solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which at that time, when I was most. in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief." Other presents were doubtless made by Dorset to Dryden on other occasions; and his old friend Mulgrave was also generous to him. Dryden speaks of the generosity of both Dorset and Mulgrave in his dedication to Mulgrave of the Æneid.

The new poet-laureate and historiographer royal was Dryden's reviler, Shadwell; and his appointment must have added greatly to Dryden's mortification. It is related that Lord Dorset, in recommending Shadwell to King William, said that he presented him, not as the best poet, but as the most honest man, politically speaking, among the competitors.

And now, deprived of official income, Dryden thought again of the drama : and in the next six years he produced four plays. The first of these was the tragedy of "Don Sebastian," acted in 1690. This play was not hastily written, and, as a composition, it is one of Dryden's best dramas. But the play had not very great success this Dryden in his preface attributes principally to its having been too long. In the beginning of the prologue he made an adroit reference to his altered position, and begged forbearance to a vanquished foe :

"The judge removed, though he's no more my lord

May plead at bar, or at the council board:

So may cast poets write; there's no pretension
To argue loss of wit from loss of pension.
Your looks are cheerful; and in all this place
I see not one that wears a damning face.
The British nation is too brave to show
Ignoble vengeance on a vanquished foe."

Dryden dedicated "Don Sebastian" to Philip Sidney, Earl of Leicester, brother of Algernon Sidney, who had himself, as Lord Lisle, taken an active part in politics under Cromwell, and was now, in old age, living in privacy, but was a supporter of the Revolution and friend of William's government. In the same year, 1690, Dryden produced a comedy, "Amphitryon," which succeeded well. It was dedicated to Sir William Leveson Gower, an ardent supporter of the Revolution, who, Dryden says, had increased his kindness to him since his misfortunes. “And as," says Dryden in his dedication, "since this wonderful revolution, I have begun with the best pattern of humanity, the Earl of Leicester, I shall continue to follow the same method, in all to whom I shall address: and endeavour to pitch on such 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 not me 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." After "Amphitryon'

* Sir Walter Scott says that some letters of Dryden to Dorset, which are preserved at Knole, but are considered not fit for publication, contain proofs of Dorset's liberality.

came, in 1691, "King Arthur, or the British Worthy," a dramatic opera, which had been originally prepared near the close of the reign of Charles the Second, and designed as a sequel to "Albion and Albanius," and for congratulation to Charles on his last political triumphs. It is needless to say that, under these circumstances, "King Arthur" was greatly changed from its first draft for representation in 1690. The origin of the poem and the changes made in it were owned by Dryden with manly frankness in his dedication of the play to George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, the great Trimmer of Charles the Second's reign, and one of Charles's leading ministers in his last years, now a friend of William, but living in political retirement. "This poem," says Dryden, "was the last piece of service which I had the honour to do for my gracious master King Charles, and though he lived not to see the performance of it on the stage, yet the Prologue to it, which was the opera of Albion and Albanius,' was often practised before him at Whitehall, and encouraged by his royal approbation." Of the alterations made he says: "Not to offend the present times, nor a government which has hitherto protected me, I have been obliged so much to alter the first design, and take away so many beauties from the writing, that it is now no more what it was formerly than the present ship of the Royal Sovereign, after so often taking down and altering, is the vessel it was at the first building." The dedication further tells us that the Duchess of Monmouth-"my first and best patroness," as Dryden here calls her had shown the poem to the Queen in manuscript, and that the Queen had read it and expressed her approval. "Poets," says Dryden in his usual courtly fashion, "who subsist not but on the favour of sovereign princes, and of great persons, may have leave to be a little vain, and boast of their patronage, who encourage the genius that animates them.” Purcell on this occasion composed the music for the opera, and it was a great success. In May 1692, Dryden produced a tragedy, “Cleomenes, or the Spartan Hero." Severe illness obliged him on this occasion to resort to the aid of his young friend Southerne, who wrote or finished for him the last act of the play. There was a difficulty for a time about the representation of "Cleomenes;" the Queen, who was acting as Regent during William's absence in Holland, making objections. The story of Cleomenes, an exiled king, seeking the assistance of a foreign ruler to restore him to his throne, was disagreeably, if not dangerously, suggestive of the position of Mary's father, James, exiled in France. The exertions of friends (among whom Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, Queen Mary's uncle, was prominent), and Dryden's asseverations of innocence of all political design, prevailed after a few months over the Queen's scruples. The play did not obtain great success. Dryden published it with a dedication to Lord Rochester. The last of Dryden's dramas appeared in the beginning of the year 1694, and was a conspicuous failure: this was “Love Triumphant, or Nature will Prevail," a tragi-comedy. The failure of this closing play of his long dramatic career must have been most mortifying to

