stage; and had to endure the humiliation of gratifying his enemies by a failure with his last production. With this unfortunate conclusion to a great dramatic career, his connection with the stage ceased in 1692.

Dryden had indeed had great reverses, but his primacy in letters was neither destroyed nor long interrupted. William III. did not remain popular; and the various elements in the nation soon drew back from the general enthusiasm to the avowed maintenance of former party and sectarian principles, so that the Catholic adherents were not long conspicuous in being the hated few who stood out against the new order of things. Dryden regained and held through life his supremacy at Will's, and was literary dictator as Ben Jonson had been before him, and as Addison and Samuel Johnson were afterwards. Ward, in the London Spy, speaks of a pinch of snuff from Dryden's box as being equivalent to a degree in that academy of wit. Southerne remained devotedly attached to him; and "the great Mr. Congreve," as Thackeray calls him, was especially in his intimacy. Others who courted him were John Dennis, the rising young Mr. Addison, Vanbrugh, Granville, and Moyle. Pope, then a boy of twelve, contrived to see him in 1700. Swift, though Dryden's cousin, was not his friend. The story goes that Swift, with a wrong conception of his own powers, had written some odes, as he thought them, which he submitted to his great kinsman. The verdict was, "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet." For this concise bit of truth, Swift assailed his critic here and there through his writings, and remains the only author whose works are much read to-day that has tried to dim the poetical fame of Dryden.

Dryden's literary work now took the form of translations

and imitations. The prefaces to these translations contain very valuable prose in the way of essays upon literary subjects. It is said that, when a poet writes prose to any extent, he usually writes the best quality. It was surely so here; and Dryden, without giving much prominence to his prose writings, perhaps did more for the language by enriching the vocabulary, teaching good expressions, and establishing a straightforward, lucid prose style, than in any other way.

He long intended to write an epic based upon either the Arthurian tales or the deeds of the Black Prince. He thought that an epic must introduce supernatural agency, and conceived the idea of guardian angels of kingdoms contending each for his own charge. It is no doubt as well that he never carried this design into execution. We may suppose with Dr. Johnson that the work would have contained many excellences, but it would have been uneven. More than this, his whole work shows a capacity for adapting and building upon the work of others, rather than of extended original conception. Had he been the man to write a great epic, he would have written one.

In 1694 he began his greatest task, a translation of Vergil, encouraged by the bookseller, Tauson, who had profited from the Miscellanies. The author and his publisher quarrelled bitterly over the terms for this; but common interest held them together, so that it was presented in 1697. Dr. Johnson remarks that the nation seemed to consider its honor interested in the rendering of its favorite classical poet by the greatest of its living writers. The author's profits, twelve hundred pounds or more, were small in comparison with the six thousand at least which Pope gained from his Iliad, but great for the age of Dryden. His work was cultivating a taste that Pope

reaped the benefit of, and no one realized this better than Pope himself.

In the preface to his last work, the Fables, he again had occasion to reply to bitter critics. A pedantic clergyman, named Milbourne, jealous for a translation of his own, assailed his Vergil; and Sir Richard Blackmore, a physician, well-meaning, but severe and narrow, had taken upon himself the task of redeeming poetry from the licentious language of such men as Dryden, Congreve, and Wycherly. These were summarily lashed by Dryden's pen; but there were strong grounds for criticism upon the poetry of the period, if given by a better man than Blackmore. Such a one was the great Jeremy Collier, who published, in 1698, "A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage." This was unfair in some of its illustrations, but contained so much well-expressed truth that it left a wholesome influence upon dramatic poetry. It shows the greatness of Dryden that he replied to this in a very different vein from his scathing remarks upon other critics. He acknowledged in a manly way the justice of many of the strictures, only protesting with reason against Collier's strained interpretation at times, and remarking, "If the zeal for God's house had not eaten him up, it had at least consumed some part of his good manners and civility." Collier seems in his turn to have accepted Dryden's statement in a manly way, and to have directed his later efforts mainly against Congreve, who well deserved a sermon.

The environment of controversy, amid which so much of Dryden's life had been passed, followed him to its very close. Vanbrugh, the playwright, had revised Fletcher's comedy of the Pilgrim; and Dryden within twenty days of his death contributed the prologue and epilogue, in the former of which he

once more paid his withering respects to Blackmore, and in the latter referred to Collier, though more courteously and without personal attack.

Dryden had long suffered from chronic complaints, but the end came suddenly. An injury to his foot became gangrened from the presence of erysipelas; and the stanch old Englishman resisted amputation, saying that he did not care to part with one leg at such an age to preserve an uncomfortable life with what remained. The end came May 1, 1700. He was honored with a public funeral by subscription; and after his remains had lain in state until twelve days after his decease, they were placed in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, between Chaucer and Cowley. His grave was unmarked until 1714, when Pope's allusion to the "rude and nameless stone" stung his old friend Lord Mulgrave, now Duke of Buckinghamshire, to give him a simple monument, upon which a bust was placed. Mulgrave's Duchess, thirty years later, replaced this bust by a better one.

Dryden's wife, the Lady Elizabeth, died insane in 1714. His three sons, Charles, born in 1666, John, 1668, and Erasmus Henry, 1669, young men of some literary aspirations and devout Catholics, had all previously died unmarried. Dryden family is now extinct.

The

Dryden is described as being thoroughly English in person, as well as manner. He was of fair complexion, full face, handsome figure in youth, though not tall, and very stout in his later years. He delighted in fishing, in which he was expert, and bowling. He was fond of scientific research, and took great interest in the philosophical awakening of his time, which was stimulated by Newton and Boyle. He was a firm believer in astrology, in which he was skilled, and many things

in his writings betray this. Dryden was essentially a domestic man of very regular habits. He seems to have passed his mornings in study, and to have regularly repaired after dinner to Will's, where tradition relates that he had his "winter " chair by the fire, and his "summer" chair on the balcony. He was an indulgent father and a kind landlord. Congreve describes him as the most modest and unassuming of men, and hence liable to be wrongly judged by those who found it hard to know him save by his writings. This goes to prove that he felt the license of his plays necessary to meet the demands of his age, and that Johnson was right in regarding indelicacy as "his trade, not his pleasure." The recognizing and following of popular taste can easily become other than a merit; but it marks the true journalistic mind, which was Dryden's, and at another period he would have written very differently. In our own time we can conceive of his occupying such a position as Charles A. Dana, with his ability for polemic writing and leadership in diction, but with the literary side more emphasized, as in the case of Bryant. He has left much that will stand the test of any age, but his whole work must not be judged save in connection with the ferments in which his lot was cast.

No better words can be applied to a study of Dryden than his own where he says, as aptly quoted by Addison :

"Errors and straws upon the surface flow;

Who seeks for pearls must dive below."

There are abundant pearls in Dryden's lines; and to those who are willing to discover them, and to recognize all that is commendable in his sturdy, industrious life, he will remain "Glorious John."