124 
Stephensiana. — No. III. 
Nature! in presence of thy mystic shrine, 
With holy awe is seen the mound— 
Immortal is the bold design ; 
Verdure perennial decks the ground. 
High o’er the landscape swells the conic 
form, 
The lightniug’s blaze derides, and winter’s 
howling storm. 
[Doc. 1, 
Repose is here, eternal as the world, 
Nor earthquake’s heaves, nor e’en o’er- 
pow’ring time, 
The antient labour from its base has hurl’d, 
In the slow march of years still seen sub¬ 
lime. 
While undistinguish’d, ages round it lye, 
The giant-grave appears, in early majesty! 
Nov. C, 1821. G. H. Toultwin. 
STEPHENSIANA. 
No. Ill. 
The late Alexander Stephens, Esq. of Park House , Chelsea, devoted an active 
ami well-spent life in the collection of Anecdotes of his contemporaries , and generally 
entered in a hook the collecting of the passing day ;—these collections we have purchased, 
and propose to present a selection from them to our readers. As Editor of the Annual 
Obituary , and many other biographical works, he may probably have incorporated 
many of these scraps ; but the greater part are unpublished , and all stand alone as cabi¬ 
net pictures of men and manners , worthy of a place in a literary miscellany. 
LETTER of LADY DRYDEN, giving 
some Account of the poet. 
RECEIVED the favour of your let¬ 
ter, and am happy your sentiments 
meet mine so entirely upon the subject 
of our correspondence, and have no 
doubt of much approving the produc¬ 
tions of your pen I am glad you are 
so far engaged in literary pursuits: they 
are entertaining, rational, and benefi¬ 
cial to the public. 
It will give me great pleasure to be 
able to give any hints which may clear 
til) the imperfect knowledge the learned 
have of the parentage of Mr. J. Dry- 
den, my great great uncle. That I 
can easily do, he being the elder bro- 
tlier of my great grandfather; but we 
have not, unfortunately, any letters or 
writings of his here, he not being (as 
is too often the case) upon good terms 
with the then head of the family Sir 
Robert Dryden, but had attached him¬ 
self to the second brother Mr. Dryden. 
of Chesterton in Huntingdonshire, with 
whom Sir Robert was at variance. This 
I imagine prevented Mr. J. D. from 
coming much here, though he inherited 
from his father a small estate at Blakes- 
ley, a village three miles from lienee, 
which we now possess by heirship; it 
brings in at present, a net rent of £182 
12s. per annum. The grandfather of 
the present tenant was tenant to the 
poet, who he said was always an excel¬ 
lent landlord, and never raised him a 
shilling in his life, and made heavy 
complaints against my late uncle (of 
whom he also rented several years) for 
increasing his rent. I believe most of 
the circumstances related of him are 
nearly true. Whether his extraordi¬ 
nary judgment in ph isiognomy lias been 
mentioned I do not recollect. His sister 
married a Mr. Shaw who had a place 
under government, and was guardian 
to my late uncle—her picture is now 
here. She and her brother John were 
on terms of friendship and often met. 
His wonderful knowledge of the effect 
of the passions of the mind upon the 
muscles of the face, used sometimes 
to give her great uneasiness. She was 
a very nervous woman, and he being of 
a lively turn, used jestingly to take 
pleasure in alarming her. 
“ The Dryden family is supposed (by 
themselves) to come .originally from 
Scotland ; it was settled here (Canon’s 
Ashby) before the depopulation of the 
monasteries by Henry VIII. and inha¬ 
bited this old mansion, which was not 
the monastic house, that being pur¬ 
chased many years afterwards by the 
family, and pulled down in my late 
uncle’s memory. The first of the fa¬ 
mily we know any tiling of was a Mr. 
Erasmus Dryden, so named from the 
learned Erasmus with whom he had 
some connection. He was made a ba¬ 
ronet by James I. He had several sons. 
His eldest son and successor was Sir 
John Dryden, who took an active part 
in the civil wars in the time of Charles I. 
and sat in the Long Parliament. The 
second son of Erasmus went into trade 
in the city; the third son settled at 
Tickmarsh in this county and had two 
sons, Mr. J. Dryden the person in ques¬ 
tion, and Mr. Erasmus Dryden, after¬ 
wards Sir Erasmus, my great grandfa¬ 
ther. Sir John D. the member in the 
Long Parliament, left two sons, Sir 
Robert and Mr. Dryden of Chesterton, 
