best patroness n.' 'The Rival Ladies' had been published with a dedication to the Earl of Orrery, a dramatic writer. 'The Wild Gallant' was not published till 1669, when the fame otherwise acquired by Dryden helped to recommend it to favour. He revived The Wild Gallant' on the stage in 1667.

In the summer of 1665 the Plague broke out in London, and all who could do so fled to the country. Dryden retired to Charlton, in Wiltshire, the seat of his father-in-law, Lord Berkshire, and he remained there for the greater part of eighteen months. During this period of retreat he wrote the 'Annus Mirabilis,' the Essay on Dramatic Poesy,' and the comedy of 'Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen.'

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The Annus Mirabilis,' a poem celebrating the events of the year, 1665-6, and describing the war with Holland, the Plague, and the Great Fire of London, was published in 1667, with a dedication to the Metropolis, and a long preface addressed to Sir Robert Howard. This poem is written in the quatrain stanzas in which Dryden had sung the praises of Oliver Cromwell eight years before. In the preface he says, 'I have chosen to write my poem in quatrain stanzas of four alternate rhymes, because I have ever judged them more noble and of greater dignity both for sound and numbers than any other verse in use, among us.' The minute knowledge of naval matters displayed in the poem was acquired, it appears, for the occasion and under some difficulties. 'For my own part,' he says, 'if I had little knowledge of the sea, yet I have thought it no shame to learn, and if I have made some mistakes, it is only, as you can bear me witness, because I have wanted opportunity to correct them, the whole poem being first written and now sent you from a place where I have not so much as the converse of any seaman.' In this poem is first strikingly remarkable Dryden's skill and force of language. Some parts of it, and especially the description of the Fire of London, are very fine.

n Dedication of King Arthur,' to the Marquis of Halifax, 1691.

Dryden's next publication was the Essay on Dramatic Poesy,' also written during his long residence at Charlton: this was published in 1668. A subject treated of in this essay was the use of rhyme in tragedies, which was now the fashion, and favoured by the King. Dryden had praised rhymed tragedies in his dedication to the Earl of Orrery, of the 'Rival Ladies,' published in 1664. In the following year Sir Robert Howard published a collection of plays, with a preface, in which, though he had himself done tragedy in rhyme, he severely criticised Dryden's doctrine. In the Essay on Dramatic Poesy,' Dryden vindicated his views. The essay was in the form of a conversation between four persons, Eugenius, Lisideius, Crites, and Neander; and under these names were respectively veiled Lord Buckhurst (afterwards Earl of Dorset), Sir Charles Sedley, Sir Robert Howard, and Dryden himself. Neander maintained the cause of rhyme in tragedies, and Crites argued on the other side with inferior force. This led to a literary controversy with Howard, which produced for a time some ill-feeling between the brothers-inlaw, but the estrangement did not last long.

During the ravages of the Plague and Fire the playhouses had been closed. They were re-opened towards the close of 1666, and in the following March 'Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen,' the play which Dryden had written at Charlton, was brought out at the King's Theatre. It was a great success. Pepys, who was present on the first night, commends 'the regularity of it and the strain of wit,' and is quite enthusiastic in his praises of Nell Gwyn, in the part of Florimel°. The play was published in the following year, with a preface, in which Dryden states that Charles had 'graced' the successful comedy 'with the title of his play.' Another comedy, 'Sir Martin Mar-all,' was brought out in the autumn of 1667 at the Duke's House. This was an adaptation of Moliere's play, 'L'Etourdi,' which had been translated by the Duke of Newcastle; and when it appeared on the stage, Pepys tells us that the general opinion was that

o Diary, March 2, 1667.

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it was a 'play by the Lord Duke of Newcastle, and corrected by Dryden.' Dryden afterwards published himself as author, and we may take for granted that the authorship was really his. The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island,' produced at the Duke's Theatre in November, 1667, was an adaptation by Dryden and Davenant of Shakspeare's Tempest. The new play was nothing more nor less than a debasement of Shakespeare's, and Dryden doubtless knew well its inferiority. In the prologue he paid a fine tribute to the genius of Shakespeare. These are the opening lines :

As when a tree's cut down, the secret root,

Lives underground, and thence new branches shoot,
So from old Shakespeare's honoured dust this day
Springs up and buds a new reviving play:
Shakespeare, who, taught by none, did first impart
To Fletcher wit, to labouring Jonson art;
He, monarch-like, gave these his subjects law,
And is that Nature which they paint and draw.'

