of a national epic poem, and his hopes of assistance from the King to enable him to fulfil his design.

But we learn from the Treasury warrant of May 1684, that in the year 1680 Dryden's salary and pension both fell into arrear, and that the arrears went on accumulating for four years. For present pecuniary aid therefore the pension would now have been useless, and Dryden's means from the end of 1679 till the summer of 1684, when there was a beginning of payment of four years' arrears, must have been sadly crippled. His contract with the King's Company no longer existed. He now depended on public favour for the profit of each separate play. The plays which he had produced since he left the King's Company in 1678 had not been successes: one, "Limberham," had brought him nothing, and "Troilus and Cressida" had not excited enthusiasm. It is stated, in a Life of Southerne,* that Dryden in no instance cleared more than a hundred pounds by a play, while the younger and less famous Southerne could clear seven hundred pounds. In 1680, Dryden appeared before the public for the first time as a translator of ancient poetry. A translation of the Epistles of Ovid appeared in this year, under his auspices: two of the Epistles were translated entirely by himself, and a third jointly by him and Lord Mulgrave; and Dryden wrote a Preface to the volume.

In 1681, Dryden produced at the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens one of his most successful plays, "The Spanish Friar, or the Double Discovery." This was a biting satire on the Roman Catholic priesthood, and hit the popular feeling of the day. The ferment which the Popish Plot had excited in 1678 was still strong; the question of excluding the Duke of York from succession to the throne, because he was a Papist, was the great question of the day. In June 1680, Shaftesbury, Russell, and thirteen other noblemen and commoners of distinction, had presented an indictment against the Duke of York as a popish recusant in the King's Bench, and their proceeding had been defeated by the abrupt dismissal of the grand jury by the court. The Duke of York was residing, in forced absence from London, at Edinburgh. The "Spanish Friar" was probably written in 1680, and acted in the spring or summer of 1681. The published play was dedicated to Lord Haughton, eldest son of the Earl of Clare, Dryden saying that he recommended "a Protestant play to a Protestant patron." Scott has placed the date of representation in 1682, guided by a passage in the Prologue which he thought must have reference to the murder of Mr. Thynne of Longleat, in February 1682. But there is no necessity for understanding a reference to Mr. Thynne's murder in the lines on which Scott founds his chronology:

"A fair attempt has twice or thrice been made

To hire night murderers and make death a trade."

Dryden doubtless referred to the attack made on himself in Rose Alley in December * Life prefixed to the collected edition of Southerne's Plays, 3 vols. 12mo. 1774.

1679, and he would also have had in his mind the attack on Sir John Coventry, instigated by Monmouth in December 1670. There is no doubt that "The Spanish Friar" appeared before the poem of "Absalom and Achitophel," published in November 1681. Here Dryden entered on a new field. Play-writing

was now for a time abandoned, and would probably never have been resumed but for the crash which came to Dryden's fortunes in 1688 with the Revolution, after the author of "The Spanish Friar" had become a Roman Catholic, and his new religion combined with his political antecedents placed him beyond the pale of office and favour from William and Mary.

Twenty years had passed since the Restoration; and in eighteen years since Dryden's first comedy, "The Wild Gallant," had been produced with very indifferent success, he had brought out twenty-two plays. * This was not the whole of Dryden's literary work; but since " Annus Mirabilis," published in 1667, he had pro- | duced no poem of importance besides plays. He was not one who worked evenly and calmly; he wrote in excitement and finished under pressure: he laboured zealously but fitfully for each work he undertook, and he worked constantly for the means of meeting his expenses: this is a grinding condition of literary labour; and strife and enmity, for the last ten or twelve years, since he had become famous, had ever crowded round his path. Fame had made him companion of most of the wealthy and noble who pursued or loved literature; and society, which Dryden loved, consumed his time and increased the expenses which it was his daily anxiety to provide for. A very interesting letter, which appeared in the "Gentleman's Magazine” of 1745, written by one who states himself to be then in his eightyseventh year, and who could recollect Dryden in the beginning of his literary career, gives us a vivid glimpse of him, probably between 1669 and 1673: "I remember plain John Dryden, before he paid his court with success to the great, in one uniform clothing of Norwich drugget. I have ate tarts with him and Madam Reeve at the Mulberry Garden, when our author advanced to a sword and Chedreux wig." The writer of this letter would have been ten years old in 1669, and fourteen in 1672. In the latter year Dryden had been already for two years poetlaureate. His dramatic reputation, which had been raised to a great height by "The Conquest of Granada," was maintained in this year, 1672, by his comedy of "Marriage à la Mode;" and another aged writer, in the same number of the

