love-letter by this Sir Francis; who, notwithstanding his narrow escape, again rushed into the Gunpowder treason, being a near relation of Catesby, the prime actor in it. The movements of Tresham in the matter have all the character of those of an actor in some strange romance. From the moment that he was admitted to the secret, Catesby was struck with inward terror and misgivings. Tresham augmented this alarm by beginning soon to plead warmly for warning the Lords Stourton and Mounteagle, who had married his sisters. A few days after, he suddenly came upon Catesby, Winter, and Fawkes, in Enfield Chase, and reiterated his entreaty. They refused; and then, on the 26th of October, as Lord Mounteagle was sitting at supper, at an old seat of his at Hoxton, which he seldom visited, and to which he had now come suddenly, a letter was brought in by his page, saying, he had received it from a tall man whose face he could not discern in the dark, and who went hastily away. The letter was tossed carelessly by Mounteagle to a gentleman in his service, who read it aloud. It was the very warning which Tresham wished so earnestly to convey to him. Mounteagle in astonishment carried the letter to Cecil the next morning, and thus the secret of the impending catastrophe was out. Once more Catesby and Winter appointed a meeting with Tresham in Enfield Chase. Their purpose was to charge him with the warning of Mounteagle, and if he were found guilty to stab him to the heart on the spot. But while they told him what had been done, they fixed their eyes searchingly on his countenance; all was clear and firm; not a muscle moved, not a tone faltered; he swore solemn oaths that he was ignorant of the letter, and they let him go. This man, when part of the conspirators were arrested, remained at large; while others fled, he hastened to the Council to offer his services in apprehending the rebels. Finally, arrested and conveyed to the Tower himself, there, under torture, he implicated the Jesuits, Garnet and Greenway, in some treason in Queen Elizabeth's time, then retracted the confession, and died in agony, as the Catholics believed of poison. Such was the career and end of this strange The family estate passed away into the hands of the Cockaynes, and is now the property of Mr. Hope. Could

man.

there be a more inspiring solitude for the composition of a poem, the object of which was to smooth the way for the return of Catholic ascendancy, and that by a poet warm with the first fires of a proselyte zeal?

Amongst other places of Dryden's occasional sojourn, may be mentioned Charlton, in Wiltshire, the seat of his wife's father, the Earl of Berkshire, whence he dates the introduction to his Annus Mirabilis; and Chesterton, in Huntingdonshire, the seat of his kinsman, John Driden, where he translated part of Virgil. In the country he delighted in the pastime of fishing, and used, says Malone, to spend some time with Mr. Jones, of Ramsden, in Wiltshire. Durfey was sometimes of this party; but Dryden appears to have underrated his skill in fishing, as much as his attempt at poetry. Hence Fenton, in his epistle to Lambard:

"By long experience, Durfey may, no doubt,
Ensnare a gudgeon, or sometimes a trout;
Yet Dryden once exclaimed in partial spite,
'He fish!'-because the man attempts to write."

And finally, Canons-Ashby connects itself inevitably with his name. It was the ancient patrimony of the family. It was not his father's, it was not his, or his sons, though the title generally connected with it fell to his son, and there his son lived and died; yet, as the place which gives name and status to the line, it will always maintain an association with the memory of the poet. These are the particulars respecting it collected by Mr. Baker. The mansion of the Drydens, seated in a small deer park, is a singular building of different periods. The oldest part, as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, or perhaps earlier, is built round a small quadrangle. There is a dining-room in the house thirty feet long by twenty feet wide, which is said to be entirely floored and wainscotted with the timber of one single oak, which grew in this lordship. In this room are various portraits of persons of and connected with the family. The drawing-room is traditionally supposed to have been fitted up for the reception of Anne of Denmark, queen of James I. The estate is good, but not so large as formerly, owing to the strange conduct of the late Lady Dryden,

who cut off her own children, three sons and two daughters, leaving the whole ancient patrimonial property from them to the son of her lawyer, the lawyer himself refusing to have it, or make such a will. The estate here was, it appears, regained, but only by the sacrifice of one in Lincolnshire. Such are the strange events in the annals of families which local historians rarely record. How little could this lady comprehend the honour lying in the name of Dryden; how much less the nature and duties of a mother.

The monument of the poet in Westminster Abbey is familiar to the public, placed there by Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, bearing only a single word,the illustrious name of-DRYDEN.

ADDISON was a fortunate man; the houses in which he lived testify it. His fame as a poet, though considerable in his own time, has now dwindled to a point which would not warrant us to include him in this work, were not his reputation altogether of that kind which inseparably binds him up with the poetical history of his country. He was not only a popular poet in his own day, but he was the friend and advocate of true poetry wherever it could be found. It was he who, in the Spectator, first sounded boldly and zealously abroad the glory of John Milton. In our time the revival of true poetry, the return to nature and to truth, have been greatly indebted to the old ballad poetry of the nation. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, and others, attribute the formation of their taste in the highest degree to the reading of Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. But it was Addison who long before had pointed out these sources, and these effects. It was he who brought forward again the brave old ballad of Chevy Chace; who reminded us

that Sir Philip Sidney had said that it always stirred his heart like the sound of a trumpet. It was he who showed us the inimitable touches of nature and of true pathos in it. He showed us how alive was the old bard who composed it to all the influences of nature and of circumstances. How the stanza

"The hounds ran swiftly through the woods,

The nimble deer to take,

That with their cries the hills and dales

An echo shrill did make;"

carried you at once to the scene. With what life and spirit and graphic power he introduced his heroes, and by their gallant bearing won at once your interest for them.

"Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come,
His men in armour bright:
Full twenty hundred Scottish spears
All marching in our sight.

"All men of pleasant Tivy-dale,
Fast by the river Tweed;

O cease your sport, Earl Percy said,
And take your bows with speed;

"And now with me, my countrymen,
Your courage forth advance,
For there was never champion yet,
In Scotland or in France,

"That ever did on horseback come,
But if my hap it were,

I durst encounter, man for man,
With him to break a spear.

"Earl Douglas on his milk-white steed,

Most like a baron bold,

Rode foremost of the company,

Whose armour shone like gold.

"Show me, said he, whose men you be,
That hunt so boldly here,

That, without my consent, do chase
And kill my fallow deer.

"The first man that did answer make

Was noble Percy, he;

Who said,-We list not to declare,

Nor show whose men we be."