JOHN DRYDEN, the subject of this memoir, was born at the parsonage house of Oldwinkle All-Saints, on or about the 9th day of August 1631.[20] The village then belonged to the family of Exeter, as we are informed by the poet himself in the postscript to his Virgil.  That his family were Puritans may readily be admitted; but that they were Anabaptists, although confidently asserted by some of our author’s political or poetical antagonists, appears altogether improbable.  Notwithstanding, therefore, the sarcasm of the Duke of Buckingham, the register of Oldwinkle All-Saints parish, had it been in existence, would probably have contained the record of our poet’s baptism.[21]

Dryden seems to have received the rudiments of his education at Tichmarsh,[22] and was admitted a king’s scholar at Westminster,[23] under the tuition of the celebrated Dr. Bushby,[24] for whom he ever afterwards entertained the most sincere veneration.  One of his letters to his old master is addressed, “Honoured Sir,” and couched in terms of respect, and even humility, fully sufficient for the occasion.  Another written by Dryden, when his feelings were considerably irritated by a supposed injustice done to his son, is nevertheless qualified by great personal deference to his old preceptor.  It may be readily supposed, that such a scholar, under so able a teacher, must have made rapid progress in classical learning.  The bent of the juvenile poet, even at this early period, distinguished itself.  He translated the third satire of Persius, as a Thursday night’s task, and executed many other exercises of the same nature, in English verse, none of which are now in existence.[25] During the last year of his residence at Westminster, the death of Henry Lord Hastings, a young nobleman of great learning, and much beloved, called forth no less than ninety-eight elegies, one of which was written by our poet, then about eighteen years old.  They were published in 1650, under the title of “Lachrymae Musarum.”

Dryden, having obtained a Westminster scholarship was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge on the 11th May 1650, his tutor being the reverend John Templer, M.A., a man of some learning, who wrote a Latin Treatise in confutation of Hobbes, and a few theological tracts and single sermons.  While at college, our author’s conduct seems not to have been uniformly regular.  He was subjected to slight punishment for contumacy to the vice-master,[26] and seems, according to the statement of an obscure libeller, to have been engaged in some public and notorious dispute with a nobleman’s son, probably on account of the indulgence of his turn for satire.[27] He took, however, the degree of Bachelor, in January 1653-4, but neither became Master of Arts,[28] nor a fellow of the university and certainly never retained for it much of that veneration usually paid by an English scholar to his Alma Mater.  He often celebrates Oxford, but only mentions Cambridge as the contrast of the sister university in point of taste and learning: