This was "before he had paid his court with
success to the great." But the story is at least _ben trovato_, and
morally true enough to serve as an illustration. Who the "old
gentleman" was has never been discovered. Of Crowne (who has some
interest for us as a sometime student at Harvard) he says: "Many a
cup of metheglm have I drank with little starch'd Johnny Crown; we
called him so, from the stiff, unalterable primness of his long
cravat." Crowne reflects no more credit on his Alma Mater than
Downing. Both were sneaks, and of such a kind as, I think, can only
be produced by a debauched Puritanism. Crowne, as a rival of Dryden,
is contemptuously alluded to by Cibber in his "Apology."
[31] Diary, III. 390. Almost the only notices of Dryden that make him
alive to me I have found in the delicious book of this
Polonius-Montaigne, the only man who ever had the courage to keep a
sincere journal, even under the shelter of cipher.
[32] Tale of a Tub, Sect. V. Pepys also speaks of buying the "Maiden
Queen" of Mr. Dryden's, which he himself, in his preface, seems to
brag of, and indeed is a good play.--18th January, 1668.
[33] He is fond of this image.
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