The bent of the juvenile poet, even at
this early period, distinguished itself. He translated the third satire
of Persius, as a Thursday night's task, and executed many other
exercises of the same nature, in English verse, none of which are now in
existence.[25] During the last year of his residence at Westminster, the
death of Henry Lord Hastings, a young nobleman of great learning, and
much beloved, called forth no less than ninety-eight elegies, one of
which was written by our poet, then about eighteen years old. They were
published in 1650, under the title of "_Lachrymae Musarum._"
Dryden, having obtained a Westminster scholarship was admitted to
Trinity College, Cambridge on the 11th May 1650, his tutor being the
reverend John Templer, M.A., a man of some learning, who wrote a Latin
Treatise in confutation of Hobbes, and a few theological tracts and
single sermons. While at college, our author's conduct seems not to have
been uniformly regular. He was subjected to slight punishment for
contumacy to the vice-master,[26] and seems, according to the statement
of an obscure libeller, to have been engaged in some public and
notorious dispute with a nobleman's son, probably on account of the
indulgence of his turn for satire.[27] He took, however, the degree of
Bachelor, in January 1653-4, but neither became Master of Arts,[28] nor
a fellow of the university and certainly never retained for it much of
that veneration usually paid by an English scholar to his Alma Mater.
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