Your most obedient servant and scholar, JOHN DRYDEN.[70] LETTER V. TO THE REV. DR BUSBY. SIR, [1682.] If I could have found in my selfe a fitting temper to have waited upon you, I had done it the day you dismissed my sonn[71] from the college; for he did the message: and by what I find from Mr Meredith, as it was delivered by you to him; namely, that you desired to see me, and had somewhat to say to me concerning him. I observ’d likewise somewhat of kindnesse in it, that you sent him away, that you might not have occasion to correct him. I examin’d the business, and found, it concern’d his having been _custos_[72] foure or five dayes together. But if he admonished, and was not believed, because other boyes combined to discredit him with false witnesseing, and to save them selves, perhaps his crime is not so great. Another fault, it seems, he made, which was going into one Hawkes his house, with some others; which you hapning to see, sent your servant to know who they were, and he onely returned you my sonn’s name; so the rest escaped. I have no fault to find with my sonn’s punishment; for that is, and ought to be, reserv’d to any master, much more to you, who have been his father’s. But your man was certainly to blame to name him onely; and ’tis onely my respect to you, that I do not take notice of it to him. My first rash resolutions were, to have brought things past any composure, by immediately sending for my sonn’s things out of college; but upon recollection, I find, I have a double tye upon me not to do it: one, my obligations to you for my education; another, my great tendernesse of doeing any thing offensive to my Lord Bishop of Rochester,[73] as cheife governour of the college. It does not consist with the honour I beare him and you to go so precipitately to worke; no, not so much as to have any difference with you, if it can possibly be avoyded. Yet, as my sonn stands now, I cannot see with what credit he can be elected; for, being but sixth, and (as you are pleased to judge,) not deserving that neither, I know not whether he may not go immediately to Cambridge, as well as one of his own election went to Oxford this yeare[74] by your consent. I will say nothing of my second sonn, but that, after you had been pleased to advise me to waite on my Lord Bishop for his favour, I found he might have had the first place, if you had not opposed it; and I likewise found at the election, that, by the pains you had taken with him, he in some sort deserved it.