In addition to these twenty-two plays, he was credited with one called "The Mistaken Husband," which he disowned. This play was published in 1675 by Bentley, a bookseller, with a statement that Dryden had revised the play and added a scene to it.

+ Gentleman's Magazine, 1745, P. 99: This most interesting letter is signed W. G.: the author is not known. Lord Hailes thought the letter Southerne's (Prior's Life of Malone, p. 255). It would exactly suit Southerne's age: he was born in 1659, and he died in 1746, in his eighty-eighth year. But Southerne was born in Ireland and passed his youth there, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Malone therefore rejected the idea of Southerne's authorship. Still Southerne might, when a boy, have visited London; but, on the other hand, why should he have concealed his name? The poem in the same number of the Magazine, quoted from in the text, is signed S. G. the poem and letter appear together.

"Gentleman's Magazine,” recalls in verse the glories which he remembered of the stage in that year and the brilliant troop of actors and actresses who combined to make "Marriage à la Mode" a great success :

"Cibber will smile applause; and think again

Of Hart, of Mohun, and all the female train,

Coxe, Marshall, Dryden's Reeve, Bet Slade, and Charles's reign!'

The rhymed plays to which Dryden had so long devoted himself, and which themselves make but a small contribution to his celebrity, enabled him to perfect by practice that power of versification which soon shone out in "Absalom and Achitophel," "Religio Laici," and "The Hind and the Panther." He had been studying for the future as well as writing for the present. He mentions in his "Discourse on Satire," addressed to Lord Dorset in 1693, that a conversation with Sir George Mackenzie had led him about the year 1673 to a careful re-reading of English poets-Waller, Denham, Cowley, Milton, and Spenser, with a special view to the study of turns of word and thought. To the English language he had given particular attention: and he had had two designs, never fulfilled, one of an English Dictionary, on the plan of the French Dictionary of the Academy, in which he was to work with Lord Roscomon, and the other of an English Prosody. And latterly, as has been mentioned, he had wished, if only the King would make him independent of the necessity of writing for daily bread, to turn his practised powers and accumulated knowledge of his art to the preparation of a national epic.

At this point it may be mentioned that three sons had been born of Dryden's marriage. The eldest, Charles, born in 1665 or 1666, was now, in 1681, a King's scholar at Westminster: and his second son, John, born in 1667 or 1668, became a Westminster King's scholar in the following year, 1682. The third and youngest, Erasmus Henry, born in May 1669, and now twelve, entered the Charter-house as a scholar in February 1683. There was little pleasure for Dryden in his wife's society at home. Bitter sneers of married life abound in Dryden's plays to prove his own conjugal unhappiness: they cannot, under the circumstances, excite respect for him, and the discreditable licentiousness of much of his writing suggests blame for himself in connexion with his domestic discomfort.

1681-1688.

It may be regarded as one proof that Dryden, before the publication of "Absalom and Achitophel," was not identified in public opinion with the Tory party and with opposition to the Whig promoters of the Exclusion Bill, that, in a squib against Shaftesbury published very shortly before this great political satire appeared, he is made to figure in Shaftesbury's train, as poet-laureate to Shaftesbury, imagined

• Mohun pronounced as a monosyllable.

