the social equal of Sir Robert Howard, held up his head before him, and some years later in a literary controversy treated him with asperity and some disdain. He had in the meantime become the husband of Sir Robert Howard's sister.

Dryden was married to Lady Elizabeth Howard in St. Swithin's Church, London, on the 1st of December, 1663. The marriage was by licence, and it is expressly mentioned that it was with the consent of the lady's father, the Earl of Berkshire, though, as she was twenty-five years of age, the father's consent was not necessary. Dryden is described in the entry in the register as of the parish of St. Clement Danes: the lady is described as of the parish of St. Martin's, in which was Berkshire House. The express mention of the father's consent disproves any inference from the celebration of the marriage in the church of a parish to which neither bride nor bridegroom belonged that it was clandestine. The marriage, however, probably took place under circumstances not happy and auspicious. There are many broad insinuations in the printed productions of Dryden's many assailants against the purity of his wife's character before her marriage: and one distinctly taunts him with having been hectored into marriage by the lady's brothers in order to save her character. A letter, which time has revealed, written by Dryden's wife before her marriage to a licentious young nobleman, the second Earl of Chesterfield, places it beyond reasonable doubt that she had an intrigue with him before her marriage.* It is hardly likely that, if her character had been unsullied, she would have married Dryden, who, though of good family, was poor, and living by his pen. There is no doubt that they were an ill-assorted pair, and that the marriage was unhappy. The wife's temper was fitful and violent; and her latter years were clouded with insanity. She was not a congenial companion by intellect for Dryden. It is difficult in such cases to distinguish entirely cause and effect, or to determine accurately the faults of both sides. A wife of softer temper and more sympathizing mind might have saved the poet from seeking, after daily literary labour, pleasure and excitement beyond his home, and might have refined and purified his character. On the other hand, a better man, or one of another temperament, might have raised the wife and made her happier. Dryden was a libertine. A beautiful actress, Ann Reeve, was notoriously for many years his mistress. The husband and wife had one strong tie in a merit common to both, love of their children. Dryden's letters give striking proofs of his warm self-denying affection for his sons, and there are two extant letters of Lady Elizabeth showing deficient cultivation, but charming in their artless manifestation of maternal tenderness and care.

Dryden gained some addition to his means by this marriage. In his dedication

* Letters of Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield, 1829, p. 95. This Earl of Chesterfield was many years afterwards a patron of Dryden, and the Georgics were dedicated to him in the Translation of Virgil. The same volume of Letters added two letters of Dryden on the subject of this dedication to the scanty stock of published Dryden letters.

of the play "Cleomenes" to Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, in 1692, he says that he held some property under this nobleman in Wiltshire: this would doubtless have been acquired through his marriage, Lord Berkshire's chief possessions being in Wiltshire. Pope told Spence that Dryden left a family estate of about £120 a year; and there are other statements in accord with that ascribed to Pope. It appears from official documents preserved in the Record Office that, in consideration of her father's services, Lady Elizabeth had received in 1662 a warrant for a grant of £3,000 from the Excise, to be paid in quarterly instalments of £250, and that she had made this over, in May 1663, to her father, in exchange for another sum of £3,000, portion of a grant of £8,000 made to him by the King. This sum of £3,000 was still due from the King in August 1666: but it may be presumed that it was ultimately paid, and added to Dryden's fortune; and property in Wiltshire may have been purchased with it.*

An entry in the Diary of Samuel Pepys of February 3, 1664, just two months after the marriage, shows that Dryden had already acquired the fame of a poet. Pepys saw him that evening in the Coffee House at Covent Garden, which came to be known as Will's, and which he frequented till death, having been then for many years its presiding spirit. "In Covent Garden to-night, going to fetch home my wife, I stopped at the great Coffee House there, where I never was before; where Dryden, the poet I knew at Cambridge, and all the wits of the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hoole of our College [Magdalen]. And had I had time then, or could at other times, it will be good coming thither; for there, I perceive, is very witty and pleasant discourse." As far back as November 1662, Dryden had been elected a Fellow of the newly-instituted Royal Society; an honour which he probably owed immediately to his poem addressed to Dr. Charleton on his work on Stonehenge, published in 1662, in which he had reviewed English discoveries in science and lauded their authors. Of science Dryden had no accurate knowledge, and his election to the Royal Society was rather a mark of social position and general reputation. He was already a writer of plays, and had produced two on the stage, though without marked success, before his marriage.

