him," said Lansdowne, "can testify this was not his character. He was so much a stranger to immodesty, that modesty in too great a degree was his failing: he hurt his fortune by it, he complained of it, and never could overcome it. He was," adds he, "esteemed, courted, and admired, by all the great men of the age in which he lived, who would certainly not have received into friendship a monster abandoned to all sorts of vice and impurity. His writings will do immortal honour to his name and country, and his poems last as long, if I may have leave to say it, as the Bishop's sermons, supposing them to be equally excellent in their kind."[59] The Bishop's youngest son, Thomas Burnet, in replying to Lord Lansdowne, explained his father's last expressions as limited to Dryden's plays, and showed, by doing so, that there was no foundation for fixing this gross and dubious charge upon his private moral character. Dryden's conduct as a father, husband, and master of a family, seems to have been affectionate, faithful, and, so far as his circumstances admitted, liberal and benevolent. The whole tenor of his correspondence bears witness to his paternal feelings; and even when he was obliged to have recourse to Tonson's immediate assistance to pay for the presents he sent them, his affection vented itself in that manner. As a husband, if Lady Elizabeth's peculiarities of temper precluded the idea of a warm attachment, he is not upbraided with neglect or infidelity by any of his thousand assailants. As a landlord, Mr. Malone has informed us, on the authority of Lady Dryden, that "his little estate at Blakesley is at this day occupied by one Harriots, grandson of the tenant who held it in Dryden's time; and he relates, that his grandfather was used to take great pleasure in talking of our poet. He was, he said, the easiest and the kindest landlord in the world, and never raised the rent during the whole time he possessed the estate."