resemblance to the entry of the Duke of Guise into Paris, which made part of the play. Was the parallel to be completed, and, as the Duke of Guise was assassinated, was Monmouth to come to a violent end? It may be understood that the King's love for Monmouth would naturally make him view with displeasure a parallel which might suggest Monmouth's assassination; and the representation of this play was in fact delayed for some months by the interposition of the Court. At last, after the King had given orders for Monmouth's arrest, it was permitted to be brought out on the stage. The public treated the play as a political manifesto, and Dryden was exposed to fresh fierce attacks from Whig writers. The play was published with a dedication to Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester : and Dryden also issued a long pamphlet in reply to his assailants, entitled "A Vindication of the Duke of Guise." He was very anxious, probably on account of the former friendship of Monmouth, to convince the public that he had had no political design in helping to write the play, that the scheme was in fact not his but Lee's, that his own connexion with the play was an accident, and his own part in it comparatively small.

Other works of more humble industry employed Dryden at this period of his most brilliant successes. In 1683 appeared the first volume of a new translation of Plutarch by several hands, to which Dryden contributed a Preface and a Life. Among the translators were Creech, Duke, Rymer, and Somers, the future Lord Chancellor. Dryden also translated, by order of the King, Maimbourg's "History of the League:" the translation was published in 1684. In the beginning of 1684, he published a volume of "Miscellanies," containing, with some of his already published pieces, greater and smaller, and with poems of other authors, some translations executed by himself from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Thus did Dryden labour in various ways for money. All his exertions were needed, for his salary and pension had now been for several years unpaid. An Exchequer warrant, dated May 6, 1684, proves that Dryden's salary had not then been paid since Lady-day 1680, nor his additional pension of £100 a year since January of the same year. The warrant was for payment of half a year's salary due at Midsummer 1680, and of a quarter's pension due Lady-day 1680. It may be presumed that this tardy payment of a trifling portion of a considerable debt was due to the friendly exertions of Hyde, Earl of Rochester, son of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, then first commissioner of the Treasury, and a consequence of an earnest appeal from Dryden, in a letter which is in print, and which was probably written in the latter part of 1683. The letter is without date:

"MY LORD, I know not whether my Lord Sunderland has interceded with your lordship for half a year of my salary: but I have two other advocates, my extreme wants even almost to arresting, and my ill health, which cannot be repaired without immediate retiring into the country. A quarter's allowance is but the Jesuit's powder to my disease: the fit will return a fortnight hence. If I durst, I would plead a little merit, and some hazards of my life from the common enemies; my refusing advantages offered by them, and neglecting my beneficial studies for the King's

service; but I only think I merit not to starve. I never applied myself to any interest contrary to your lordship's, and on some occasions, perhaps not known to you, have not been unserviceable to the memory and reputation of my lord your father. After this, my lord, my conscience assures me, I may write boldly, though I cannot speak to you. I have three sons growing to man's estate; I bred them all up to learning, beyond my fortune; but they are too hopeful to be neglected, though I want. Be pleased to look on me with an eye of compassion. Some small employment would render my condition easy. The King is not unsatisfied of me; the Duke has often promised me his assistance; and your lordship is the conduit through which they pass: either in the Customs, or the Appeals of the Excise, or some other way, means cannot be wanting, if you please to have the will. 'Tis enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and starved Mr. Butler; but neither of them had the happiness to live till your lordship's ministry. In the meantime, be pleased to give me a gracious and speedy answer to my present request of half a year's pension for my necessities. I am going to write somewhat by his Majesty's command, and cannot stir into the country for my studies, till I secure my family from want. You have many petitions of this nature, and cannot satisfy all; but I hope from your goodness to be made an exception to your general rules, because I am with all sincerity "Your lordship's most obedient humble servant,

JOHN DRYDEN."

Such were Dryden's wants, through the poverty of the Exchequer and the neglect of the Government, at the time of his greatest industry in its service and of his highest fame. The supposition that the above letter was written in the autumn of 1683 is strengthened by the fact that Dryden was appointed, on December 17, 1683, Collector of the Customs in the port of London.* The emoluments of this appointment are not known, but they were very likely considerable. There appears to have been a small salary of £5 a year for collecting the duties on cloth; as in the Secret Service Expenses of Charles II. and James II., published by the Camden Society, there occurs the following entry: "To John Dryden, collector of the duties upon cloth in the port of London, for one year's salary, ended at Christmas 1685, £5." But fees or percentages would probably make the material emolument.

