contrary opinion themselves, yet blame not me for adhering to a lost cause and judging for myself, what I cannot choose but judge, so long as I am a patient sufferer and no disturber of the government.' To Lord Leicester, whose mansion was near his own residence in Gerrard Street, Dryden writes that · 'his best prospect is on the garden of Leicester House,' and that its owner has more than once offered him his patronage, 'to reconcile him to a world of which his misfortunes have made him weary.' And in the last of these dedications, written in 1694, and addressed to the Earl of Salisbury, to whom he says that his wife was related, he writes, 'You have been pleased to take a particular notice of me even in this lowness of my fortunes, to which I have voluntarily reduced myself, and of which I have no reason to be ashamed.' Dryden held himself proudly in his enforced change of circumstances. King William's government could not favour him, even if there were the disposition to do so. His Toryism and his many gibes at the Dutch might have been, and probably would have been, generously forgiven; but he could not recant his new Roman Catholic religion and conform to the tests required for office. In his poem Eleonora,' written in 1691, in honour of the memory of the Countess of Abingdon, for which he received a very handsome pecuniary reward of five hundred guineas from the Earl, he speaks of himself as one

Who, not by cares or wants or age deprest,
Stems a wild deluge with a dauntless breast.'

Dryden had in 1692 produced, with aid from others, a translation of the Satires of Juvenal and Persius, to which he prefixed a 'Discourse on Satire,' addressed to the Earl of Dorset. Among those who aided him were his two elder sons, John and Charles. Dryden himself translated the first, third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth Satires of Juvenal, and the whole of Persius. Dryden also wrote a life of Polybius for a translation by Sir Henry Shere, given to the world in 1692. A third volume of 'Miscellanies' was published, under Dryden's editorship, in 1693, and a fourth in 1694, In the last volume

appeared Dryden's translation of the fourth Georgic of Virgil, and his poem addressed to Sir Godfrey Kneller. This poem has been always reprinted in an imperfect state; the omitted passages are restored in the lately-published Globe edition. One of the omitted passages, immediately following an allusion to the first pair in Eden, is of autobiographical interest :

'Forgive the allusion; 'twas not meant to bite,

But Satire will have room, where'er I write.

There is in this poem an admirable description of a perfect portrait :

'Likeness is ever there, but still the best,

Like proper thoughts in lofty language drest.'

Dryden's new friendship with Southerne has been mentioned. Through Southerne he became acquainted with another young dramatist, Congreve, who was also early famous. Congreve's first play, 'The Old Bachelor,' was brought out in 1693; Dryden had seen it in manuscript, and declared that he never saw such a good play, and he aided to adapt it for the stage. Congreve was at this time but twentythree years old. A second play was produced by him within a twelvemonth, 'The Double Dealer,' which did not attain the brilliant success that had attended Congreve's first effort. Dryden, who the year before had consoled Southerne under a similar disappointment, now addressed to Congreve a poem, which was prefixed to 'The Double Dealer' when published. The poem is headed, 'To my dear friend, Mr. Congreve.' He anticipates in this poem a brilliant future for Congreve, designates him as the fittest of living writers for the laureateship which he himself had lost, and ends in well-known beautiful lines by bequeathing to Congreve the care of his own reputation :

:

In him all beauties of this age we see,
Etherege his courtship, Southern's purity,
The satire, wit, and strength of Wycherly.
All this in blooming youth you have achieved,
Nor are your foiled contemporaries grieved;

Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning the ungrateful stage;
Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense,
I live a rent-charge on His providence.
But you, whom every Grace and Muse adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains; and oh, defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend.
Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue,
But shade those laurels which descend to you:
And take for tribute what these lines express,

You merit more, nor could my love do less.'

An air of insincerity is given to the prophecy of the laurel for Congreve by a similar compliment addressed a few years later to another young dramatist, George Granville, who was rich and of noble family, and became afterwards Secretary of State and a peer, with the title of Lord Lansdowne, and who was a beneficent friend of Dryden in his last years. A poem addressed to Mr. Granville in 1690, 'on his excellent tragedy, called "Heroic Love," ' contains these lines:

But since 'tis Nature's law in love and wit,

That youth should reign, and withering age submit,
With less regret those laurels I resign,

Which, dying on my brows, revive on thine.

