-whose own habits were convivial, although not to the same extent the real faults of his opponent were his popularity as a comic writer, and his politics. Shadwell was a zealous Protestant, and the bitterest of the many who replied to the "Medal." For this he became the hero of "MacFlecknoe " -a masterly satire, holding him up to infamy and contempt— besides sitting afterwards for the portrait of Og, in the second part of "Absalom and Achitophel." Shadwell had, by and by, his revenge, by obtaining the laureateship, after the Revolution, in room of Dryden, and no doubt used the opportunity of drowning the memory of defeat in the butt of generous canary which had now for ever passed the door of his formidable rival.

Dryden's circumstances, at this time, were considerably straitened. His pension as laureate was not regularly paid; the profits from the theatre had somewhat fallen off. He tried in various ways, by prefacing a translation of "Plutarch's Lives," by publishing a miscellany of versions from Greek and Latin authors, and by writing prologues to plays and prefaces to books, to supply his exhausted exchequer. His goodhumoured but heartless monarch set him on another task, for which he was never paid, writing a translation of Maimbourg's "History of the League," the object of which was to damage Shaftesbury and his party, by branding them as enemies to monarchy. In 1682 he wrote his "Religio Laici."

Not long after, in February 1684, Charles II. became, for the first time in his life, serious, as he felt death-the proverbial terror of kings-rapidly rushing upon him. He tried to hide. the great and terrible fact from his eyes under the shield of a wafer. He died suddenly-a member of the "holy Roman Catholic Church,"-and much regretted by all his mistresses; and apparently by Dryden, who had been preparing the opera of" Albion and Albanius," to commemorate the king's triumph over the Whigs, when this event turned his harp into mourning, and his organ into the voice of them that weep. He set himself to write a poem which should at once express regret for the set, and homage to the rising, sun. This was his "Threnodia Augustalis," a very unequal poem, but full of

inimitable passages, and discovering all that careless greatness which characterised the genius of the poet.

Charles II. had, at Dryden's request, to whom arrears for four years had been due, raised his laureate salary to £300. The additional hundred dropped at the king's death, and James was mean enough even to curtail the annual butt of sack. He probably had little hope of converting the author of "Religio Laici" to his faith, else he would not have withheld what Charles had so recently granted. Afterwards, when he ascertained that an interesting process was going on in Dryden's mind, tending to Popery, he perhaps thought that a little money cast into the crucible might materially determine the projection in the proper way; or perhaps the prospect produced, or at least accelerated, the process. We admire much in Scott's elaborate and ingenious defence of Dryden's change of faith; and are ready to grant that it was only a Pyrrhonist, not a Protestant, who became a Papist after allbut there was, as Dr Johnson also thinks, an ugly coincidence between the pension and the conversion. Grant that it was not bestowed for the first time by James, it had been withheld by him, and its restoration immediately followed the change of his faith. Dr Johnson was pleased, when Andrew Miller said that he "thanked God he was done with him," to know that Miller "thanked God for anything;" and so, when we consider the blasphemy, profanity, and filth of Dryden's plays, and the unsettled and veering state of his religious and political opinions, we are almost glad to find him becoming "anything," although it was only the votary of a dead and corrupted form of Christianity. You like to see the fierce, capricious, and destructive torrent fixed, although it be fixed in ice.

That he found comfort in his new religion, and proved his sincerity by rearing up his children in the faith which his wife had also embraced, and by remaining a Roman Catholic after the Revolution, and to his own pecuniary loss, has often been asserted. But surely there is a point where the most inconsistent man is obliged to stop, if he would escape the character of an absolute weather-cock; and that there are charms and com

forts in the Popish creed for one who felt with Dryden, that he had, partly in his practice, and far more in his writings, sinned against the laws of morality and common decency, we readily grant. Whether these charms be legitimate, and these comforts sound, is a very different question. Had Dryden, besides, turned Protestant again, we question if it would have saved him his laureate pensions, and it would certainly have blasted him for ever, under the charge of ingratitude to his benefactor James. On the whole, this passage of the poet's life is not very creditable to his memory, and his indiscriminate admirers had better let it alone. It would have strained the ingenuity and the enthusiasm of Claud Halcro himself to have extracted matter for a panegyrical ode on this conversion of "glorious John."

