stain on the poet's fame. In 1661, he made his first attempt as a dramatic writer, and he afterwards wrote a number of tragedies and comedies; but though they contain passages of vigour and beauty not unworthy of their author's great genius, they are as a whole inferior, while their licentious character, and the frequent grossness of their language, present the painful exhibition of a gifted poet prostituting the powers of his poetic talents to the corruption of his age. It does not detract from the baseness of such a perversion of genius, that the poet's dramatic writings produced a liberal revenue, and secured for him the patronage of the Crown, and the appointment to the joint offices of poet-laureat and historiographerroyal, which yielded him an annual salary of £200. In 1681, Dryden wrote his celebrated political satire of "Absalom and Achitophel," in which, under the guise of Scripture characters, the Duke of Monmouth, Earl Shaftesbury, and other leading personages obnoxious to the court, were satirised with equal wit and severity. The success of this bold political satire was such as has been rarely, if ever equalled; and the author followed it up by others, in which he gratified no less his personal feelings than the political predilections of the court party with which he was allied. These compositions, possessing in their subject no greater elements of enduring interest than a modern newspaper paragraph, have commanded an enduring interest by the singular vigour and beauty which their author threw into his numbers. As a political partisan, all his keenest feelings were enlisted in the subject, while the description of characters, which this species of poetic composition required, was entirely suited to the cast of his mind, though he failed so greatly in embodying them in the form demanded by the drama. The character of his sonorous and powerful versification is thus happily described by Pope: "Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join The remaining incidents of Dryden's life are not such as his admirers can dwell on with pleasure. In 1665, he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, an alliance which gave him the prized attractions of rank, but added neither to his worldly means nor his personal happiness. On the death of Charles II., Dryden followed up his political compliance of an earlier date, by a change of religion suited to the opinions of his successor. It has, indeed, been attempted to be shown by some of his biographers, that this adoption of the Roman Catholic faith was a sincere conversion; but it cannot be overlooked that one of its first fruits was an addition of £100 a-year to his pension, and that in making such a change, he was only following the example of some of the basest time-servers of a mean age. The most interesting result of this conversion was the production of his poem of the "Hind and Panther," a controversial poem, in which the Hind represents the Church of Rome, and the Panther the Church of England, while the Independents, Quakers, and other sects, are coarsely caricatured as bears, boars, hares, &c. This was followed by a congratulatory poem on the birth of the unfortunate son of James II., which he celebrated as an auspicious event, destined to perpetuate the security, and advance the glory of church and state. The Revolution, which followed only a few months after, sufficed to show how little of the prophetic prescience of ancient bards pertained to the time-serving poet-laureat. The changes which followed deprived him of his pension, and compelled him to devote the remaining years of his life to the production of some of his finest original compositions, as well as to his numerous translations from the Greek, Roman, Italian, and old English poets. To the great intellectual powers displayed in many of these later productions, Dryden owes much of his well-earned fame, while they procured him at the time very liberal remuneration. His health, however, gave way under unremitting literary toil, and his closing years were embittered alike by pecuniary difficulties and the rancour of literary feuds, such as the satirist rarely fails to provoke. He died on the 1st of May 1700, in an obscure lodging in Gerard Street, London. But his great genius was not wholly unappreciated, though his latter years were thus clouded by neglect and misfortune. He was honoured by a public funeral, and his remains were laid in Westminster Abbey, near the tomb of Chaucer, where a monument was erected by the Duke of Buckingham, graced with the simplest and most emphatic of all inscriptions-the single word, “Dryden.” He was a great genius cast on a mean age, which he had not the self-sacrificing courage to attempt to teach by his muse, and he is most aptly compared by Scott to the degraded and blind champion of the Israelites amid the Philistines, set to make sport for them by "a ribald king and court." The shame, however, was not less that of the servile poet than of the ribald court. THOMAS KEN. BORN 1637; DIED 1711. THE name of Bishop Ken takes, with propriety, a place among those of the poets of the seventeenth century, since his beautiful Morning and Evening Hymns still occupy a just prominence among the most favourite hymns employed in Christian worship. His character is, in every sense, a pleasing one, and presents a gratifying contrast to that which most frequently occupies the attention of the biographer of poets of the period. Thomas Ken, the son of a London solicitor, residing at Furnival's Inn, received his education at Winchester School, and New College, Oxford, and was elected a Fellow of Winchester College in 1661. After occupying various appointments in the church, he was selected, in 1679, as chaplain to the Princess of Orange; but having given some offence to the Prince, afterwards William III., he resigned his post, and accompanied Lord Dartmouth as his chaplain, when that nobleman was despatched by the English government to destroy the fortifications of Tangiers. On his return to England, he was promoted to the office of royal chaplain; and the last appointment made by Charles II., immediately before his death, was the promotion of Ken to the bishopric of Bath and Wells. This appointment was confirmed by James II., and he is universally acknowledged to have adorned the episcopal office, by the same purity and consistency of conduct which had compelled the respect even of the dissolute Court of Charles II. His charities also were expended with equal liberality and prudence; and his consistent integrity may be inferred from the fact that he was per T secuted in turn by each party. He was one of the seven bishops sent to the Tower by James II., for opposing the reading of the "Declaration of Indulgence;" and yet, remaining firm in his fidelity to that monarch, he was ejected from his bishopric for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to William III. He ultimately received from the government a pension of £200 a-year, and having accepted an invitation to reside with the Thyme family, in Wiltshire, he died there, in 1711, and was interred in the churchyard of Frome. MATTHEW PRIOR. BORN, 1664; DIED, 1721. THE poet Prior was of humble origin, and early left an orphan, so that the place of his birth has been matter of dispute. He owed his career in after life to the kindness of his uncle, who kept the Rummer Tavern, near Charing Cross, London. By him, the boy was placed under the care of Dr. Busby, at Westminster School, where he early showed a love for classical literature. Notwithstanding this early proficiency, however, he returned to the Rummer Tavern, to assist his uncle in the humble office of a tapster, and it was while still engaged in such duties that the attention of the Earl of Dorset was attracted to the boy, by observing him reading Horace with manifest interest. Further investigation satisfied this nobleman of the talents and strong intellectual tastes of his protegee, and he accordingly sent him, in 1682, to St. John's College, Cambridge, where, in due time, he obtained a fellowship. There he formed an intimacy with Charles |