But let them not mistake my patron's part,
Nor call his charity their own desert."
From the letter to Tonson above referred to, it would seem that the
dedication of the Third Miscellany gave offence to Queen Mary, being
understood to reflect upon her government, and that she had commanded
Rymer to return to the charge, by a criticism on Dryden's plays. But the
breach does not appear to have become wider; and Dryden has elsewhere
mentioned Rymer with civility.
The Third Miscellany contained, of Dryden's poetry, a few songs, the
first book, with part of the ninth and sixteenth books of the
Metamorphoses, and the parting of Hector and Andromache, from the Iliad.
It was also to have had the poem of Hero and Leander, from the Greek;
but none such appeared, nor is it clear whether Dryden ever executed the
version, or only had it in contemplation. The contribution, although
ample, was not satisfactory to old Jacob Tonson, who wrote on the
subject a most mercantile expostulatory letter[8] to Dryden, which is
fortunately the minutiae of a literary bargain in the 17th century.
Tonson, with reference to Dryden having offered a strange bookseller six
hundred lines for twenty guineas, enters into a question in the rule of
three, by which he discovers, and proves, that for fifty guineas he has
only 1446 lines, which he seems to take more unkindly, as he had not
_counted_ the lines until he had paid the money; from all which Jacob
infers, that Dryden ought, out of generosity, at least to throw him in
something to the bargain, especially as he had used him more kindly in
Juvenal, which, saith the said Jacob, is not reckoned so easy to
translate as Ovid.
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