If the Exchequer warrant of May 1684 was now effective, Dryden obtained a miserable sum of £75, when the Government owed him some £1,200 more. It is probable, however, that this was only a first instalment of payment, and that all arrears were in time paid. In a dedication to Lord Rochester, in 1692, of his play 'Cleomenes," Dryden says to him: "Your goodness has not been wanting to me during the reign of my two masters (Charles and James); and even from a bare treasury my success has been contrary to that of Mr. Cowley: and Gideon's fleece has then been moistened, when all the ground was dry about it."+ Something

*This fact in Dryden's life was ascertained by Mr. Peter Cunningham, and first published in one of his valuable notes to Johnson's Life of Dryden in his edition of the "Lives of the Poets" (vol. i. p. 335). The letters-patent of December 17, 1683, and those renewing the appointment after the accession of James, February 20, 1686, were seen by Mr. Cunningham in the Audit Office. + Cowley, in his "Complaint," had represented his Muse alone as neglected, when everything around prospered after the King's restoration:

"But then, alas! to thee alone,

One of old Gideon's miracles was shown.
For every tree and every herb around

With pearly dew was crowned,

And upon all the quickened ground

The fruitful seed of Heaven did brooding lie,
And nothing but the Muse's fleece was dry."

perhaps is to be put to the account of Dryden's inveterate habit of flattery: but yet it is probable that when James soon became king, if not before, Rochester, who was made Lord Treasurer after the accession of James, effected the payment of all the arrears.

Of Dryden's three sons referred to in his letters to Rochester as growing to man's estate, and as having been educated beyond his fortune, the eldest (now, in 1684, eighteen or nineteen) had entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in June of the previous year, a Westminster scholar, as his father had been before him; and some Latin verses addressed by him to Lord Roscomon on his "Essay of Translated Verse" were published in this year, in front of Lord Roscomon's poem, and side by side with English verses by the father. The second son, John, was still at Westminster, and was next year, 1685, elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, of which he did not avail himself, probably on account of his father's soon after becoming a Roman Catholic. The youngest was at the Charterhouse, and was also elected next year to a scholarship for Oxford and Cambridge, of which, probably for the same reason, he did not avail himself.

Dryden published a second volume of Miscellanies under the title, "Sylvæ," in the beginning of 1685; and in this volume his eldest son, Charles, appeared as a contributor. This volume contained several new translations by Dryden from Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, and Theocritus.

Dryden had written an opera, "Albion and Albanius," in celebration of the success of Charles against the popular party and parliamentary opposition, and the opera had been several times privately rehearsed before the King, and he had also written a second opera, “King Arthur," as a sequel to “Albion and Albanius,” and also intended for the glorification of Charles, when, on February 5, 1685, after a few days' illness, came the death of the King, and the crown passed to his brother James. The poet-laureate lost no time in producing an Ode to the Memory of Charles II.; "Threnodia Augustalis" is its title. This poem was published early in March. Its object was panegyric, and Dryden could always luxuriate in praise as easily as in vituperation. He who had so lately laid before Rochester the piteous tale of his poverty through the injustice of Charles's government, and prayed to be saved from that indifference to literature which had neglected Cowley and starved Butler, could now apostrophize Charles as "the great encourager of arts;" though it must be admitted that there is refinement of skill in the part of the poem which commemorates Charles's services to poetry. The Muses are described as returning with Charles from banishment, and prospering under him, though lightly fed :

So glorious did our Charles return;

The officious Muses came along,

A gay harmonious quire, like angels ever young;

(The Muse that mourns him now his happy triumph sung.)

Even they could thrive in his auspicious reign;
And such a plenteous crop they bore,
Of purest and well-winnowed grain

As Britain never knew before;

Though little was their hire and light their gain,

Yet somewhat to their share he threw :

Fed from his hand, they sung and flew,

Like birds of Paradise that lived on morning dew.
Oh never let their lays his name forget!
The pension of a Prince's praise is great."

66

Albion and

The poem ended with a panegyric on the new sovereign. Albanius" was now altered to meet the new circumstances, and an addition was made to it of praises of James. It was brought out on the stage on the 3d of June, 1685, four months after James's accession. There was a fatality against this opera; for, on the sixth night of its representation, London was alarmed by news of the landing of Monmouth at Lyme for rebellion; the theatre was suddenly emptied before the conclusion of the representation, and the opera was never reproduced. Great expense had been incurred on the scenery for bringing out this opera, and much loss was sustained by the Company. The opera had not been popular; the music, by Grabut, a Frenchman, the master of the King's band, and a favourite of Charles, was indifferent, and national jealousy was evoked by Dryden's preference of a Frenchman to Purcell and other English composers.

