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DRU circumstances aggravated the disaffection of the Italians, and helped to bring on the social war, which raged for two years with bitter violence, and cost the commonwealth, according to the writer quoted above, three hundred thousand of her most active citizens.

, is sometimes called, to distinguish him from the stepson of Augustus, was the only son of the Emperor Tiberius by his wife Vipsania, the daughter of Agrippa. He took part with his father in pronouncing the funeral orations of Augustus in. 14. In the following year he held the consulship, and was sent to quell the discontent of the legionaries in Pannonia. He afterwards commanded in Illyricum, and received an ovation for his services there. Other offices with which he was intrusted gave him additional opportunities of distinguishing himself, and after the death of his cousin Germanicus, his path to the throne appeared open. But the ambition of Sejanus and the intrigue of that unprincipled favourite with his wife, issued in their administering poison to him, from the effects of which he died,. 23.

, son of that Germanicus whom the Emperor Tiberius adopted, became, like Drusus Cæsar, an object of jealousy to the ambitious Sejanus, and the dissolute character of the prince rendered him an easy prey. After his mother Agrippina and his brother Nero were banished,. 29, he was thrown into the dungeons of the palace, where, after several years of suffering, he died by starvation,. 33.

, nephew of the Emperor Tiberius and uncle of Caligula, succeeded the latter on the imperial throne. His father Drusus, the younger of the stepsons of Augustus, had married Antonia, the daughter of the triumvir, and their son Claudius was born at Lyons, 10. He had a feeble constitution, and his mind also was in some respects deficient; but the neglect with which he was treated drove him to literary studies, and, though he never acquired wisdom and energy of character, he displayed an amount of intellectual activity which ought to have escaped the insults to which he was subjected at the court of Caligula. He wrote an account of the ancient Etrurians and Carthaginians, a history of the empire, and memoirs of his own times; none of which are extant. When his nephew fell by the hands of the conspirators, Claudius was found concealed in the palace and proclaimed emperor,. 41, by the prætorians, who had sufficient power to establish him on the throne, notwithstanding the efforts of a party to restore the republican form of government. The amnesty which he at once published for all but the murderers of Caligula, disarmed opposition; and he subsequently acquired considerable popularity by the mild and liberal policy which he followed. The respect paid by him to the senate, the consuls, and other magistrates; his sparing assumption of high honours, and the subjection of his personal property to the common taxes; the revival of the privy council which had disappeared in the two preceding reigns, and the repeal of some of the more oppressive laws and imposts—these measures, and the execution of such useful works as the completion of the Claudian aqueduct, the formation of a new harbour at the mouth of the Tiber, and the draining of the Fucine lake, gave his reign an honourable place in history. Among the military operations in which he engaged, the principal was the expedition to Britain, which the emperor for a time commanded in person, against the celebrated Caractacus. The dark shadows on the picture were his sensual excesses, and the facility with which he allowed his wives and favourites to practise on his constitutional timidity, and lead him into acts of cruel injustice. The banishment of Julia the daughter of Germanicus, and of the philosopher Seneca; the severe laws against the Jews and Christians; the execution of his son-in-law Pompeius and the virtuous Valerius Asiaticus—were dictated by the malice of the infamous Messalina his third consort. His subsequent marriage with his niece Agrippina, introduced into his palace another series of intrigues and crimes, which brought disgrace upon his name, and eventuated in his destruction. He was poisoned by her directions with the view of securing the sovereignty to her son Nero,. 54.—W. B.  DRYANDER,, a Swedish naturalist, was born in 1748, and died in London in 1811. He studied at Lund, and, on taking his degree, he published a thesis on Fungi. He afterwards sent memoirs to the Academy of Sciences of Stockholm. Sir Joseph Banks employed him to take charge of his scientific collections in London. While occupying this situation, he contributed papers to the Royal and Linnæan Societies. He published a catalogue of the library of Banks.—J. H. B.  DRYDEN,, one of the great names in the literature of England, and the founder of the critical school of English poetry, was born in Northamptonshire on the 9th August, 1631. The honour of his birthplace is disputed by two adjacent parishes called Aldwincle or Oldwincle—one distinguished as All Saints, the other as St. Peters. The family of Driden appears to have been originally of Cumberland, and came to Northamptonshire in the time of the poet's great-grandfather, John, who, by his marriage with the daughter of Sir John Cope of Canons Ashby, acquired that property which is still the family seat. The poet's father, Erasmus, himself a younger son, married Mary Pickering, the daughter of a puritan minister, and John was the eldest of their fourteen children. At Tichmarsh certainly, and probably at Oundle also, he received his early education. He entered Westminster as a king's scholar, and soon attracted the attention of Dr. Busby. In 1650 he was elected a scholar of Trinity college, Cambridge, where he took the degree of bachelor of arts in 1653. It is said he suffered some slight disgraces there, which may possibly account for the preference which he afterwards accorded to Oxford. Upon the death of his father in 1654 he took possession of his small patrimony, which, during his mother's life, was but £40 a year, and he prudently resolved to apply himself to study. The residue of his time at Cambridge is marked by nothing eventful, if we except a transitory passion for his fair cousin, Honor Driden. The lady refused his suit, but it is said that she was not really indifferent to his merits, and in after life regretted her rejection of the great poet. In 1657 Dryden left the university for the metropolis to make his way in the world. The friends to whom family ties attached him, were not such as were likely to promote his success in literature. His uncle Sir John, Honor's father, and his cousin "Fiery Pickering," as Sir Gilbert was called, were staunch puritans. To the latter he became secretary, and thus had the advantage of frequently seeing the protector in consultation with his lord-chamberlain, and obtaining a knowledge of that extraordinary man, which two years after he turned to account in the first poem which he gave to the world. In this he had as rivals the panegyrics of Waller, whose fame was well established, and of Sprat, afterwards bishop of Rochester. With the Restoration all his hopes from the puritan party vanished, and Dryden, with many others, transferred his allegiance from a hopeless protectorate to a monarchy that they deemed needful for the repose of the nation; and so he celebrated the return of Charles to the throne of his fathers by his poem of "Astræa Redux." Family ties were thus broken, and Dryden, left to his own resources, went to lodge with Herringham, a bookseller of some note in the New Exchange. What his position with his host was is not accurately known. His enemies charged him with being a literary fag for him. At all events the connection introduced him to the wits and literary men of the day, who all frequented the house, and amongst them Sir Robert Howard, son of the earl of Berkshire, a poetic trifler who had just published a volume of verses. With him he visited the earl's seat of Charlton; assisted him in the production of a tragedy, the Indian Queen; and made love to his sister, Lady Elizabeth, whom he married in 1663, a union which was productive of no happiness. Meantime he was rising in estimation; he had added to his loyal professions a poem on the coronation, a panegyric addressed to Chancellor Hyde, and a satire on the Dutch, and attained to the honour of membership in the Royal Society in 1662. Dryden's position now demanded the active exercise of his talents, and he cast about him to discover the path that was most likely to lead him to wealth and to fame. The return of Charles was the signal for the revival of theatrical representations. The playhouses reopened, the playwrights reappeared, and set to work with increased ardour and a licentiousness all the greater for its long repression. Dryden had already seen the popular movement towards the drama, and had produced a comedy, "The Wild Gallant," a dead failure, though it had the congenial support of the notorious duchess of Cleveland. He saw at once his genius lay not in that direction, and he tried his hand at a tragi-comedy, "The Rival Ladies." It was well received, but it is principally notable for the defence of rhymed plays in the dedication to the earl of Orrery, leading to a controversy between the poet and his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard, that 