to have been elected King of Poland.* A further inference may be drawn from the appearance of Dryden's name in this connexion that, notwithstanding his possession of the office of poet-laureate, a belief existed that he was not on the best terms with the Court. "The Spanish Friar" must have displeased the Duke of York, and could not have been acceptable to the King, who had also privately adopted the Roman Catholic religion and been secretly zealous to establish it as the state religion. The inevitable tendency of that drama was to foment the feeling excited by the Popish Plot against the Roman Catholics, and anything which increased that feeling increased obloquy and danger for the Duke of York, to whom Charles was attached, and whose cause as regards the succession to the throne he warmly espoused. Dryden had wished doubtless to make a popular drama and extract profit from the anti-papist feeling. But he would certainly wish

to be in favour with both the King and his brother, and his anxiety to serve and gratify them would now be even whetted by any untoward consequences of his "Protestant play." The general belief of Dryden's authorship of Mulgrave's "Essay on Satire" would have materially helped to create an idea which undoubtedly prevailed that Dryden was in opposition to the Court. His friend Mulgrave had lately had a difference with the King, and thought himself ill-treated : he at any rate had assailed the King with satire, and Dryden was probably hastily associated with Mulgrave's opposition on the strength only of their friendship. It is seen by some lines already quoted from Mulgrave's "Essay on Satire," published in 1682, that he himself, on the contrary, regarded Dryden about this time as spoilt by addiction to the Ministry. One of Dryden's bitter poetical assailants, the author of The Laureat," says that his pension was at this period taken from him, and that therefore he went into opposition, satirized the King, and wrote "The Spanish Friar." The pension was not taken from him; but it was not paid at this time, through the shameful poverty of the Exchequer. This is how falsehood is generated. Dryden, having for some time past wished to give up play-writing and obtain the King's patronage and assistance for writing an epic poem, was now ready to gratify the King by turning his hand to political satire. It is said that the King himself suggested to Dryden the subject of Shaftesbury instigating Monmouth to aspire to the succession to the throne. Dryden went to Scripture for an allegory, and produced Shaftesbury as the cunning Achitophel and Monmouth as the misguided Absalom. It is idle in a piece of this sort to require entire correspondence in all the details of the allegory or a perfect plot. Dryden wanted only a shred of story whereby to evolve characters of the leading men of both parties; the story itself is of inferior consequence. Shaftesbury was the politician on whom he now concentrated his powers

"A Modest Vindication of the Earl of Shaftesbury, in a Letter to a Friend, concerning his being elected King of Poland," printed in Somers Tracts, vol. vii.

of attack. There is no information of any personal quarrel to explain the fierceness of Dryden's onslaught on Shaftesbury; the poet was evidently bound to him by no tie of previous friendship or obligation, and there was therefore nothing to restrain him from the savage treatment which he knew would please the King, the Duke of York, and all the Tories, and which he administered without restraint of conscience, because it suited his prevailing purpose. Mr. Hallam, a great but fair admirer of Dryden, speaks of "his natural proneness to virulent ribaldry." There is positive untruth in some of his accusations against Shaftesbury, who, whatever may have been his faults, was never a venal politician, whose personal honour was never questioned, who, throughout his stormy career, retained the personal friendship of strong political opponents, and who was the intimate and respected friend of Locke and of Lord Russell. Dryden reviles Shaftesbury for political acts, for a share in which he had previously applauded Clifford. He reviles him for the Dutch war of 1673, which he himself had vehemently incited in a drama expressly written for the purpose. Nothing can be more objectionable and ribald than the reference in "Absalom and Achitophel" to Shaftesbury's undistinguished, but not unamiable son:

"And all to leave what with his toil he won
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son,
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy."

Monmouth is treated tenderly by Dryden, because Charles in his heart loved him, and because Dryden was under personal obligations to him, and still more to the Duchess of Monmouth, who had been one of his earliest and most useful and constant friends. Buckingham, to whom Dryden owed a grudge, is introduced more prominently than would probably otherwise have been the case or than his present part in politics warranted. The sketch of him as Zimri is one of the most finished and happiest characters in the poem, and he is treated with mercy rather than severity. Dryden was not less skilful in praise than in satire and some of his eulogistic sketches of friends among the supporters of the Court are very beautiful, especially the tribute to the memory of the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Ormond's son. His friend Mulgrave was not forgotten:

This poem was published in November 1681, and probably on the 17th of November, just one week before Shaftesbury was indicted at the Old Bailey for high treason. He had been arrested on this charge, and committed a prisoner to the Tower on July 2, 1681. After much delay a bill of indictment against him was presented to the grand jury for the city of London on November 24. The time of publication of this elaborate attack on Shaftesbury was doubtless chosen