The world is made for the bold impious man,
Who stops at nothing, seizes all he can.
Justice to merit does weak aid afford,

She trusts her balance and neglects her sword.
Virtue is nice to take what's not her own;

And while she long consults, the prize is gone."

The

There was now a long interval before another play by Dryden appeared, and there is no sign of other occupation of importance between the production of "Aurengzebe" in 1675 and that of "All for Love, or the World Well Lost," a tragedy on the theme of Antony and Cleopatra, which was brought out at the King's Theatre in the winter of 1677-8, probably in the beginning of 1678. The play of "All for Love" was greatly benefited by the time given to its composition, and Dryden was conscious of its superior merits. He had now abandoned rhyme, and he said in the Preface that, as he had taken his subject from Shakespeare, he had made it his great object to imitate his style : "In my style, I have professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare, which that I might perform freely, I have disencumbered myself from rhyme, not that I condemn my former way, but that this is more proper to my present purpose." He says of this, that it was "the only play written for himself, the rest were given to the people." The success of this play was very great. His fellowbeneficiaries of the King's Theatre gave him on this occasion, as a special favour, the profits of "the third day" of representation. The author of a play had ordinarily "the third day;" but Dryden being a sharer in the general profits of the theatre, was excluded by his engagement from this advantage. conduct of the company in granting him "the third day" on this occasion was particularly generous, for, as has been already said, Dryden had never fulfilled his own engagement to furnish three plays a year, and had indeed, while always receiving his stipulated share of the profits, not produced more on the whole than one a year. It is set forth in his partners' memorial of complaint to the Lord Chamberlain made very shortly after, which has been already referred to, that this favour was granted to Dryden on a representation by him of the inconvenience he had suffered by the diminution of his profits. "The house being burnt," say the memorialists, "the company in building another contracted great debts, so that the shares fell much short of what they were formerly. Thereupon Mr. Dryden complaining to the company of his want of profit, the company was so kind to him that they not only did not press him for the plays which he is engaged to write for them, and for which he was paid beforehand, but they did also, at his earnest request, give him a third day for his last new play, called 'All for Love,' and at the receipt of the money of the said third day he acknowledged it as a gift, and a particular kindness of the company." But very soon after this act of generosity Dryden, greatly in arrears with the King's Theatre as to the plays he had promised, joined with Nathaniel Lee in

a new play, the "Edipus," which was offered to the Duke's Company. The memorialists complain to the Lord Chamberlain of this ungrateful proceeding as an act of injustice to them, and they pray him either to compel Dryden to give the play to them or to compel the Duke's Company to grant them pecuniary compensation. "Edipus" was brought out by the Duke's Company in Dorset Gardens, and there is no information that compensation was adjudged. Another play by Dryden, a comedy, "The Kind Keeper, or Limberham," was also produced about the same time at Dorset Gardens. Dryden had now clearly quarrelled with and left the King's Company. "Edipus" had been a success, but 'The Kind Keeper" gave great offence, and was acted only three times. In April 1679, “Troilus and Cressida, or Truth found too Late," an adaptation of Shakespeare's play, was brought out in Dorset Gardens. It took less time to adapt than to invent; and as with his other hasty adaptations from Shakespeare and Milton, "The Tempest" and "The State of Innocence," a marked inferiority to the greater poet's original is obvious. "Troilus and Cressida" was published in 1679, with an Essay on the grounds of criticism in tragedy by way of Preface. The Prologue, spoken by Betterton, who appeared as the ghost of Shakespeare, contained another fine homage in Dryden's best style to Shakespeare's genius:

"Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age,

I found not, but created first, the stage;
And if I drained no Greek or Latin store,
'Twas that my own abundance gave me more."

