DRY CELL 



27OO 



DRYING MACHINE 



Dry Cell. In electricity, a type 

 of cell in which the solution is con- 

 verted practically into a solid by 

 the addition of chemicals of gela- 

 tinous materials which vary accord- 

 ing to the type of cell. The advan- 

 tages of dry batteries are port- 

 ability and 'cleanliness. See Cell, 

 Voltaic. 



Dryden, JOHN (1631-1700). 

 English poet. Born at Aldwinkle, 

 Northamptonshire, Aug. 9, 1631, 

 he was educated at Westminster 

 and Trinity CoUege, Cambridge. 

 Being possessed of a competence 

 from his father's estate, he decided 

 upon a literary career, and, to 

 satisfy popular taste, he began to 

 write plays, continuing to do so, 

 chiefly for financial reasons, all the 

 rest of his life. He wrote twenty- 

 two in all, but he had no real 

 gift for dramatic composition, and 

 apart from certain isolated pass- 

 ages, Dryden's plays add nothing 

 to his reputation. The best known 

 are perhaps The Indian Emperor, 

 1665 ; The Conquest of Granada, 

 1670 ; and Marriage a la Mode, 

 1672. The plays are tainted with 

 the licentiousness which charac- 

 terises the Restoration drama. 



Dryden's career in poetry proper 

 began in 1659, when he published 

 some verses on the death of 

 Cromwell. A subsequent effort in 

 1660, Astraea Redux, a poem on 

 the restoration of the monarchy, 

 has laid Dryden open to the 

 charge of trimming, but panegyric 

 prompted by the passing of a 

 great man is not necessarily in- 

 consistent with an expression of 

 welcome towards a new order of 

 things after the gloomy years of 

 Puritan rule. A much finer effort is 

 the Annus Mirabilis, 1667, a poem 

 oh the wonderful year of 1666 which 

 saw the end of the Great Plague of 

 London, the Great Fire, and the 

 Dutch War. A long period of 

 writing for the stage ensued, 

 and it was not until 1681 and 

 1682 that Dryden published his 

 three great satires Absalom and 

 Achitophel, The Medal, and Mac- 

 Flecknoe. The first is an attack 

 upon Lord Shaftesbury. He is 

 Achitophel counselling the young 

 duke of Monmouth, who is Absa- 

 lom, to rebellion against his father. 

 When Shaftesbury was tried for 

 high treason and acquitted, his 

 friends had a medal struck to 

 celebrate the occasion. This pro- 

 voked from Dryden the second 

 satirical poem, considerably in- 

 ferior to the first. "" The rival 

 partisans engaged the minor poet 

 Shadwell to reply in kind. Shad- 

 well's effort was so vulgar and 

 scurrilous that it provoked yet a 

 third poem from Dryden entitled 

 MacFlecknoe from the name of 



an obscure Irish bard a master- 

 piece of subtle satire, which com- 

 pletely overwhelmed the unfortu- 

 nate Shadwell. 



Dryden's next poems, Religio 

 Laici, 1682, and The Hind and the 

 Panther, 1687, show him in quite a 

 new light. The first appears to 

 have been written in defence of 

 the Church of England, while the 

 second is in defence of the Church 

 of Rome, to which he had in the 

 meantime become a convert. The 

 " milk-white hind immortal and 

 unchanged " is the latter, while the 

 spotted panther is the former. 

 During the closing period of 

 Dryden's life appeared his two 

 noble odes, the Ode for S. Cecilia's 

 Day, 1687, and Alexander's Feast, 

 1697 ; several verse translations of 

 classical poets, and a number of 

 miscellaneous writings, including a 

 paraphrase of some of Chaucer's 

 Canterbury Tales. 



After Kneller 



Up to the revolution of 1688 

 Dryden had enjoyed some degree 

 of prosperity, having been made 

 Poet Laureate in succession to 

 Davenant, and receiving several 

 other government appointments. 

 Quite early in life he had married 

 Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter 

 of the duke of Berkshire. The 

 advent of William III deprived 

 him of his laureateship and other 

 offices. He died May 1, 1700, and 

 was buried in Westminster Abbey. 



There are echoes of the Eliza- 

 bethans in the poetry of Dryden, 

 but he belongs essentially to the 

 classical school of poetry, which in 

 the matter of form, at any rate, 

 was brought to its highest point of 



perfection by Pope in the next 

 century. Less polished than Pope, 

 Dryden has much more vigour in 

 his poetry. The same quality of 

 vigour is shown in the admirable 

 prose of the prefaces to his plays. 

 See English Literature. 



John McBain 



Bibliography. Works, ed. with 

 Life, Walter Scott, 1808, revised by 

 G. Saintsbury, 1882-93; Poetical 

 Works, ed. with Memoir, W. D. 

 Christie, 1870 (Globe ed.) ; Johnson's 

 Lives of the Most Eminent English 

 Poets, ed. P. Cunningham, 1854 ; 

 Johnson's Life of Dryden, ed. A. J. 

 F. Collins, 1914 ; Among My Books, 

 J. R. Lowell, repr. 1912. 



Dry Farming. Special method 

 of growing crops. In regions where 

 the annual rainfall is under 20 ins., 

 such as large tracts of Africa, 

 Australia, and North America, 

 they cannot be successfully grown 

 on ordinary lines. To deal with 

 such cases dry farming has been 

 introduced. The essential feature 

 is summer-tillage every other year, 

 or once in three years, so as to 

 store up moisture in the soil for 

 the use of the crops that follow. 

 Disk-harrowing, followed by deep 

 ploughing and again by pressing 

 with fluted rollers, removes all 

 moisture-stealing weeds and pro- 

 duces a finely divided surface layer 

 of "mulch," which checks evapora- 

 tion and conserves the water in 

 the soil. Most cereals do well, 

 but barley, being shallow-rooted, 

 is not to be recommended. See 

 Agriculture ; Crops. 



Drygalski. Islet in Davis Sea, 

 Antarctica. Off the coast of Queen 

 Mary Land, it is about 9 m. in 

 diameter. It was discovered and 

 named by Sir Douglas Mawson, of 

 the Australasian Antarctic Expe- 

 dition, Jan. 21, 1914. 



Dry gill Shales. Group of sedi- 

 mentary rocks on Caldbeck Fell, 

 Cumberland. Like the Dufton 

 shales on the W. Pennine slope in 

 Westmorland, they represent iso- 

 lated residual outcrops of strata 

 deposited in late Ordovician time, 

 when the Sleddale group of Conis- 

 ton limestones was being laid down 

 farther S. over the Lake district. 



Drying Machine. Apparatus 

 for removing moisture from tex- 

 tile materials. Excess moisture is 

 removed from loose textile mate- 

 rials by centrifugal dryers, and also 

 by squeezing rollers and afterwards 

 passing the material through hot- 

 air chambers upon conveyers. Cloth 

 may be semi-dried by suction in 

 passing over a cylinder, aiid fur- 

 ther dried by transit over steam- 

 heated cylinders. Drying cylinders 

 for textile fabrics are arranged hori- 

 zontally or vertically at will, and 

 the speed of driving is adjusted to 

 suit requirements. See Woollen. 



