leaving open the question whether it was a change for the better. On the proper man It was natural that the tendencies of English literature thus enumerated should be represented in the poet-laureate for the time being. Who was the fit man to be appointed laureate at the Restoration? Milton was out of the question, having none of the requisites. Butler, the man of greatest natural power of a different order, and possessing certainly as much of the anti-Puritan sentiment as Charles and his courtiers could have desired in their laureate, was not yet sufficiently known, and was, besides, neither a dramatist nor a fine gentleman. Cowley, whom public opinion would have pointed out as best entitled to the honour, was somehow not in much favour at court, and was spending the remainder of his days on a little property near Chertsey. Waller and Denham were wealthy men, with whom literature was but an amusement. whole, Sir William Davenant was felt to be the for the office. He was an approved royalist; had, in fact, been laureate to Charles I., after Ben Jonson's death in 1637; and had suffered personally in the cause of the king. He was, moreover, a literary man by profession. He had been an actor and a theatre-manager before the Commonwealth; he had been the first to start a theatre after the relaxed rule of Cromwell made it possible; and he was one of the first to attempt heroic or rhymed tragedies after the French model. He was also, far more than Cowley, a wit of the new school; and, as a versifier, he practised, with no small reputation, the neat, lucid style introduced by Denham and Waller. He was the author of an epic called Gondibert, written in rhymed stanzas of four lines each, and which Hobbes praised as showing more shape of art, health of morality, and vigour and beauty of expression," than any poem he had ever read. We defy any one to read the poem now; but there have been worse things written; and it has the merit of being a careful and rather serious composition by a man who had industry, education, and taste, but no genius. The only awkwardness in having such a man for a laureate was, that he had no nose. This awkwardness, however, had existed at the time of his 66 first appointment in the preceding reign. At least, Suckling adverts to it in his Session of the Poets, where he makes the wits of that time contend for the bays "Will Davenant, ashamed of a foolish mischance, "And surely the company would have been content, But in all their records, either in verse or prose, If the more decorous court of Charles I., however, overlooked this facial deficiency, it was not for that of Charles II. to take objection to it; the more especially as it might be regarded, if Suckling's insinuation is true, as entitling the poet to additional sympathy from Charles and his companions. After all, Davenant, notwithstanding his misfortune, seems to have been not the worst gentleman about Charles's court, either in morals or manners. Milton is said to have known and liked him. Davenant's laureateship extended over the first eight years of the Restoration, or from 1660 to 1668. Much was done in these eight years both by himself and others. Heroic plays and comedies were produced in sufficient abundance to supply the two theatres then open in London-one of them called the Duke's company, under Davenant's management; the other, the King's company, under the management of an actor named Killigrew. The number of writers for the stage was very great, including not only those whose names have been mentioned, but others new to fame. The literature of the stage formed by far the largest proportion of what was written, or even of what was published. Literary efforts of other kinds, however, were not wanting. Of satires, and small poems in the witty or amatory style, there was no end. The publication of the first part of his Hudibras in 1663, and of the second in 1664, drew public attention, for the first time, to a man, already past his fiftieth year, who had more true wit in him than all the aristocratic poets put together. The poem was received by the king and the courtiers with roars of laughter; quotations from it were in everybody's mouth; but notwith standing large promises, nothing substantial was done for the author. Meanwhile Milton, blind and gouty, and living in his house near Bunhill Fields, where his visitors were hardly of the kind that admired Butler's poem, was calmly proceeding with his Paradise Lost. The poem was finished and published in 1667, leaving Milton free for other work. Cowley, who would have welcomed such a poem, and whose praise Milton would have valued more than that of any other contemporary, died in the year of its publication. Davenant may have read it before his death in the following year; but perhaps the only poet of the time who hailed its appearance with enthusiasm adequate to the occasion, was Milton's personal friend, Marvel. Gradually, however, copies of the poem found their way about town, and drew public attention once more to Cromwell's old secretary. The laureateship remained vacant two years after Davenant's death; and then it was conferred-on whom? There can be little doubt that, of those eligible to it, Butler had, in some respects, the best title. The author of Hudibras, however, seems to have been one of those ill-conditioned sarcastic men whom patronage never comes near, and who are left, as a matter of necessity, to