On the revival of theatrical representations at the Restoration, Charles the Second, acting under the advice of Clarendon, gave permission for only two theatres, which were called the King's Theatre and the Duke's, the latter in honour of the Duke of York. The King's Theatre was under the direction of Thomas Killigrew, a favourite court-wit and a writer of plays; the Duke's was under Sir William Davenant, the poet-laureate. Dryden's first play, "The Wild Gallant," a comedy, was brought out in February 1663, by the King's Company, who were then acting in Vere Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, waiting for the completion of a better house in Drury Lane, to which they moved in

*Calendars of State Papers (Domestic), 1661-2 and 1665-6, by Mrs. Everett Green: Feb. 27: March 28, and May 7, 1662; June 25, Aug. 22 and 29, 1666.

April 1663. Dryden's first play was a decided failure. Pepys saw it acted on February 23, and recorded in his Diary that "it was ill acted, and the play so poor a thing as ever I saw in my life.” He mentions that the King was present that night, and says that "the King did not seem pleased at all the whole play, nor anybody else." Dryden himself acknowledges the failure in his Preface to the play, when he published it some years after, in 1669; but the King comforted him by ordering the play to be acted at Court more than once; and some verses addressed by Dryden to Lady Castlemaine, “upon her encouraging his first play," show that it found favour with the King's then ruling mistress. Not daunted by his first failure, Dryden produced before the end of 1663, at the King's Theatre, a second play, "The Rival Ladies," a tragicomedy. This had some success, and it continued to be acted for some time. Pepys saw it on August 4, 1664; "a very innocent and most pretty witty play," he says, "I was much pleased with it." Two years after, he read it one day, as he walked to Woolwich from London, July 18, 1666, and found it "a most pleasant and fine-writ play." The tragic scenes were written in rhyme, and Dryden took occasion in a dedication to the Earl of Orrery, when he published the play in 1664, to argue for rhyme in tragedy in preference to blank verse. He was following in the footsteps of Orrery himself in using rhymed verse for tragedy, and was also gratifying the King's declared taste. He conformed himself also to the taste of Charles in borrowing plots for his first two plays from the Spanish. His first plays pandered to low tastes by coarse language and indecent ideas; and in this respect Dryden continued as he began, showing not only in his comedies, but in other works, as in Translations, and even in his latest Fables from Chaucer and Boccaccio, a prurient love of the indecent, which is a blot on his character and tarnishes his fame.

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Dryden, next, assisted Sir Robert Howard in the composition of his tragedy, "The Indian Queen," which was produced with great splendour of costume and scenery at the King's Theatre in January 1664, and was a very great success. Pepys and Evelyn both record the success of the play. The former thought "the play good, but spoiled with the rhyme, which breaks the sense;" the "show" was "most pleasant,' and surpassed high expectations. Evelyn thought the play well-written," and "beautiful with rich scenes, as the like had never been seen here, or haply, except rarely, elsewhere on a mercenary theatre."* How much of "The Indian Queen" was written by Dryden is not known: he says, in an advertisement of his own sequel-tragedy "The Indian Emperor," that he wrote part of it. But the play was doubtless much more Howard's than Dryden's. This joint labour would have been just before Dryden's marriage with Howard's The subject of "The Indian Queen" had been Montezuma acquiring

sister.

* Pepys, Jan. 27 and Feb. 10, 1663-4; Evelyn, Feb. 5, 1663-4.

the throne of Mexico. In "The Indian Emperor" Dryden's subject was the conquest of Mexico and dethronement of Montezuma by the Spaniards. "The Indian Emperor" was brought out at the King's Theatre in the early part of 1665; the fine scenes and dresses of "The Indian Queen" reappeared. As Dryden said in the Prologue,

"The scenes are old, the habits are the same

We wore last year, before the Spaniards came."

"The Indian Emperor" succeeded on the stage, and Dryden had now obtained a firm footing as a dramatic author. The author's profits from the acting of a play were derived from the third night's representation, which custom appropriated for his benefit. A successful third night might bring Dryden at this time forty or fifty guineas: the publisher's payment for copyright and the pecuniary reward for a dedication were additional profits, which, later, were valuable to Dryden. As yet, of the three plays which he had produced, he had published only "The Rival Ladies," dedicated to Lord Orrery. "The Indian Emperor "was published in 1667, with a dedication to the young Duchess of Monmouth, and "The Wild Gallant" was not published till 1669.

