the household of Charles II., whose appointments were but irregularly paid; but perhaps his sup posed delinquency made it more difficult for him than others to obtain redress. At this period broke out the pretended discovery of the Popish Plot, in which Dryden, even in "Absalom and Achitophel," evinces a partial belief.1 Not encouraged, if not actually discountenanced, at court; sharing in some degree the discontent of his patron Mulgrave; above all, obliged by his situation to please the age in which he lived, Dryden did not probably hold the reverence of the Duke of York so sacred, as to prevent his making the ridicule of the Catholic religion the means of recommending his play to the passions of the audience. Neither was his situation at court in any danger from his closing on this occasion with the popular tide. Charles, during the heat of the Popish Plot, was so far

rather than justify himself, where justification was so easy. Yet his resentment is said to have been

"For pension lost, and justly, without doubt:

When servants snarl we ought to kick them out.

That lost, the visor changed, you turn about,
And strait a true-blue Protestant crept out.
The Friar now was wrote; and some will say,
They smell a malecontent through all the play."

See the whole passage, Dryden's Works, vol. vi., p. 369.
See, for this point also, the volume and page last quoted :

["From hence began that plot, the nation's curse,
Bad in itself, but represented worse;
Raised in extremes, and in extremes decried,
With oaths affirm'd, with dying vows denied ;
Nor weigh'd nor winnow'd by the multitude,
But swallow'd in the mass unchew'd and crude.
Some truth there was, but dash'd and bruis'd with lies,
To please the fools, and puzzle all the wise. ']

from being in a situation to incur odium by dismissing a laureat for having written a Protestant play, that he was obliged for a time to throw the reins of government into the hands of those very persons, to whom the Papists were most obnoxious. The inference drawn from Dryden's performance was, that he had deserted the court; and the Duke of York was so much displeased with the tenor of the play, that it was the only one, of which, on acceding to the crown, he prohibited the representation. The " Spanish Friar " was often objected to the author by his opponents, after he had embraced the religion there satirized. Nor was the idea of his apostasy from the court an invention of his enemies after his conversion, for it prevailed at the commencement of the party disputes; and the name of Dryden is, by a partisan of royalty, ranked with that of his bitter foe Shadwell, as followers of Shaftesbury in 1680.1 But whatever cause of coolness or disgust our author had received from Charles or his brother, was removed, as usual, as soon as his services became necessary; and thus the supposed author of a libel on the king became the ablest defender of the cause of monarchy, and the author of the " Spanish Friar," the advocate and convert of the Catholic religion.

In his private circumstances Dryden must have been even worse situated than at the close of the

In "A Modest Vindication of Antony, Earl of Shaftes bury, in a Letter to a Friend concerning his having been elected King of Poland," Dryden is named poet laureat to the supposed king-elect, and Shadwell his deputy.-See Dryden's Works, vol. ix., p. 453.

last Section. His contract with the King's Company was now ended, and long before seems to have produced him little profit. If Southerne's biographer can be trusted, Dryden never made by a single play more than one hundred pounds; so that, with all his fertility, he could not, at his utmost exertion, make more than two hundred a-year by his theatrical labours. At the same time, they so totally engrossed his leisure, that he produced no other work of consequence after the "Annus Mirabilis." 2 If, therefore, the payment of his pension was withheld, whether from the resentment of the court, or the poverty of the exchequer, he might well complain of the " unsettled state," which doomed him to continue these irksome and ill-paid labours.

"Dryden being very desirous of knowing how much Southerne had made by the profits of one of his plays, the other, conscious of the little success Dryden had met with in theatrical compositions, declined the question, and answered, he was really ashamed to acquaint him. Dryden continuing to be solicitous to be informed, Southerne owned he had cleared by his last play L.700; which appeared astonishing to Dryden, who was perhaps ashamed to confess, that he had never been able to acquire, by any of his most successful pieces, more than L.100."-Life of Southerne prefixed to his Plays. For a curious account of the prices obtained for poems and plays in those times, see D'ISRAELI'S Quarrels of Authors, Appendix to vol. i.]

'There was published 1679, a translation of Appian, printed for John Amery at the Peacock, against St Dunstan's Church, Fleet-street. It is inscribed by the translator, J. D., to the Earl of Ossory; and seems to have been undertaken by his command. This work is usually termed, in catalogues, Dryden's Appian. I presume it may be the work of that Jonathan Dryden, who is mentioned, ante, p. 24.

SECTION V.

Dryden engages in Politics—Absalom and Achitophel, Parı First-The Medal-Mac-Flecknoe-Absalom and Achitophel, Part Second-The Duke of Guise.

THE controversies in which Dryden had hitherto been engaged, were of a private complexion, arising out of literary disputes and rivalry. But the country was now deeply agitated by political faction ; and so powerful an auxiliary was not permitted by his party to remain in a state of inactivity. The religion of the Duke of York rendered him obnoxious to a large proportion of the people, still agitated by the terrors of the Popish Plot. The Duke of Monmouth, handsome, young, brave, and courteous, had all the external requisites for a popular idol; and what he wanted in mental qualities was amply supplied by the Machiave! subtlety of Shaftesbury. The life of Charles was the only isthmus between these contending tides, "which, mounting, viewed each other from afar, and strove in vain to meet." It was already obvious, that the king's death was to be the signal of civil war. His situation was doubly embarrassing, because, in all probability, Monmouth, whose claims were both unjust in themselves, and highly derogatory to the

authority of the crown, was personally amiable, and more beloved by Charles than was his inflexible and bigoted brother. But to consent to the bill for excluding the lawful heir from the crown, would have been at the same time putting himself in a state of pupilage for the rest of his reign, and evincing to his subjects, that they had nothing to expect from attachment to his person, or defence of his interest. This was a sacrifice not to be thought of so long as the dreadful recollection of the wars in the preceding reign determined a large party to support the monarch, while he continued willing to accept of their assistance. Charles accordingly adopted a determined course; and, to the rage rather than confusion of his partisans, Monmouth was banished to Holland, from whence he boldly returned without the king's license, and openly assumed the character of the leader of a party. Estranged from court, he made various progresses through the country, and employed every art which the genius of Shaftesbury could suggest, to stimulate the courage, and to increase the number, of his partisans. The press, that awful power, so often and so rashly misused, was not left idle. Numbers of the booksellers were distinguished as Protestant or fanatical publishers; and their shops teemed with the furious declamations of Ferguson, the inflammatory sermons of Hickeringill, the political disquisitions of Hunt, and the party plays and libellous poems of Settle and Shadwell. A host of rhymers, inferior even to those last named, attacked the king, the Duke