Wilts Notes and Queries. 377 
The accompanying illustration, being one of the series, represents 
a catastrophe which befel Charles, the son of the poet Dryden, by 
his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, first Earl of 
Berkshire, of Charlton Park, near Malmesbury. The occurrence 
arose out of the following remarkable circumstances :— 
Soon after the birth of his second son Charles, Dryden took 
occasion to inform his wife, the Lady Elizabeth, that he had been 
calculating the child’s nativity, and was grieved to discover that 
he was born in an evil hour, “ Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun, being 
all under the Earth, and the lord of his ascendant being afflicted 
with a hateful square of Mars and Saturn.” The poet thereupon 
proceeded to address the afflicted mother, who sat petrified with 
dismay, after the following manner :—“ If he live to arrive at his 
eighth year,” said he, “he will go near to die a violent death on his 
very birthday: but should he escape this calamity, of which I see 
but small hopes, he will, in his twenty-third year, lie under 
the very same evil influence. And should he, which seems almost 
impossible, escape this crisis also, the thirty-third or thirty-fourth 
year is, I fear” Here the convulsive grief of the Lady checked 
at once the predictions of the seer, and appealed to the sympathy 
of the husband. Dryden did his best to comfort her, and even to 
disabuse her mind of the prejudice ; but the anticipated catastrophe, 
already a reality to himself, had taken equal possession of her own 
imagination ; and when the inauspicious month of August, in which 
their little son was to enter his eighth year, arrived, the mutual fears 
of the parents revealed themselves. The Court being just then “ in 
progress,” and the poet-laureate at leisure, he was invited by his 
brother-in-law, the young Earl of Berkshire, to keep the long va- 
cation at Charlton in Wilts; the lady Elizabeth being invited, at 
the same time, to her uncle Mordaunt’s. It was agreed that each 
parent should take one of the two surviving children, John and 
Charles ; but each was anxious to secure Charles. The husband 
was peremptory, and the parting wasin anger. The long-expected 
day soon after arrived; and the absent mother, unable to control her 
anxiety, became herself almost the victim of a violent fever. She 
was assured, in a letter by Dryden, of the child’s preservation, but 
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