During the greater part of the year 1686 Dryden was engaged in writing 'The Hind and the Panther,' an elaborate defence in verse of his new religion. This poem is in the form of a dialogue between a milkwhite Hind, representing the Church of Rome, and a Panther, representing the Church of England; and the Hind has of course the best of the discussion. The author of 'Religio Laici' and of 'The Spanish Friar,' could not bring himself to treat the Church to which he so lately belonged with entire disrespect; and the Panther is described as

sure the noblest next the Hind,
And fairest creature of the spotted kind;
Oh, could her inborn stains be washed away,
She were too good to be a beast of prey!
How can I praise or blame, and not offend,
Or how divide the frailty from the friend?

Her faults and virtues lie so mixed, that she

Nor wholly stands condemned nor wholly free.'

The various dissenting bodies are introduced into the poem under the names of different animals. This, the most imaginative and the longest of Dryden's poems, was published in April 1687.

Dryden's first ode for St. Cecilia's day was written in November 1687, at the request of a musical society formed four years before the celebration of the feast of St. Cecilia, the guardian saint of music.

On June 10, 1688, the Queen gave birth to a son, an event which was hailed with joy by all the friends of the Court, while the Protestant party declared the child an imposture. The birth of the Prince was celebrated by Dryden in a poem entitled 'Britannia Rediviva,' which was very hastily composed, and is one of his least successful efforts.

There was a very short interval between the birth of

b A perfect text of so celebrated a poem is of much literary importThe editors have generally substituted uprooted for Dryden's better word unrooted in the line

ance.

'And trees unrooted left their place.' This is one of very many similar corrections in the Globe edition of Dryden's Poems.

James's unfortunate heir and the Revolution, which drove James into exile, placed William and Mary on the throne, and destroyed Dryden's prospects of advancement. His newlyadopted religion made it impossible for him to take the oaths required of all holders of office, and to recant now would have been at once indecent and unprofitable. His offices of Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal, his place in the Customs, and his pension of 100l. a year, were now all lost by him. It was stated by Prior, and has been often repeated on his authority, that the Earl of Dorset, who was now appointed Lord Chamberlain, made the poet an allowance from his own purse equivalent to the official salary he had lost. This is a mistake; but there is no doubt that Dorset at different times made Dryden handsome presents of money, and the poet, in his 'Discourse on Satire,' dedicated to Dorset in 1693, gratefully acknowledges his generosity. Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, was also bountiful to him in his reduced circumstances.

In his fallen fortunes Dryden turned once more to the drama. In 1690 he produced two plays. The first was a tragedy called 'Don Sebastian.' Though one of his best dramas, it was not very successful, and Dryden attributed the failure of it to its length, or in his own language, to his having exceeded 'the proper compass of a play.' A comedy, 'Amphitryon,' produced in the same year, had better success. At the time of Charles the Second's death Dryden was engaged in writing, as a sequel to 'Albion and Albanius,' an opera, 'King Arthur, or the British Worthy.' This work, much altered to suit the altered times, was now brought out with great success. About the representation of his next play there was some difficulty. The story of 'Cleomenes, King of Sparta,' was of an exiled king seeking protection at a foreign court. King William was absent in Holland, and Mary, the Regent, feeling that the play was disagreeably suggestive of her father's position at St. Germains, objected to its being acted. Her objections were, however, overcome by Dryden's friends, and 'Cleomenes' was produced in May

Dryden had been seized with a severe fit of illness while hastening to finish 'Cleomenes,' and he was compelled to call in the aid of a young friend, Southerne, to finish it for him. Southerne, Dryden's junior by twenty-eight years, had acquired sudden celebrity by his first play, 'The Loyal Brother, or the Persian Prince,' produced in 1682, when he was only twenty-three. It had been brought on the stage with a prologue and epilogue by Dryden; and Dryden again had written the prologue for Southerne's second play, 'The Disappointment, or the Mother in Fashion,' which had also been a success. A check came to Southerne's success in 1692, shortly after Dryden had honoured him by seeking his assistance for 'Cleomenes.' His fourth play, the 'Wives' Excuse,' was not well received on the stage, and Dryden now consoled his young friend by some lines of condolence and compliment. He ascribed the want of success to the story and the absence of a favourite actor:

'Yet those who blame thy tale commend thy wit,

So Terence plotted, but so Terence writ.

Like his, thy thoughts are true, thy language clean,

Even lewdness is made moral in thy scene.

The hearers may for want of Nokes repine,
But rest secure, the readers will be thine.
Nor was thy laboured drama damned or hissed,
But with a kind civility dismissed.'

One more play, 'Love Triumphant, or Nature will Prevail,' was produced by Dryden in the beginning of 1694, and he relinquished play-writing. 'Love Triumphant' was a failure. A letter written by one who was evidently a bitter enemy of Dryden, and who calls him 'huffing Dryden,' says that the play was 'damned by the universal cry of the town.'

'Don Sebastian' was dedicated to the Earl of Leicester, elder brother of Algernon Sydney; 'Amphitryon' to Sir William Leveson Gower of Trentham; 'King Arthur' to George Saville, Marquis of Halifax; 'Cleomenes' to Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, son of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and uncle to Queen Mary; and 'Love Triumphant' to the Earl of Salisbury. These were all friends

of the Revolution, and of William and Mary's government, who, Dryden is careful to say in each of his dedications, had continued kind to him in his adversity. He endeavoured, he says, 'to pitch on such men only as have been pleased to own me in this ruin of my small fortune, who, though they are of a contrary opinion themselves, yet blame me not 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 of 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: