Mr. Dryden (says Congreve) 'had personal qualities, to challenge love and esteem from all who were truly acquainted with him. He was of a nature exceeding humane and compassionate, easily forgiving injuries, and capable of a prompt and sincere reconciliation with those who had offended him.--His friendship, where he professed it, went much beyond his professions.--As his reading had been very extensive, so was he very happy in a memory, tenacious of every thing he had read. He was not more possessed of knowledge, than he was communicative of it; but then, his communication of it was by no means pedantic, or imposed upon the conversation, but just such, and went so far, as by the natural turns of the discourse in which he was engaged, it was necessarily prompted, or required. He was extremely ready and gentle in the correction of the errors of any writer, who thought fit to consult him, and full as ready and patient to admit of the reprehension of others in respect of his own oversight or mistakes. He was of a very easy, I may say, of very pleasing access; but something slow, and as it were dissident in his advances to others. He had something in his nature that abhorred intrusion in any society whatsoever; and indeed, it is to be regretted, that he was rather blameable on the other extreme. He was of all men I ever knew, the most modest, and the most easy to be discountenanced in his approaches, either to his superiors or his equals.--As to his writings--may venture to say in general terms, that no man hath written in our language so much, and so various matter; and in so various manners so well. Another thing I may say, was very peculiar to him, which is, that his parts did not decline with his years, but that he was an improving writer to the last, even to near 70 years of age, improving even in fire and imagination as well as in judgment, witness his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, and his fables, his latest performances. He was equally excellent in verse and prose: His prose had all the clearness imaginable, without deviating to the language or diction of poetry, and I have heard him frequently own with pleasure, that if he had any talent for writing prose; it was owing to his frequently having read the writings of the great archbishop Tillotson. In his poems, his diction is, wherever his subject requires it, so sublime and so truly poetical, that it's essence, like that of pure gold cannot be destroyed. Take his verses, and divest them of their rhimes, disjoint them of their numbers, transpose their expressions, make what arrangement or disposition you please in his words; yet shall there eternally be poetry, and something which will be found incapable of being reduced to absolute prose; what he has done in any one species, or distinct kind of writing, would have been sufficient to have acquired him a very great name. If he had written nothing but his Prefaces, or nothing but his Songs, or his