As with the greater dead he dares not strive,

He would not match his verse with those who live.

Let him retire betwixt two ages cast,

The first of this and hindmost of the last.'

Dryden had now for some time wished to apply himself to the composition of an epic poem: but for this leisure was necessary, and play-writing gave him bread. He explains himself on this subject in the dedication of 'Aurengzebe,' to Sheffield Earl of Mulgrave. He had had an opportunity,

through Mulgrave's good offices, of speaking both with the King and the Duke of York of his desire to devote himself to the production of a national epie poem, and he now asked Mulgrave to remind the King of his ambition. Several years later, in 1693, in his 'Discourse on Satire,' addressed to the Earl of Dorset, he mentions two subjects which he had thought of; one was the Conquest of Spain by Edward the Black Prince, and the other King Arthur conquering the Saxons. Dryden's wishes were not gratified by the King. No office was given him which relieved him from the necessity of writing for subsistence. It is however possible, that the King may now have granted him the pension of 100l. a year in addition to the salaried offices of Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal, which it has been lately ascertained that he obtained during the reign of Charles II; but the date of the grant of the pension is not known *.

Dryden's next play did not appear for two years after; it was 'All for Love, or the World Well Lost,' the story of Antony and Cleopatra, and it was produced at the King's Theatre in the winter of 1677-8. To the preparation of this tragedy Dryden had devoted more time and labour than usual, and he considered it his best play. 'All for Love' had great success, and the company gave Dryden the benefit of the third night, to which the terms of his contract did not

* This pension from Charles was first made known by the publication by Mr. R. Bell in 1854 of a treasury warrant of 1684 for payment of arrears; and Mr. P. Cunningham has since published a treasury warrant for payment of a quarter due January 5, 1679. (Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets,' Cunningham's edition, vol. i. p. 334, note.)

entitle him. This act of generosity appears to have been ill requited by Dryden; his next play 'Edipus,' written in conjunction with Nathaniel Lee, was given to the Duke's company and brought out at the rival theatre. This was regarded by the King's company as a breach of contract, with the aggravation of ingratitude. He had never fulfilled his engagement to write three plays a year, and indeed had produced on an average less than one a year. Yet the Company appear never to have made a deduction from the share of profits promised him in return for three plays a year. They now complained to the Earl of Arlington, the Lord Chamberlain, of Dryden's proceeding as a violation of contract; but there is no sign of their having obtained redress. Dryden now broke with the King's Theatre, or the King's Theatre with him, and his subsequent plays came out at the rival house. 'The Kind Keeper, or Limberham,' a very coarse comedy, followed' Edipus,' and gave such offence that, after it had been three times acted, Dryden withdrew it. In April 1679, he produced with indifferent success 'Troilus and Cressida,' an adaptation of Shakespeare's play. 'All for Love,' on its publication, was dedicated to the Earl of Danby, then the chief Minister, 'Limberham,' to Lord Vaughan, a literary nobleman, and 'Troilus and Cressida,' to the Earl of Sunderland, a rising politician and future leading minister.

As Dryden was returning to his house in Long Acre through Rose Alley, Drury Lane, on the night of the 18th of December, 1679, he was fallen upon and severely beaten by a gang of ruffians. There appears to be little doubt that the instigator of this cowardly attack was Wilmot Earl of Rochester, who conceived Dryden to be the author of a poem in circulation, an Essay on Satire, in which he was severely attacked. Sheffield Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Marquis of Normanby and Duke of Buckinghamshire, is now known to have been the author of the poem; but at the time a

y Almost all our information as to Dryden's partnership in the King's Theatre is derived from this memorial of complaint addressed to the Lord Chamberlain, which is printed in Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 73.

belief seems to have prevailed that Dryden had written it. It is not impossible that Dryden may have seen the poem before it was put in circulation and given it some revision. Yet it is difficult to believe that Dryden, who was dependent on the King's pleasure for 300l. a year of his income would have been so imprudent as to make himself in any way responsible for a poem in which the King also was severely assailed. It is more likely that the great intimacy which existed at this period between Dryden and Mulgrave is the sole origin of the suspicion. Mulgrave positively asserted in a note in a later edition of the poem that Dryden was entirely innocent of the authorship. In a poem of Rochester's, published the year before, Dryden had been freely and unpleasantly criticised, and Rochester may have expected retaliation and been prone to conclude that Mulgrave's attack on him came from Dryden. These are Rochester's lines in his 'Allusion to the Tenth Satire of the First Book of Horace,' published in 1673.