It was ascertained by Lord Macaulay that in the new patent issued after James's accession for Dryden's offices of poet-laureate and historiographer royal, the annual butt of canary was omitted as part of the laureate's emoluments; and it is to be presumed that this small economy was calculated. But the salary of the two offices remained the same, £200 a year. His office of Collector of Customs in London was renewed to him. On March 4, 1686, a year after James's accession, letters-patent were issued granting Dryden an additional pension of £100 a year, to begin from the beginning of the reign. This was of course a renewal of the pension of 100 a year which Dryden had been receiving for a considerable time from Charles; but it is not to be forgotten that the patent placed this annuity on a better footing. Dryden had in the meantime become a Roman Catholic. Two months before, rumours of this change had come to the ears of his acquaintance Evelyn, who made this entry in his Diary, January 19, 1686: “Dryden, the famous play-writer, and his two sons, and Mrs. Nelly (miss to the late king), were said to go to mass: such proselytes were no great loss to the Church."

Lord Macaulay has been the subject of disrespectful comment by recent biographers, because he has ascribed Dryden's change of religion to the pension of £100 a year granted by James.* The fact of Dryden's having been in receipt of a

* See Mr. R. Bell's Life prefixed to his edition of Dryden's Poems, 1854, and the Rev. R. Hooper's Life, prefixed to the new Aldine edition, 1866.

pension of like amount during Charles's reign, in addition to his salary, has been ascertained since Lord Macaulay wrote; and it may be freely admitted that Dryden did not become a Roman Catholic either to obtain a pension of a hundred pounds a year or because this pension had been granted to him. A hundred a year, even if it had been now granted for the first time, would probably not have been sufficient bait or reward to Dryden for changing his religion. But it is hard to believe that in this great change, coming so soon after James's accession, and so soon after his "Protestant play” of “The Spanish Friar,” and his Protestant poem "Religio Laici," visions of greater worldly advantage did not influence Dryden. There was no surer way to James's favour than to become a Roman Catholic. He was bent on doing everything he could for that religion and its holders. Dryden's life was a perpetual struggle for income; and his character and career do not oppose the notion which the time of his conversion suggests, that his becoming a Roman Catholic was in great measure a movement of calculated expediency. His life and writings, neither before nor after his conversion, are those of a man strongly imbued with religion. Priests had been the constant theme of his satire, and but four years before, when the prevailing tide was against the Roman Catholics, he had held up the Roman Catholic priesthood to ridicule and obloquy on the stage. A little before he had deliberately published his "Religio Laici," a Church of England manifesto against both Popery and Protestant Dissent. And this is not a solitary instance of suspicious change. He had suddenly veered with the Restoration from Cromwell to the Stuarts. His virulent denunciations against Shaftesbury when persecuted by the Court are in flat contradiction of his praises of Shaftesbury's colleagues and policy when Shaftesbury was in power. Sir Walter Scott had endeavoured, before Lord Macaulay wrote, to prove Dryden's sincerity, and some of his arguments have been adopted without inquiry by others. "His wife," says Scott, "had for some time been a Catholic; and though she may be acquitted of any share in influencing his determination, yet her new faith necessarily brought into his family persons both able and disposed to do so.". There is no authority whatever for Scott's statement that Dryden's wife was a Roman Catholic before him. Malone, who, with the characteristic spirit of Boswellian biography, chose to assert that the sincerity of Dryden's.conversion could not be doubted, had said: "I suspect his wife, Lady Elizabeth, had long been a Papist; her brother Charles, the second Earl of Berkshire, who succeeded to the title in 1669, and was probably godfather to our poet's eldest son, certainly was one. But this Lord Berkshire had died in 1679, six years before Dryden's conversion. The suspicion of Malone as to the wife, resting on no firmer foundation than the conversion of her brother who had died six years before, is the sole foundation of Scott's assertion that Lady Elizabeth Dryden was a Roman Catholic before her husband. Scott goes on to say: "His eldest and best beloved son, Charles, is also said, though upon uncertain authority, to have been a Catholic before his father, and to have contributed to his change." The