Admitted into the bosom of the Church, he soon found that he must prove his faith by his works. He was employed by James to defend the reasons of conversion to the Catholic faith alleged by Anne Duchess of York, and the two other papers on the same subject which, found in Charles' strong box, James had imprudently given to the world. This led him to a contest with Stillingfleet, in which Dryden came off only second best. He next, in an embowered walk, in a country retirement at Rushton, near his birthplace, composed his strange, unequal, but brilliant and ingenious poem, "The Hind and the Panther," the object of which was to advocate King James' repeal of the Test Act, and to prove the immeasurable superiority of the Church of Rome to that of England, as well as to all the dissenting sects. This piece produced a prodigious clamour against the author. Its plan was pronounced ridiculous-its argument one-sided-its zeal assumed -and Montague and Prior, two young men then rising into eminence, wrote a clever parody on it, entitled the "Town and Country Mouse." In addition to this, he wrote a translation of Varilla's "History of Heresies," and a life of Francis Xavier, the famous apostle of the Indies, whose singular story, a tale of heroic endurance and unexampled labours, but bedropt with the most flagrant falsehoods, whether it be read in Dryden's easy and fascinating narrative, or in the more

gorgeous and coloured account of Sir James Stephen, in the "Edinburgh Review," forms one of the most impressive displays of human strength and folly, of the greatness of devoted enthusiasm, and of the weakness and credulity of abject superstition.

In spite of all these attempts to bolster up a tottering throne and an effete faith, the Revolution came, and Dryden's hopes and prospects sank like a vision of the night. And now came the hour of his enemies' revenge! How the Settles, the Shadwells, and the Ravenscrofts, rejoiced at the downfall of their great foe! and what ironical condolence, or bitter satirical exultation, they poured over his humiliation! And, worst of all, he durst not reply. "His powers of satire," says Scott, "at this period, were of no more use to Dryden than a sword to a man who cannot draw it." The fate of Milton in miniature had now befallen him; and it says much for the strength. of his mind, that, as in Milton's case, Dryden's purest and best titles to fame date from his discomfiture and degradation. Antæus-like, he had now reached the ground, and the touch of the ground to him, as to all giants, was inspiration.

His history, from this date, becomes, still more than in the former portions of it, a history of his publications. He was forced back by necessity to the stage. In 1690, and in the next two years, he produced four dramas,—one of them, indeed, adapted from the French, but the other three, original; and one, Don Sebastian, deemed to rank among the best of his dramatic works. In 1693, another volume of miscellanies, with more translations, appeared. He also published, about this time, a new version of "Juvenal and Persius," portions of which were contributed by his sons John and Charles. His last play, "Love Triumphant," was enacted-as his first, the "Wild Gallant," had been-without success; and it is remarkable, that while the curtain dropped heavily and slowly upon Dryden, it was opening upon Congreve, whose first comedy was enacted the same year with Dryden's last, and who became the lawful heir of much of Dryden's licentiousness, and of more than his elegance and wit.

He next commenced the translation of "Virgil," which in

the course of three years he completed, and gave to the world. It was published in July 1697. He had dashed it off with the utmost freedom and fire, and no work was ever more thoroughly identified with its translator. It is Dryden's "Virgil," every line of it. A great and almost national interest was felt in the undertaking, such as would be felt now, were it announced that Tennyson was engaged in a translation of Goethe. Addison supplied arguments, and an essay on the "Georgics." A dedication to the new king was expected by the Court, but inexorably declined by the poet. It came forth, notwithstanding, amidst universal applause; nor was the remuneration for the times small, amounting to at least £1200 or £1400.

So soon as this great work was off his hands, by way, we suppose, as Scott was used to say, of "refreshing the machine," Dryden wrote his famous ode, "Alexander's Feast,' for a meeting of the Musical Society on St Cecilia's day,—wrote it, according to Bolingbroke, at one sitting, although he spent, it is said, a fortnight in polishing it into its present rounded and perfect form. It took the public by storm, and excited a greater sensation than any of the poet's productions, except "Absalom and Achitophel." Dryden himself, when complimented on it as the finest ode in the language, owned the soft impeachment, and said, "A nobler ode never was produced, and never will;" and in a manner, if not absolutely, he was right.

Dryden was now again at sea for a subject. Sometimes he revolved once more his favourite plan of an Epic poem, and "Edward the Black Prince" loomed for a season before him as its hero. Sometimes he looked up with an ambitious eye to Homer, and we see his hand "pawing" like the hoof of the war-horse in Job, as he smelled his battle afar off, and panted to do for Achilles and Hector what he had done for Turnus and Eneas. He meant to have turned the "Iliad" into blank verse; but, after all, translated the only book of it which he published into rhyme. But, in fine, he determined to modernise some of the fine old tales of Boccacio and Chaucer; and in March 1699-1700, appeared his brilliant