Thine be the laurel then; thy blooming age
Can best, if any can, support the stage .'

Dryden renounced the drama in 1694, in order to devote himself to the translation of Virgil, a work which occupied him almost exclusively for the next three years. The translation was published by subscription in 1697, and it was a success both pecuniarily and in respect of fame. Writing to his sons a few months after the publication, he says, 'My Virgil succeeds in the world beyond its desert or my reputation,' and he goes on to say that the profits might have been more had his conscience allowed him to comply with the wish of his publisher Tonson, and dedicate the work to the King. The publisher had been so bent on gaining his point in this matter that he caused the engraving of Æneas to be altered into some likeness to William, in the hope that Dryden might relent at the last moment. But this wily stratagem failed, and Dryden's Virgil appeared with three separate dedications; of the Pastorals to Lord Clifford, the son of his early patron, the Lord Treasurer; of the Georgics to the Earl of Chesterfield; and of the Æneid, to his old and kind friend Mulgrave, now Marquis of Normanby. The Virgil was published by subscription. There were two sets of subscribers: one of five guineas each, and the other of two guineas. There were 102 of the first class, and 250 of the second. The profit to Dryden was twelve or thirteen hundred pounds. It is extremely difficult to arrive at a definite notion of the exact arrangements between Dryden and Tonson as to profits, and Malone and other biographers have expended much ingenuity in discussion and conjecture on this subject. The poet's

c George Powel, one of the principal actors at Drury Lane Theatre, irritated by taunts at the Drury Lane company in Dryden's poem to Granville, twitted Dryden with his giving to Granville laurels which he had given away before, both to Congreve and Southerne. (Preface to The Fatal Discovery, or Love in Ruins,' 1698, quoted by Malone, vol. i. part i. p. 311.)

d From a positive statement made by one of Dryden's biographers, the Rev. John Mitford, in Pickering's Aldine edition of Dryden's

relations with his publisher during the progress of his translation and of the printing of Virgil were anything but pleasant. Several of Dryden's letters of this period which have been preserved abound in complaints and accusations against Tonson. At one time he has thoughts of leaving him, but upon trial he finds that 'all of his trade are sharpers, and he not more than others.' He accuses him of paying him in clipped and in bad money, and on one occasion he sends him by Tonson's messenger three insulting lines of poetry, with a message, 'Tell the dog that he who wrote these lines can write more.' Tonson must have been startled by this beginning of a portrait of him :—

With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair,

And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air.'

Dryden is said to have begun his translation of Virgil at the house of his cousin John Driden of Chesterton, and there to have written the first lines with a diamond on a windowpane. Some part of the work was done at Denham Court

Poems, published in 1832, there should be in existence an agreement dated June 15, 1694, between Dryden and Tonson, attested by Congreve as one of the witnesses: but Mr. Mitford does not say where the agreement is to be seen, and he makes his statement without giving any authority. Mr. Mitford says that by this agreement Dryden was to receive for the Virgil 200l., to be paid at stated intervals, and a hundred copies of the work on large paper, Tonson to pay all expenses, and have the proceeds of the sale of the small paper copies. But this statement of the case is not consistent with many passages of Dryden's letters on the subject, of 1695, 1696, and 1697, which are printed by Malone and Scott. Dryden's letters, however, are not sufficient to enable us to arrive at certainty as to his arrangements with his publisher. The subject is discussed in Malone's Life, in the Rev. Mr. Hooper's, prefixed to the recent reprint of the Aldine edition, and in the Memoir of the Globe edition.

e These three lines are introduced into a poem called 'Faction Displayed,' ascribed to Mr. Shippen, published after Dryden's death, and are there quoted as Dryden's description of Tonson, who figures in this poem as Bibliopolo. Pope called Tonson, 'left-legged Jacob' in the Dunciad, and referred in a note to Dryden's two left legs.' This story therefore is well authenticated.

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