"Troilus and Cressida" was dedicated to Robert, Earl of Sunderland, who had shortly before been made Secretary of State, and was in close friendship with the Duchess of Portsmouth, who was then in the ascendant with Charles. "All for Love" had been dedicated to Danby, who then was the powerful Lord Treasurer, soon to fall before the parliamentary opposition headed by Shaftesbury and Russell, and become an inmate of the Tower. "Limberham" was dedicated to Lord Vaughan. Of this play, which had been so badly received that after three nights it was withdrawn, Dryden says in the dedication that "it was intended for an honest satire against our crying sin of keeping." He attributes its bad reception to the enmity of those whose vice was exposed. "The crime," he says, "for which it suffered, was that which is objected against the satires of Juvenal and the epigrams of Catullus, that it expressed too much of the vice which it decried." It is to be inferred from Dryden's language that strong remonstrances from powerful friends of his own, probably from the highest-placed in the land, led him to withdraw this piece. Indelicacy of language alone would not have caused condemnation. Dryden states that in preparing the play for the press he had altered or omitted all passages which had offended his friends when it was acted: "for their authority,' he proceeds, "is and shall be ever sacred to me, as much absent as present, and in all alterations of their fortune, who for those reasons have stopped its further

appearance on the theatre." He predicts that posterity will endorse his own opinion that "Limberham" was one of his best comedies. It is certainly one of the coarsest, and the acted play was probably worse in this respect than the published one.*

In the year 1679 Dryden separated himself, why it is not known, from his old publisher, Herringman, in whose house he is said by Shadwell to have lived when he first started in London, and began the connexion, which lasted till his death, with the famous Jacob Tonson, then a young and poor bookseller. "Troilus and Cressida" was published in 1679 by Tonson and Swalle: and there is a story, which may or may not be true, that Tonson, being unable to find twenty pounds for payment to Dryden for the copyright, obtained the money from his brother bookseller Swalle, on condition of giving him half the profits.

In December of the year 1679, Dryden was the victim of a savage and cowardly night attack in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, of which the instigator is believed to have been the poet and profligate John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who had been among Dryden's friends and patrons. The play of "Marriage à la Mode" was dedicated by Dryden in 1673 to Rochester with the usual profusion of flattery; and there is preserved a letter of Dryden to Rochester, written a short time after, warmly acknowledging patronage and bounty. Rochester was capricious, and in a few years there was ill-feeling between the two. Dryden is said to have resented Rochester's successive patronage of Settle, Crowne, and Otway, and his efforts to befriend them at Court; but in all the stories told relating to these three poets, and of slights or injuries to Dryden through favour to them, there is more of suspicion and conjecture than certain knowledge. What is more certain is, that Dryden formed, in or about the year 1673, an intimacy with the Earl of Mulgrave, another young noble poet, who had a desperate quarrel with Rochester. It is perhaps true that Mulgrave had some aid from Dryden for revising a poem, composed, it is said, in 1675, and circulated in manuscript in 1679, an "Essay on Satire," in which Rochester was severely treated. There is no doubt that Dryden was suspected of the authorship. The following passage of a letter from Rochester to his friend Henry Savile, Nov. 21, 1679, which was published with blanks for the names,† has always been understood to refer to Dryden and Mulgrave and to this poem: "I have sent you herewith a libel, in which my own share is not the least; the King having perused it is in no way dissatisfied with his. The author is apparent, Mr. Dryden, his patron my Lord Mulgrave having a panegyric in the midst." The panegyric on Mulgrave

Malone mentions that he had seen in Lord Bolingbroke's study, after his death, a copy of "Limberham" corrected by Dryden, with exceptionable passages scratched through. (Life of Dryden, p. 118; and see Prior's Life of Malone, p. 364.)

The blanks are

Published in 1697 in "Familiar Letters," vol. I. with Preface by T. Brown. here filled up with the names, as has been commonly done by preceding biographers.

