“Was there no milder way but the small-pox;
  The very filthiness of Pandora’s box? 
  So many spots, like naeves, our Venus soil? 
  One jewel set off with so many a foil? 
  Blisters with pride swelled, which through ’s flesh did sprout,
  Like rose-buds, stuck i’the lily-skin about. 
  Each little pimple had a tear in it,
  To wail the fault its rising did commit,
  Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife,
  Thus made an insurrection ’gainst his life. 
  Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
  The cabinet of a richer soul within? 
  No comet need foretel his change drew on,
  Whose corpse might seem a constellation.”

This is exactly in the tone of Bishop Corbet’s invective against the same disease: 

  “Oh thou deformed unwoman-like disease,
  Thou plough’st up flesh and blood, and there sow’st pease;
  And leav’st such prints on beauty that dost come,
  As clouted shoon do on a floor of loam. 
  Thou that of faces honey-combs dost make,
  And of two breasts two cullenders, forsake
  Thy deadly trade; now thou art rich, give o’er,
  And let our curses call thee forth no more."[32]

After leaving the university, our author entered the world, supported by friends, from whose character, principles, and situation, it might have been prophesied, with probability, that his success in life, and his literary reputation, would have been exactly the reverse of what they actually proved.  Sir Gilbert Pickering was cousin-german to the poet, and also to his mother; thus standing related to Dryden in a double connection.[33] This gentleman was a staunch puritan, and having set out as a reformer, ended by being a regicide, and an abettor of the tyranny of Cromwell.  He was one of the judges of the unfortunate Charles; and though he did not sit in that bloody court upon the last and fatal day, yet he seems to have concurred in the most violent measures of the unconscientious men who did so.  He had been one of the parliamentary counsellors of state, and hesitated not to be numbered among the godly and discreet persons who assisted Cromwell as a privy council.  Moreover he was lord chamberlain of the Protector’s court, and received the honour of his mock peerage.

The patronage of such a person was more likely to have elevated Dryden to the temporal greatness and wealth acquired by the sequestrators and committee-men of that oppressive time, than to have aided him in attaining the summits of Parnassus.  For, according to the slight records which Mr. Malone has recovered concerning Sir Gilbert Pickering’s character, it would seem, that, to the hard, precise, fanatical contempt of every illumination, save the inward light, which he derived from his sect, he added the properties of a fiery temper, and a rude and savage address.[34] In what capacity Dryden lived with his kinsman, or to what line of life circumstances seemed to destine the future poet, we are left at liberty to conjecture.  Shadwell, the virulent antagonist of our author, has called him Sir Gilbert Pickering’s clerk; and it is indeed highly probable that he was employed as his amanuensis, or secretary.