Dryden put faith in judicial astrology, and used to calculate the
nativity of his children. On the birth of his son Charles, he caused
the exact minute of his coming into the world to be noted. He
calculated the child's nativity, and observed with grief that he was
born in an evil hour; for Jupiter, Venus, and the sun were all under
the earth, and the lord of his ascendant afflicted with a hateful
square of Mars and Saturn. Dryden told his friends that if the child
lived to the eighth year, he would narrowly escape a violent death on
his very birthday; but if he should then overleap danger, he would in
his twenty-third year be under the same influence; and if he should
escape the second time, the thirty-third or thirty-fourth year would
prove fatal. The boy's eighth birthday was looked forward to with
great anxiety by his parents. On the dreaded day, Dryden, with the
view of keeping him indoors and away from danger, gave him a double
exercise in Latin. Charles was complying with his father's command,
when a stag pursued by hounds was seen making towards the house. The
noise reached the servants' ears, and they rushed out to see the
chase. A manservant seized Charles by the hand, and took him out with
him. Just as they reached the gate, the stag, being at bay, made a
bold rush and leaped over the court wall, which, being old and low,
the dogs followed, threw down a part thereof, and the unfortunate boy
was buried in the ruins. He was much bruised, so that he was six weeks
in a dangerous state. In the twenty-third year of the son's age he was
at Rome, where he fell from an old tower belonging to the Vatican,
which so greatly injured his head that he never fully recovered the
accident. In his thirty-fourth year he was bathing in the Thames with
another gentleman, when he was seized with cramp while in the water,
and drowned before assistance could reach him. Thus the father's
astrological calculations proved correct.