in the poem is extremely mild: the King and his mistresses are unsparingly assailed. Another passage of a letter of Rochester to Savile also refers, it may be taken for granted, to Dryden: "You wrote me word that I'm out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have admired* for the disproportion of him and his attributes. He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be fond of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please, and leave the repartee to Black Will with a cudgel." This last remark strongly confirms the suspicion or belief that Rochester was instigator of the cowardly night attack on Dryden on the 18th of December, 1679. As the poet was returning to his residence in Long Acre that evening through Rose Street, Covent Garden, he was attacked and cudgelled by a party of ruffians, who escaped after perpetrating the assault. A reward of £50 was offered for the discovery of the offender, and, later, the same reward and a pardon were offered to the offender himself if he would make known the instigator. Neither offender nor instigator was discovered. It seems to have been always believed that Rochester was the instigator of this assault, and the "Essay on Satire" the cause of anger. Yet it is strange that Dryden should have been thought the author of the poem, for, dependent as he was on the favour of the King, and holding the offices of Poet-Laureate and Historiographer Royal, besides an annuity of £100 from the King, how could he have published abuse of Charles? How could he have allowed himself to risk, or lie even for only one day under, suspicion of the authorship of a poem in which the King is described, with his two mistresses, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, and Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, as "sauntering Charles between his beastly brace," and is taunted with being fooled by both?

"Was ever prince by two at once misled,

False, foolish, old, ill-natured, and ill-bred?"

Whatever may have been suspected at the time, there is no doubt that Mulgrave, and not Dryden, was the author of the "Essay on Satire." This, however, may be conceded, that Rochester is very likely to have suspected Dryden of complicity in the part of the satire affecting himself. Conscience might have generated such a suspicion, for he had severely criticised Dryden shortly before in his poem called "An Allusion to the Tenth Satire of Horace," published in 1678; and Dryden had shown himself stung by Rochester's attack by a reply, in his Preface to "All for Love," evidently intended for Rochester, though he was not named, and much more telling, because less personal, than the coarse lines of the "Essay on Satire."

The Rose Alley ambuscade should have excited universal indignation for

* Admired, wondered at.

the instigator, and sympathy with Dryden. The sufferer could not sustain dishonour by so cowardly an assault. The Rose Alley assault, however, was made a continual theme for ridicule and insult directed against Dryden by vulgar and bitter revilers. Mulgrave, afterwards speaking of Dryden in his "Art of Poetry," first published in 1682, referred to this disgraceful attack in the following lines :-

"The Laureate here may justly claim our praise,
Crowned by Mac Flecknoe with immortal bays;
Though praised and punished for another's rhymes,
His own deserve that glorious fate sometimes,
Were he not forced to carry now dead weight
Rid by some lumpish minister of state."

There was appended to these lines, slightly, but not materially, altered, in the edition of 1717, a note by Mulgrave, explaining the reference to the "Essay on Satire" for which, it is there said, "Mr. Dryden was both applauded and beaten, though not only innocent but ignorant of the whole matter."

Mulgrave's strong assertion of Dryden's innocence and ignorance should suffice to disconnect him with the authorship of the "Essay on Satire." Dryden said of himself, in his dedication to Mulgrave of "Aurengzebe," that he subsisted wholly by the King's bounty; and the courtly exaggeration of this statement does not destroy its substantial truth. He had now a pension of £100 a year dependent on the King's pleasure, in addition to his salary of £200 a year as Poet-laureate and Historiographer Royal. In what year subsequent to 1678, and under what circumstances, this additional pension was granted, is not known. The first indication of it is a Treasury order for payment of £25 to Dryden for the quarter ended January 5, 1679, "upon his pension of £100 per annum, which his Majesty is pleased to allow him by way of addition to the sum of £200 per annum by letters-patent previously granted to him."* There is another later proof of this pension in a Treasury warrant of May 6, 1684, for payment of a quarter of his salary, due as far back as Midsummer 1680, and also for payment, "by virtue of his Majesty's letters of privy seal directing an additional annuity of £100," of £25, a quarter of this annuity, due at Lady-day 1680.+ It is possible that this additional pension may have been the result of Dryden's dedication to Mulgrave of his play of "Aurengzebe," published in 1676, in which he had proclaimed his desire to devote himself to the composition

*This piece of information has been contributed by Mr. Peter Cunningham, in one of his Notes to the Life of Dryden in his edition of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" (vol. i. p. 334). A payment of £50 "to John Dryden, poet-laureate, on his annuity due at Lady day, 1679," which appears in the volume of Secret Service Expenses of Charles II. and James II. published by the Camden Society, is probably a payment of half a year of the same pension, the Treasury order probably not having been otherwise honoured.

This document was published by Mr. R. Bell in the Life prefixed to his edition of Dryden's Poems, 1854