And in the same prologue he says—

Again

'But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be;
Within that circle none durst walk but he.'

'But Shakespeare's power is sacred as a king's.'

Dryden and Davenant's 'Tempest' was published by Dryden in 1668, Davenant having died in the interval: and in the preface Dryden mentions that Davenant had taught him to venerate Shakespeare.

If Dryden's mutilation of the Tempest seems inconsistent with his reverence for Shakespeare, it must be borne in mind that Dryden wrote for money, that to adapt took less time than to create, and that the audiences for which he wrote neglected Shakespeare's plays and applauded Dryden's.

Those who have best succeeded on the stage
Have still conformed their genius to their age.' P

P.Dryden's Epilogue to the Second Part of The Conquest of Granada.'

The year 1667 had been one of great dramatic success for Dryden. The Maiden Queen,' 'Sir Martin Mar-all,' and 'The Tempest' had all been well received, and his first play, 'The Wild Gallant,' unsuccessful when it first appeared, had been revived with some success.

Until now the profits derived by Dryden from his plays had come from the third night's representation, which custom made the author's benefit, from the prices received from his publisher, from presents in return for dedications, and probably also from a retaining fee of the King's company, to which all his plays were given. A successful'third night' of a play would probably at this time bring Dryden forty or at most fifty guineas, and the price of the copyright of one of his plays would now be but a trifle. For 'Cleomenes,' one of his latest plays, he is known to have received thirty guineas for the copy, and no more; and this was probably the highest price he ever got. He is said never to have received, in his days of greatest fame, more than a hundred guineas for third night and copyright together. There had been no dedication to his last three published plays, the 'Maiden Queen,' 'Sir Martin Mar-all,' and 'The Tempest.' But henceforth his plays were always dedicated to some noble patron, who, according to the custom of the time, sent a present of money in return for the compliment. To recount Dryden's noble patrons is a necessary part of his biography. 'What I pretend by this dedication,' he said, in 1691, in dedicating 'King Arthur,' to George Savile Lord Halifax, 'is an honour which I do myself to posterity by acquainting them that I have been conversant with the first persons of the age in which I lived.'

After the production of 'The Tempest' he entered into a contract with the King's company, by which he bound himself to produce three plays a year, in return for a share and a quarter of the profits of the theatre, all which were divided into twelve shares and a quarter. Under this arrangement Dryden received from 1667 to 1672 a yearly income of from 300l. to 400l. a year. The King's Theatre was burnt down in 1672, and the losses of the company then reduced Dryden's share of profits to about 2007, a year. His recip

rocal duty, to write three plays a year, was never fulfilled; but the company appear to have behaved always generously to him and not mulcted him for his shortcomings.

Under this new contract two comedies, 'An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer,' an adaptation of the younger Corneille's 'Feint Astrologue,' and 'Ladies à la Mode,' were produced in 1668. 'An Evening's Love' was not very successful. Evelyn went to see it, and was afflicted to see how the stage was degenerated and polluted by the licentious times 9.' The criticism of Samuel Pepys is very similar, and Herringman, the publisher, told Pepys that Dryden himself considered it but a fifth-rate play. Of 'Ladies à la Mode,' Pepys, from whom alone we have knowledge of it, says that it was a translation from the French, and that it was 'so mean a thing as when they came to say it would be acted again, both he that said it, Beeson, and the pit fell a laughing, there being this day not a quarter of the pit full.' It was never acted again, and Dryden never published it 3.

Dryden's mother died in 1670. He was an affectionate son, and there are indeed none but pleasant indications of his relations with members of his family. The first of some little bequests in the will of the mother, who had little to leave, is a silver tankard and her wedding-ring to her son now so famous. 'I give and bequeath to my beloved son, John Dryden, a silver tankard marked with J. D., and a gold ring, which was my wedding-ring. And it is my will that after the decease of my dear son, John Dryden, his eldest son, Charles Dryden, should have the ring as a gift from his grandmother, Mary Dryden.' On the death of his mother, Dryden came into possession of the whole of the little Blakesley estate, and the addition thus made to his income was not more than 20%. a year: but his income at this time, derived from various sources, from his estate, his salary and his brain-work, probably amount to about 700l. a year.