Dryden, who had announced that it was to be his last play. The prologue declared that the poet now forsook the stage, and in the epilogue Dryden deprecated criticism on a dead poet :

"Now, in good manners, nothing shall be said

Against this play, because the poet's dead."

Dryden had now determined to renounce play-writing and devote himself to a translation of the whole of Virgil. Evelyn supped on January 11, 1694, at Mr. Edward Sheldon's, "where was Mr. Dryden, the poet, who now intended to write no more plays, being intent on his translation of Virgil: he read to us his prologue and epilogue to his valedictory play now shortly to be acted." The plays which he owned at the close of his dramatic career are twenty-seven in number.

Other labours had helped during the last six years to increase Dryden's ways and means. He had written in 1692 his poem "Eleonora," in honour of the memory of the Countess of Abingdon, written at the request of her husband. He had never seen the lady and was not acquainted with the husband: a handsome fee of five hundred guineas rewarded him for his execution of the sorrowing husband's commission. In 1693 he produced a translation of the Satires of Juvenal and Persius, in which he was aided by his two elder sons and others: and he prefixed to the work a Discourse on Satire, addressed to his old friend and benefactor, the Earl of Dorset. Dryden himself translated the first, third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth Satires of Juvenal, and the whole of Persius. He wrote a Life of Polybius to be prefixed to a translation by Sir Henry Shere: this also appeared in 1692. A third volume of Miscellanies appeared in 1693, containing some translations by Dryden from Ovid and Homer; and a fourth volume of Miscellanies, the last which Dryden issued, appeared in 1694. To this volume he contributed a translation of the Third Georgic of Virgil, and his excellent poem addressed to Sir Godfrey Kneller.

Congreve had commenced his career as a dramatic writer in January 1693, with "The Old Bachelor," produced on the stage when its author was no more than twenty-three. Southerne had introduced Congreve and his play to Dryden before its representation: and Dryden, always kind and encouraging to young authors of desert, had declared that he had never before seen such a first play. The success of Congreve's first play was great: but a second, brought out before the end of the same year, "The Double Dealer," was not so successful. It was on the appearance of "The Double Dealer" that Dryden addressed to Congreve the poem in which occur the beautiful lines prophesying for him literary eminence, and commending to his affectionate care his own reputation:

"But you whom every muse and grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,

Be kind to my remains; and oh, defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend!

Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue,
But shade those laurels which descend to you,
And take for tribute what these lines express;
You merit more, nor could my love do less."

It is pleasant to read in a letter of Dryden, written to Tonson in 1695, of the friendship and respectful attention of Southerne and Congreve, who went four miles out of London to accompany Dryden back to the capital, on an occasion when he was returning from Northamptonshire.

Dryden's three sons were now residing at Rome, where the Pope extended to them his protection and favour. The eldest, Charles, was appointed Chamberlain to the Pope; and the second, John, obtained also some office in the Pope's household. The youngest became an officer in the Pope's guards.