'Well, sir, 'tis granted, I said Dryden's rhymes

Were stol'n, unequal, nay, dull many times.
What foolish patron is there found of his

So blindly partial to deny me this?

But that his plays, embroidered up and down
With wit and learning, justly pleased the town,
In the same paper I as freely own.

Yet having this allowed, the heavy mass

That stuffs up his loose volumes must not pass.'

A publicly advertised offer of a reward of fifty pounds for the discovery of the offenders failed to furnish any clue to the author of this dastardly assault. This Rose Alley assault became the theme of many taunts from Dryden's bitter adversaries after he threw himself into political controversies2. z One of these is worth quoting to illustrate the old pronunciation of aches as a word of two syllables as late as 1680

'Thus needy Bayes, his Rose Street aches past.'

The Protestant Satire.' Dryden himself pronounced the word in the same manner in his first poem, the Elegy on Lord Hastings,' written in 1649. Aches rhymes with catches in Hudibras,' Part II. Canto ii. 1. 456; and see also Part III. Canto ii. 1. 407 of Hudibras,'

One of Dryden's most successful plays was the 'Spanish Friar, or the Double Discovery,' a satire on the Roman Catholic priesthood, produced at the Duke's Theatre in 1681, at a time when popular feeling was strongly excited against the Papists, and when the question of the day was the exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession because he was a Roman Catholic.

Dryden's pecuniary resources about this time had become much crippled. Through the poverty of the Treasury, his salary and pension were not paid, and in May 1684 there was a four years' accumulation of arrears. After the production of the Spanish Friar,' Dryden turned from play-writing to political satire. His famous political poem, ‘Absalom and Achitophel,' was published in November 1681. The subject of the poem, Shaftesbury and Monmouth, is said to have been suggested by the King himself. Monmouth, the Absalom of the poem, for whom his father, Charles, had always a tender affection, is treated through the poem with great delicacy, but Shaftesbury, who is Achitophel, is truculently and unscrupulously assailed. Together with Shaftesbury, Buckingham, who was now one of the great Protestant opposition to the court, is described in Dryden's happiest vein, under the name of Zimri.

Shaftesbury had been lying in the Tower under a charge of high treason since July 2, 1681, and Dryden's poem was published a very few days before his trial, probably with the deliberate object of inflaming public opinion against him and helping to obtain a condemnation. The poem was published on November 17; on November 24 the bill of indictment against Shaftesbury went before a London grand jury, and was thrown out. The decision was received by the people of London with acclamations, and a medal was struck by his friends in commemoration of his triumph. The sale of 'Absalom and Achitophel' was so rapid that a second edition appeared within a month. The medal celebrating Shaftesbury's escape from his persecutors furnished Dryden with a subject and a name for a new political satire, which was even more fierce against Shaftesbury than its predecessor. 'The

Medal' was brought out in March 1682. This poem, as well as 'Absalom and Achitophel,' was published anonymonsly, but there was no doubt as to the authorship of either poem; and Dryden's opponents were quick to produce answers, all more remarkable for virulence than literary merit. 'The Medal of John Bayes,' by Shadwell, especially roused Dryden's anger. Shadwell and he had formerly been on friendly terms, and Dryden had written in 1678 a prologue to Shadwell's play, 'The True Widow.' They probably now quarrelled only on political grounds. There was now great fury between the partisans of the Duke of York and those of the Duke of Monmouth, and at this period arose the divisions and the names of Whig and Tory. Dryden was with the Tories, and Shadwell with Shaftesbury, Monmouth, and the Whigs. 'The Medal of John Bayes' provoked Dryden to write a new satire, 'Mac Flecknoe,' in which Shadwell is represented as the poetical heir of Flecknoe, an inferior poet and voluminous author, who had died some five years before. 'Mac Flecknoe' was published in October 1682. In the following month a second part of Absalom and Achitophel' appeared. Of this poem only a small portion was by Dryden; the bulk of the poem being the production of Nahum Tate, who afterwards translated the Psalms into verse, and became in time poet laureate. Dryden contributed two hundred lines, and he perhaps revised the whole of Tate's work.

Dryden now passed from politics to theology, and produced 'Religio Laici,' a clear and argumentative exposition in harmonious verse, of the Protestant faith. The merits of this poem are happily, and without exaggeration, described by Dryden's friend and brother-poet, Lord Roscommon, in some lines of commendation which were prefixed to the poem on its publication :

'Let free impartial men from Dryden learn
Mysterious secrets of a high concern,

And weighty truths, solid convincing sense,
Explained by unaffected eloquence.'

A drama, the 'Duke of Guise,' a joint work of Dryden and

C