As secretary to Sir Gilbert, young Dryden learned to scan the political horizon, and to aspire to preferment.
CROMWELL'S DEATH, AND DRYDEN'S MONODY .-- But those who had depended upon Cromwell, forgot that he was not England, and that his breath was in his nostrils.

The time of his departure was at hand.

He had been offered the crown (April 9, 1656,) by a subservient parliament, and wanted it; but his friends and family opposed his taking it; and the officers of the army, influenced by Pride, sent such a petition against it, that he felt obliged to refuse it.

After months of mental anxiety and nervous torture--fearing assassination, keeping arms under his pillow, never sleeping above three nights together in the same chamber, disappointed that even after all his achievements, and with all his cunning efforts, he had been unable to put on the crown, and to be numbered among the English sovereigns--Cromwell died in 1658, leaving his title as Lord Protector to his son Richard, a weak and indolent man, who, after seven months' rule, fled the kingdom at the Restoration, to return after a generation had passed away, a very old man, to die in his native land.

The people of Hertfordshire knew Richard Cromwell as the excellent and benevolent Mr.Clarke.
Very soon after the death of Oliver Cromwell, Dryden, not yet foreseeing the Restoration, presented his tribute to the Commonwealth, in the shape of "Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell; written after his funeral." A few stanzas will show his political principles, and are in strange contrast with what was soon to follow: How shall I then begin, or where conclude, To draw a fame so truly circular?
For, in a round, what order can be showed, Where all the parts so equal perfect are?
He made us freemen of the continent, Whom nature did like captives treat before; To nobler preys the English lion sent, And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar.
His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest; His name a great example stands, to show How strangely high endeavors may be blest, Where piety and valor jointly go.
THE RESTORATION .-- Cromwell died in September: early in the next year these stanzas were written.