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a charming young man, given more to dice and cards than to study;" and the truth of the latter estimate was sufficiently established by his squandering the greater part of the fortune he acquired on his father's death in gambling.

Denham was a favourite at the Court of Charles I., and was appointed by him, first to the office of Sheriff of the county of Surrey, and afterwards to that of Governor of Farnham Castle. Destitute, however, as he was of any skill in military affairs, he was little fitted to command one of the royal strongholds at so important a period, and he soon resigned the post and joined the court at Oxford. He had already won some distinction by the publication of a tragedy entitled the "Sophy," in 1641, and two years after, "Cooper's Hill," the most popular of all his poems, appeared. It is a descriptive poem, interspersed with such reflections as the commanding view from Cooper's Hill suggested, with the river Thames, the field of Runnymede, Windsor Forest, and other historic scenes visible. Both Dryden and Johnson have selected for special commendation the following lines allusive to the Thames, which, both in their faults and their beauties, are strikingly characteristic of the artificial style of the age to which they belong :

"Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;

Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full."

Denham shared in the fortunes of his royal master. During the exile of Charles II. he formed one of his mock court, and is described under the high-sounding title of Ambassador to the King of Poland. At the Restoration, he was rewarded with the office of surveyor of public

buildings, which he was probably as incapacitated for as for his governorship of Farnham Castle. His marriage was unfortunate, and his latter days embittered by the fruits of an uncongenial union. He died in March 1668, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. Denham scarcely merits, as a poet, so prominent a place as his chance position among the eldest born of his class gives him here. With all his merits, indeed, it may be questioned of him, as of not a few others of the noted poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, if poems of no greater merit than theirs would even command a hearing amid the higher rank of poets of the present day.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

BORN, 1618; DIED, 1667.

COWLEY was the son of a city grocer, born in Fleet Street, London, and owed his education to his mother's success in obtaining him admission as a king's scholar at Westminster. He himself informs us, that his poetical taste was formed by his delighted perusal of Spenser when a boy. He cannot, however, be considered to have made the great Elizabethan poet his model. His verse is characterized by the intricate elaboration, and the sparkling wit, which formed the chief sources of admiration at the court of the Charleses. Like the other poets of his day, he bore his share in the troubles of the period; forsook Cambridge for St. John's College, Oxford, as more suited to a royalist student; and spent ten years in exile, employed in confidential services on behalf of the royal family. On returning to England in 1656, he was arrested

as a spy, but he was able to find satisfactory security for his neutrality, and practised his profession as a physician, without farther molestation, till the death of Cromwell. Cowley was distinguished, among the writers of a licentious age, for purity and elevated religious feeling, and this, perhaps, helped to render him suspected at the court of Charles II. A false charge of disloyalty was made the excuse for refusing him an appointment long promised to him, but he at length obtained, through the influence of friends, the gift of a lease which produced about £300 a year to him for life. Like many other literary men, his leisure years were nearly unproductive, and all his best works are traceable to the period when he was struggling with fortune, and had to snatch his moments of leisure from engrossing pursuits. His poetry was highly estimated in his own day, though it is now little read, and on his death a grave was found for him among the noble and illustrious dead in Westminster Abbey.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

BORN, 1621; DIED, 1695.

THE sterling worth of Henry Vaughan as a poet, may be considered to be established by the fact that his poems have been republished in our own day, and have been received with commendations not often yielded by modern critics to writers of his age. Vaughan was a native of Brecknockshire, in Wales, from whence he passed to Jesus College, Oxford, when seventeen years of age. He was then sent by his father to London, and entered at the inns of court as a student of law. But the poetical mind

of Vaughan found little to suit its sympathies in the dry study of law, and he accordingly betook himself to medicine. After obtaining the requisite knowledge for his new profession, he withdrew to his native place, Newton, on the banks of the river Esk, Brecknockshire, where he is believed to have passed a tranquil and happy life in the successful practice of his profession, and the cultivation of his favourite studies. He named himself, and was styled by his contemporaries, "The Silurist," from his birthplace being within the region of the old Silures, a name since rendered more familiar by its adoption into the nomenclature of modern geology. He continued to reside in the vicinity of his native place until his death, on the 29th of April 1695; and his remains lie interred in a rural churchyard, about two miles distant from Brecknock.

JOHN DRYDEN.

BORN, 1631; DIED, 1700.

AMONG the most illustrious names which grace the literature of England in the seventeenth century, that of Dryden occupies a prominent place; and amid all the changes of taste and public opinion, such is the force of true genius, that not only his noble St. Cecilia's Ode, and other poems of general interest, retain their popularity, but even his political satires, though they have long since lost all the satirical pungency derived from the party feeling of his day, still command our favour by their poetical vigour and beauty. Dryden's father was a man of ancient family, and possessed a small estate in Northamptonshire, which had descended to him from an honourable ancestry.

Like many others of the smaller proprietors, his sympathies appear to have been in favour of the Puritan party, in the struggle with Charles I., and he officiated as a magistrate during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. We thus learn what was the early bent given to the poet's mind, and which was manifested in the first production of his muse. John Dryden received a liberal education from his father. At an early period he was placed at Westminster School, under the celebrated Dr. Busby, and from thence he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of Master of Arts, and obtained a fellowship. On the death of his father in 1654, Dryden succeeded to the paternal property, and removed to London, where he allied himself to the party then in power, and afterwards gave full proof of his sincerity, by the production of his "Heroic Stanzas," the first real evidence of his poetic genius, devoted to the commemoration of Cromwell's death.

Unhappily the age in which Dryden lived was one specially characterized by unprincipled political tergiversation, and a low standard of religious or moral principle in public men. In these respects, no less than in the true qualities of poetry, the productions of Dryden's muse most vividly reflect the spirit of the age. On the restoration of Charles II., Dryden hastened, with unblushing meanness—which strangely contrasts with the upright independence of Milton on the same occasion-to conform his views to the party in the ascendant. The “Astræ Redux," a congratulatory poem on the glorious restoration, was followed by a Panegyric on the Coronation," and thenceforward, many of the finest evidences of Dryden's poetical genius afford no less manifest evidence of his political servility. His moral servility is a still greater

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