It is no slight honour to this play, that it was written by the illustrious author of the "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day."² The play, in return, confers but little honour upon Dryden.

The burning bosom, throbbing heart, the enchanting sensations, which the author, in his odes and poems, inspires, are rarely excited by his dramatic works. The stage, which exalts the muse of many an author, humbles that of the present great poet; and he ranks as a dramatist beneath those rivals who can move the passions by a more judicious adherence to nature and simplicity.

"All for Love" was the author's favourite drama;—he said, he wrote it solely to please himself, and had succeeded in his design. Yet, were it not for the interest which attaches to the names of his hero and heroine, their characters are too feebly drawn to produce those emotions which an audience at a tragedy come prepared to feel.

Who can be inattentive to the loves of Marc Antony and Cleopatra? Yet, thus described, their fate in representation seldom draws a tear, or gives rise to one transport of passion in the breast of the most observing auditor. The work is, nevertheless, highly valuable. It is one of the most interesting parts b 2[Page 4]of Roman and Egyptian history; and the historian—Dryden.

There is certainly in this short history, compared with more copious ones, a diminution of Cleopatra's faults: yet her character is by no means so graced with virtues, and dignified by heroism in this drama, as in the tragedy of Pompée, by the great Corneille.³

The wife of Antony, in the present composition, is, unexpectedly, the most affecting personage in the whole piece: and the comic sentences of Ventidius the sole support of those scenes, where the tragic parts, more particularly, decline into languor.

The author was an advocate for tragi-comedy, and held, that all theatrical productions required alternate scenes of grief and joy, to render the whole a more perfect picture of nature, than could be given by one continued view of either. Some of his biographers have said, that, in his latter days, Dryden altered this opinion, and was convinced, that tragedy and comedy should never unite.⁴ It is probable he recanted; and it is consolatory to reflect, that this great man was as apt perhaps to change his mind upon all other subjects, as upon that in which his political interest was concerned.

In politics, the author of this tragedy was so inconstant, that he wrote funeral lamentations on the death of Oliver Cromwell, and hymns of joy on the restoration of King Charles.

He wrote "The Spanish Friar," to vilify the Roman Catholic religion, whilst that religion was persecuted; and translated an ancient Father, to prove it the true [Page 5]faith, when the King on the throne professed himself one of its members.⁵

This extraordinary man was a grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, of Northamptonshire, and born near Oundle,⁶ in that county. His hereditary income seems to have been extremely confined, yet he was educated for no profession;⁷ whilst the emoluments of a poet, like those of a soldier, scarcely ever supply the various necessities of the gentleman.

He married Lady C. Howard,⁸ sister to the Earl of Berkshire; but this union could not give much aid to his finances, as it is testified, that the world has been indebted for his works to his poverty. His pen was not more pre-eminent than reluctant.

Dryden's manners were meek and modest in the same remarkable degree as his satire on his enemies was bold and revengeful; for, like other able writers of his time, his days were embittered by the envy and malignity of rivals.

But with all their slander, and all his own in return, he was not so worn by evil passions as to die much before the age of seventy. He departed this life in the year 1701, at his house in Gerrard Street, professing the faith of the Church of Rome.⁹

So distinguished a believer might have done honour to that Church—but Dryden believed also in astrology.¹⁰