king's mistress. His second play, the ‘Rival Ladies,’ a tragi-comedy, succeeded fairly at the same theatre later in the same year. On 3 Feb. 1664 Pepys records that he saw Dryden, ‘the poet I knew at Cambridge,’ at the coffee-house in Covent Garden with ‘all the wits of the town.’ In August Pepys saw and admired the ‘Rival Ladies.’ Dryden had helped Sir Robert Howard in the ‘Indian Queen,’ a tragedy upon Montezuma, brought out with great splendour and marked success in January 1664. He produced a sequel, the ‘Indian Emperor,’ which was brought out with the same scenes and dresses in the beginning of 1665, and repeated the success of its predecessor.

The theatres were closed from May 1665 till the end of 1666 by the plague and the fire of London. Dryden retired for some time to Charlton in Wiltshire, a seat of his father-in-law, Lord Berkshire, where his eldest son