reason to think, from their mode of accounting, that Sir Erasmus Henry had, like his mother, been visited with mental derangement before his death, and had resigned into Edward’s hands the whole management of his concerns.  Thus ended the poet’s family, none of his sons surviving him above ten years.  The estate of Canons-Ashby became again united to the title, in the person of John Dryden, the surviving brother.[78]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Such, I understand, is the general purport of some letters of Dryden’s, in possession of the Dorset family, which contain certain particulars rendering them unfit for publication.  Our author himself commemorates Dorset’s generosity in the Essay on Satire, in the following affecting passage:  “Though I must ever acknowledge to the honour of your lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that since this Revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence which I had from two kings, whom I had served more faithfully than profitably to myself—­ then your lordship was pleased, out of no other motive but your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which at that time, when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief.  That favour, my lord, is of itself sufficient to bind any grateful man to a perpetual acknowledgment, and to all the future service which one of my mean condition can be ever able to perform.  May the Almighty God return it for me, both in blessing you here, and rewarding you hereafter!”—­Essay on Satire, vol. xiii.

[2] So says Ward, in the London Spy.

[3] “Dryden, though my near relation,” says Swift, “is one whom I have often blamed, as well as pitied.”  Mr. Malone traces their consanguinity to Swift’s grandmother, Elizabeth Dryden, being the daughter of a brother of Sir Erasmus Driden, the poet’s grandfather; so that the Dean of St. Patrick’s was the son of Dryden’s second cousin, which, in Scotland, would even yet be deemed a near relation.  The passages in prose and verse, in which Swift reflects on Dryden, are various.  He mentions, in his best poem, “The Rhapsody,”

         “The prefaces of Dryden,
  For these our cities much confide in,
  Though merely writ at first for filling,
  To raise the volume’s price a shilling.”

He introduces Dryden in “The Battle of the Books,” with a most irreverent description; and many of the brilliant touches in the following assumed character of a hack author, are directed against our poet.  The malignant allusions to merits, to sufferings, to changes of opinion, to political controversies, and a peaceful consciences, cannot be mistaken.  The piece was probably composed flagrante odio, for it occurs in the Introduction to “The Tale of a Tub,” which was written about 1692.