Hogarth Essays, First Series, No 9. 

A curiously relational work in which Lubbock declares Dryden to be a highly elusive subject: "Look for him and he is not there: the lines of the human figure dissolve, as you turn, into those of the literature of his age" (5). As a result of this elusiveness, Lubbock's approach is to characterize Dryden as a man particularly malleable to the fashions of his day and eager to please his audience. Being apparently unable to distinguish Dryden personally from what is known about his historical period, Lubbock decides that Dryden must be an embodiment of his time.