mass of readers are often as anxious as upon ordinary points of criticism. There were also the order and dates of his works; his letters; his friends; his literary adversaries; and their contests, to ascertain in a long and distinguished, though unhappily for his comfort, a contentious career.
The notes to the Prose Works, in addition to those of the Life, tells us all of him of any importance that we are likely to know. No source of information was left untried. When unsuccessful himself on particular points, he has given some clue for others to follow. But when we consider how much on all subjects remains buried in family archives; how difficult it is to get them examined or suffered to be examined, by their owners; and how often it is that what are discoveries in literary eyes are not deemed so by the uninitiated, we must not be surprised at the slow pace at which they emerge into light from old boxes and closets. We must be thankful for what has been done. All literary men agree that none but Malone could have accomplished so much. To his pages all must turn who want accurate information upon the life and works of Dryden.
Merits such as these might be supposed to pass with general applause; but there is a large class of persons who feel disposed to decry what they have not virtue to imitate; and on this occasion the ridicule which had been so largely directed against the poet himself during life, took aim in another way at his biographer. He was, in fact, deemed to be too particular. Yet on such a subject we want facts whenever they can be fathomed—not romance or con-