The translation of Virgil, as a whole, was commenced in the end of 1693, and was finished about the end of 1696. It was published in July 1697. There is a tradition that the first lines of the work were written by Dryden with a diamond on a pane of a window in his cousin John Driden's house at Chesterton, in Huntingdonshire, where in the last ten or twelve years of his life the poet was a frequent and honoured guest, and where lived with her brother his early love, Honor, who had never married. The house at Chesterton was pulled down in the beginning of this century, and it casts some doubt on the truth of this traditional story that the pane of glass which bore so valuable an inscription has not been preserved. During three years Dryden worked with laborious assiduity at his great translation: one diversion only of importance occurred while he was translating Virgil. In 1695, he (to use his own expression) "borrowed two months" for a translation in prose of Du Fresnoy's "Art of Painting," and he prefixed to the translation an essay which he called a Parallel of Poetry and Painting," the work, he said, of twelve mornings. Some of Dryden's correspondence with his publisher, Tonson, while he was engaged on the translation, is in print: it testifies to his assiduity, enables us to mark with some minuteness the progress of his labour, and reveals much bickering with Tonson. The work was to be published by subscription, and it was proposed to have a hundred and two subscribers at five guincas each, half to be paid at once: each of these was to be honoured by printing his coat of arms at the foot of one of a hundred and two engravings with which the book was to be adorned: and there was to be a second subscription, of two guineas, of persons whose names would only appear in a list printed with the book. It is not clear how much of the produce of these subscriptions went to Dryden and how much to Tonson. It is to be supposed that the expense of the engravings was defrayed from the five-guinea subscriptions; of the five guineas, three were paid down at once. It is to be inferred from Dryden's letters to Tonson that the latter was

*Letter from Dryden to W. Walsh, December 12, 1693, published in R. Bell's Life of Dryden. prefixed to his edition of Dryden's Poetical Works, 1854

under an undertaking to pay him fifty pounds on the completion of every two books of the Æneid,* and such an arrangement may or may not have extended to the Georgics, and there might have been also a sum of fifty pounds for the Pastorals. It is conjectured that these were payments to Dryden by Tonson for copyright, in addition to the portion of the subscription-money which went to the poet. There were in the end 102 subscribers of five guineas and 250 of two guineas, and Dryden in one of his letters calculates the guinea at twenty-nine shillings: this would make £1,469. If all expenses of plates, paper, printing, and publisher's charges were defrayed out of this sum alone, and Pope's statement that Dryden cleared £1,200 from his Virgil is correct, there would be left a very small balance for the expenses. If Tonson's payments of fifty pounds on completion of every couple of books of the Eneid were payments by him for copyright, to be added to Dryden's portion of the subscriptions, this would make £300 more if the payments were confined to the Æneid: £450 if, as has been supposed, the arrangement embraced the Georgics and if fifty pounds were in like manner given for all the Pastorals. It is clear from Dryden's letters that he received portions of the subscription-moneys, and that Tonson retained some. In one of his letters to Tonson, Dryden says: "I thank you for the civility of your last letter in the country; but the thirty shillings upon every book remains with me." This was written at a time when the second subscriptions were being collected, and probably means that he was to have thirty shillings for every two-guinea subscription. Dryden proceeds: "You always intended I should get nothing by the second subscription, as I found from first to last." The meaning of this may be that Tonson was opposed to the second set of inferior subscriptions of two guineas, regarding each copy so subscribed for as subtracted from the general sale of the book by which it may have been that he would solely profit. Dryden complains of Tonson's not having published in the first instance the proposals for the first subscriptions: had this been done, he says, he would have got more. In counting up the total of what Dryden may have received for his Virgil, the presents which would have come to him from the three noblemen, Lord Clifford, the Earl of Chesterfield, and the Marquis of Normanby (his old friend Mulgrave), to whom the Pastorals, the Georgics, and the Eneid were respectively dedicated, with what Dr. Johnson has called "an economy of flattery, at once lavish and discreet," must not be forgotten. Lord Chesterfield sent him a "noble present;" so Dryden called it in his letter of thanks, which has been lately published. These presents may have eked out Dryden's profits to some sum near that said to have been named by Pope: and, on the other hand, that sum, £1,200, may be an

* I agree with the Rev. Mr. Hooper, who has pointed out in his Memoir of Dryden prefixed to the new Aldine edition of Dryden's Poems (p. xci.), that the obvious inference from Dryden's letters is, that Tonson paid £50 on the completion of every couple of books of the Æneid, and not, as Malone and Scott understood, on the completion of every one.