"If you will meet mee in the Old Exchange, about six a clock, I will justify my selfe."—Letters of Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield, 1829, p. 95. This was the same Earl of Chesterfield to whom Dryden dedicated the Georgics thirty years later.
As Dryden's detractors have been nearly as anxious to blacken his wife's character as his own, they have seized on this letter to confirm the reckless and random assertions of contemporary libellers, that her reputation was questionable. The matter may be left to readers to decide,—I can see nothing in the phrases necessarily implying any improper intimacy.
Perhaps it is not superfluous to observe that Scott has not shown his accustomed judgment and knowledge of the seventeenth century in his remark about the Howards and the tobacconists. The separation between classes, as such, was indeed sharp; but it was probably rather more than less usual then than now for scions of noble and gentle families to go into retail trade. It may be added that the evidence of a quarrel between Dryden and his own family is far from strong, and that one of the causes assigned by Scott for that quarrel, the change of spelling, is very dubious as a matter of fact. It has been seen that "Driden" appears in the licence, and it is not certain that the poet invented the y, or first used it.
Very shortly after the marriage occurs the first mention of Dryden of a personal kind. Pepys writes, under date February 3d, 1664: "In Covent Garden to-night at the great coffee-house, where Dryden the poet I knew at Cambridge and all the wits of the town."—ED.]
[17] [To give exact dates, the preface to Sir R. Howard is dated November 10th, 1666. The poem appeared immediately afterwards. Pepys bought it on the 2d of February, and pronounced it "a very good poem." Some other dates and facts of a more precise kind than those in the text may be given here. Dryden left London in the summer of 1665, either from dread of the plague, or because the playhouses were shut. The interval of eighteen months seems to have been wholly spent at Charlton, and Charles Dryden, his eldest son, was born during this time, though the precise date is not known. Charlton is near Malmesbury in Wiltshire, and as Dryden afterwards speaks of himself as possessed of some property in that county, it has been reasonably conjectured that it was in virtue of a settlement on his wife. But if so, it cannot have been freehold property of Lord Berkshire's, as the poet says that he holds of the Hydes. Lady Elizabeth had received a considerable grant (£3000) from the Crown in recognition of her father's services, but it is not certain that it was ever paid. No London domicile of his is known except the house in Gerrard Street, now marked with a plate by the Society of Arts. There is a house—now subdivided—in Fetter Lane which also has a plate (the successor of a stone inscription) stating that Dryden lived there. No biographer takes notice of this, and the topographers who do notice it do not believe the story. If there be any foundation for it, the period of his residence must probably have been before his marriage.— ED.]
[18] [I venture to think this last remark overstated. Sarcasms on matrimony were the fashion, and Dryden followed it. The evidence of mutual unhappiness is almost nil.—ED.]
[19] Sandford, a most judicious actor, is said, by Cibber, cautiously to have observed this rule, in order to avoid surfeiting the audience by the continual recurrence of rhyme.
[20] The Honourable Edward Howard, Sir Robert's brother, expresses himself in the preface to the "Usurper," a play Published in 1668, "not insensible to the disadvantage it may receive passing into the world upon the naked feet of verse, with other works that have their measures adorned with the trappings of rhyme, which, however they have succeeded in wit or design, is still thought music, as the heroic tone now goes; but whether so natural to a play, that should most nearly imitate, in some cases, our familiar converse, the judicious may easily determine."
[21] [A dislike which was silent for five years, if it existed.—ED.]
[22] Who drew Sir Robert in the character of Sir Positive Atall in the "Sullen Lovers;" "a foolish knight, that pretends to understand everything in the world, and will suffer no man to understand anything in his company; so foolishly positive, that he will never be convinced of an error, though never so gross." This character is supported with great humour.