[1] He was an ungrateful son of his _alma mater_, having pointedly declared his preference for Oxford. Perhaps this disloyalty may be connected with the appearance at Cambridge of a pamphlet against him, in the form of a mock defence against "the censure of the Rota," in the same year (1673). [2] Malone thinks that it was the translation of _The History of the League_, but Dryden can have hardly deemed country retirement necessary for a work of this nature. [3] It is perhaps worth remarking that, although not yet a Roman Catholic, Dryden in this name employs the orthography, not of the authorized English version, but of the Vulgate. [4] In his dedication to the second book of _De Raptu Proserpinae_, Claudian says: 'Tu mea plectra moves, Antraque Musarum longo torpentia somno Excutis et placito ducis ab ore sonos.' CHAPTER II. POETS CONTEMPORARY WITH DRYDEN. [Sidenote: Oldham (1653-1683).] The contemporary of Dryden who approached him most nearly in satiric force, and, generally speaking, in the borderland between poetry and prose, was John Oldham (1653-1683). Not much is known of his life. The son of a Nonconformist minister, he nevertheless obtained a university education, but after leaving college was glad to accept the position of usher in Archbishop Whitgift's free school at Croydon. Coming to town he filled the post of tutor in various families, and by his _Satires upon the Jesuits_ (1681) gained the acquaintance of Dryden and other men of letters and the patronage of the Earl of Kingston, who seemed likely to provide for him, but at whose seat in Nottinghamshire he died of the smallpox, December, 1683.