the bitter enjoyment of their own humours. There does not seem to have been even a question of appointing him; and the office, the income of which would have been a competence to him, was conferred on a man twenty years his junior, and whose circumstances required it lessJohn Dryden. The appointment, which was made in August, 1670, conferred on Dryden not only the laureateship, but also the office of "historiographer royal," which chanced to be vacant at the same time. The income accruing from the two offices thus conjoined was 2007. a-year, which was about as valuable then as 6007. a-year would be now; and it was expressly stated in the deed of appointment that these emoluments were conferred on Dryden "in consideration of his many acceptable services done to his majesty, and from an observation of his learning and eminent abilities, and his great skill and elegant style both in verse and prose. At the time of the Restoration, or even for a year or two after it, such language could, by no stretch of courtesy, have been applied to Dryden. At that time, as we have seen, Dryden, though already past his thirtieth year, was certainly about the least distinguished person in the little band of wits that were looking forward to the good time coming. He was a stout, fresh-complexioned man, in grey drugget, who had written some robust stanzas on Cromwell's death, and a short poem, also robust, but rather wooden, on Charles's return. That was about all that was then known about him. What had he done, in the interval, to raise him so high, and to make it natural for the court to prefer him to what was in fact the titular supremacy of English literature, over the heads of others who might be supposed to have claims, and especially over poor battered old Butler? A glance at Dryden's life, during Davenant's laureateship, or between 1660 and 1670, will answer this question. Dryden's connexion with the politics of the Protectorate had not been such as to make his immediate and cordial attachment to the cause of restored royalty either very strange or very unhandsome. Not committed either by strong personal convictions, or by acts, to the Puritan side, he hastened to show that, whatever the older Northamptonshire Drydens and their relatives might think of the matter, he, for one, was willing to be a loyal subject of Charles, both in church and in state. This main point being settled, he had only farther to consider into what particular walk of industry, now that official employment under government was cut off, he should carry his loyalty and his powers. The choice was not difficult. There was but one career open for him, or suitable to his tastes and qualifications-that of general authorship. We say "general authorship;" for it is important to remark that Dryden was by no means nice in his choice of work. He was ready for anything of a literary kind to which he was, or could make himself, competent. He had probably a preference for verse; but he had no disinclination to prose, if that article was in demand in the market. He had a store of acquirements, academic and other, that fitted him for an intelligent apprehension of whatever was going on in any of the London circles of that day-the circle of the scholars, that of the amateurs of natural science, or that of the mere wits and men of letters. He was, in fact, a man of general intellectual strength, which he was willing to let out in any kind of tolerably honest intellectual service that might be in fashion. This being the case, he set the right way to work to make himself known in quarters where such service was going on. He had about 407. a-year of inherited fortune; which means something equivalent to 1207. a-year with us. With this income to supply his immediate wants, he went to live with Herringman, a bookseller and publisher in the New Exchange. What was the precise nature of his agreement with Herringman, cannot be ascertained. His literary enemies used afterwards to say that he was Herringman's hack, and wrote prefaces for him. However this may be, there were higher conveniences in being connected with Herringman. He was one of the best known of the London publishers of the day, was a personal friend of Davenant, and had almost all the wits of the day as his customers and occasional visitors. Through him, in all probability, Dryden first became acquainted with some of these men, including Davenant himself, Cowley, and a third person of considerable note at that time as an aristocratic dabbler in literature-Sir Robert Howard, son of the Earl of Berkshire. That the impression he made on these men and others, in or out of the Herringman circle, was no mean one, is proved by the fact that, in 1663, we find him a member of the Royal Society, the foundation of which by royal charter had taken place in the previous year. The number of members was then one hundred and fifteen, including such scientific celebrities of the time as Boyle, Wallis, Wilkins, Christopher Wren, Dr. Isaac Barrow, Evelyn, and Hooke, besides such titled amateurs of experimental science as the Duke of Buckingham, the Marquis of Dorchester, the Earls of Devonshire, Crawford, and Northampton, and Lords Brouncker, Cavendish, and Berkeley. Among the more purely literary members were Waller, Denham, Cowley, and Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. The admission of Dryden into such company is a proof that already he was |