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JOHN DRYDEN, Esq;

This illustrious Poet was son of Erasmus Dryden, of Tickermish in
Northamptonshire, and born at Aldwincle, 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 Astræa Redux, a poem on the happy restoration