It

The great Plague which visited England in 1665 closed the play-houses, and interrupted for a time Dryden's career of play-writing. The plague had hardly ceased when, in September 1666, London was ravaged by the great Fire, and through these two calamities there were no dramatic representations in London from May 1665 till very near the close of the year 1666. During the greater part of this long period Dryden seems to have lived at his father-in-law Lord Berkshire's seat at Charlton in Wiltshire. He composed during this time the poem of "Annus Mirabilis,"—the year 1666 of Dutch war, plague, and fire: the Preface to which, dated from Charlton, November 10, 1666, was addressed to Sir Robert Howard, with many friendly compliments. "You have not only been careful of my fortune," he says, "which was the effect of your nobleness, but you have been solicitous of my reputation, which is that of your kindness. is not long since I gave you the trouble of perusing a play for me, and now, instead of an acknowledgment, I have given you a greater in the correction of a poem." The play which Howard had perused was probably the comedy of "Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen," which was brought out with great success soon after the re-opening of the theatres. Another work which employed Dryden, during his residence in the country in 1666, was his "Essay of Dramatic Poesy," which he published in 1668, and which led to a controversy with Sir Robert Howard, and to an interruption, probably however not very long, of his friendship with his brother-in-law. The subject of dispute was the comparative merits of rhyme and blank verse in tragedies; Howard, though he had written rhymed heroic plays, tartly criticised Dryden's doctrine in the Preface to his play of The Duke of Lerma," published in 1668; and Dryden sharply rejoined in "A Defence of

the Essay of Dramatic Poesy" prefixed to a second edition of "The Indian Emperor." The pieces of this controversy may yet be read with interest, especially Dryden's larger portion: the quarrel, on which biographers have much dwelt, has probably been exaggerated. There is incontrovertible proof in Dryden's letters of the last years of his life, that he and Sir Robert Howard were on terms of intimacy and affection, and that Howard was kind and generous to him. Dryden's eldest son, Charles, was born at Charlton in 1665 or 1666.

The "Annus Mirabilis,” published in the beginning of 1667, added considerably to Dryden's fame. It was the longest and most elaborate poem which he had yet produced. In this poem he returned to the quatrain stanzas which he had used in his poem in praise of Cromwell, and to which the ear of the poetry-reading public was familiarized by the "Gondibert " of Davenant. The difficult stanza is managed by Dryden with skill, and he shows in this poem his mastery of the English language. The Dutch war and the deeds of the English navy were subjects of thrilling interest at the moment; his description of the Fire of London contains some fine poetry. The poem has many passages of thought, tenderness, and dignity, which greatly predominate over occasional disfigurements of extravagance and bathos. Pepys, who generally reflected the public opinion, says of this poem, which he bought and read on February 2, 1667: "I am very well pleased this night with reading a poem I brought home with me last night from Westminster Hall, of Dryden's, upon the present war; a very good poem.”

Dryden's comedy of " Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen," was brought out at the King's Theatre in March 1667, and was a great success. Nell Gwyn, who had lately begun as an actress, enchanted the audience in the part of Florimel. Pepys went with his wife to see the play on March 2, the first night: the King and the Duke of York were present: "The play," says Pepys, "was mightily commended for the regularity of it, and the strain and wit;" and of Nell Gwyn's acting he says, "I never can hope to see the like done again by man or woman." He records a second and a third visit to the play within the month, and each time renews in the same strain his praises both of the play and of Nell Gwyn's acting. The play was published in the following year with a courtly Preface, which was and was not a dedication to the King: modesty prevented such a dedication; but the play "having been owned in so particular a manner by his majesty that he has graced it with the title of his play," Dryden announced that "after this glory which it has received from a sovereign prince," he could not "send it to seek protection from any subject." Dryden now revived his first play, "The Wild Gallant," and his established fame probably helped to give it more success. In the autumn of 1667 "Sir Martin Mar-all," a comedy, was brought out at the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The belief at the time was that this play, an obvious adaptation of Molière's "L'Etourdi," had been reconstructed and made his own by Dryden from a translation of Moliere's play by the Duke