gust our author had received from Charles or his brother, was removed, as usual, as soon as his services became necessary; and thus the supposed author of a libel on the king became the ablest defender of the cause of monarchy, and the author of the " Spanish Friar" the advocate and convert of the Catholic religion.

In his private circumstances Dryden must have been even worse situated than at the close of the last Section. His contract with the King's Company was now ended, and long before seems to have produced him little profit. If Southerne's biographer can be trusted, Dryden never made by a single play more than one hundred pounds; so that, with all his fertility, he could not, at his utmost exertion, make more than two hundred a-year by his theatrical labours.* At the same time, they so totally engrossed his leisure, that he

"Dryden being very desirous of knowing how much Southerne had made by the profits of one of his plays, the other, conscious of the little success Dryden had met with in theatrical compositions, declined the question, and answered, he was really ashamed to acquaint him. Dryden continuing to be solicitous to be informed, Southerne owned he had cleared by his last play L.700; which appeared astonishing to Dryden, who was perhaps ashamed to confess, that he had never been able to acquire, by any of his most successful pieces, more than L.100."-Life of Southerne prefixed to his Plays.

produced no other work of consequence after the "Annus Mirabilis."* If, therefore, the payment of his pension was withheld, whether from the resentment of the court, or the poverty of the exchequer, he might well complain of the “unsettled state," which doomed him to continue these irksome and ill-paid labours.

* There was published 1679, a translation of Appian, printed for John Amery at the Peacock, against St Dunstan's Church, Fleet-street. It is inscribed by the translator, J. D., to the Earl of Ossory; and seems to have been undertaken by his command. This work is usually termed, in catalogues, Dryden's Appian. I presume it may be the work of that Jonathan Dryden, who is mentioned p. 81.

SECTION V.

Dryden engages in Politics-Absalom and Achitophel, Part First-The Medal-Mac-Flecknoe-Absalom and Achi tophel, Part Second-The Duke of Guise.

THE Controversies, in which Dryden had hitherto been engaged, were of a private complexion, arising out of literary disputes and rivalry. But the country was now deeply agitated by political faction; and so powerful an auxiliary was not permitted by his party to remain in a state of inactivity. The religion of the Duke of York rendered him obnoxious to a large proportion of the people, still agitated by the terrors of the Popish Plot. The Duke of Monmouth, handsome, young, brave, and courteous, had all the external requisites for a popular idol; and what he wanted in mental qualities was amply supplied by the Machiavel subtlety of Shaftesbury. The life of Charles was the only isthmus between these contending tides, "which, mounting, viewed each other from afar, and strove in vain to

meet." It was already obvious, that the king's death was to be the signal of civil war. His situation was doubly embarrassing, because, in all probability, Monmouth, whose claims were both unjust in themselves and highly derogatory to the authority of the crown, was personally amiable, and more beloved by Charles than was his inflexible and bigotted brother. But to consent to the bill for excluding the lawful heir from the crown, would have been at the same time putting himself in a state of pupilage for the rest of his reign, and evincing to his subjects, that they had nothing to expect from attachment to his person, or defence of his interest. This was a sacrifice not to be thought of so long as the dreadful recollection of the wars in the preceding reign determined a large party to support the monarch, while he continued willing to accept of their assistance. Charles accordingly adopted a determined course; and, to the rage rather than confusion of his partizans, Monmouth was banished to Holland, from whence he boldly returned without the king's licence, and openly assumed the character of the leader of a party. Estranged from court, he made various progresses through the country, and employed every art which the genius of Shaftesbury could suggest,

to stimulate the courage, and to increase the num ber, of his partisans. The press, that awful power, so often and so rashly misused, was not left idle. Numbers of the booksellers were distinguished as Protestant or fanatical publishers; and their shops teemed with the furious declamations of Ferguson, the inflammatory sermons of Hickeringill, the political disquisitions of Hunt, and the party plays and libellous poems of Settle and Shadwell, An host of rhymers, inferior even to those last named, attacked the king, the Duke of York, `and the ministry, in songs and libels, which, however paltry, were read, sung, rehearsed, and applauded. It was time that some champion should appear in behalf of the crown, before the public should have been irrecoverably alienated by the incessant and slanderous clamour of its opponents. Dryden's place, talents, and mode of thinking, qualified him for this task. He was the poet-laureat and household servant of the king, thus tumultuously assailed. His vein of satire was keen, terse, and powerful, beyond any that has since been displayed. From the time of the Restoration, he had been a favourer of monarchy, perhaps more so, because the opinion divided him from his own family. If he had been for a time neglected, the smiles of a sove

VOL. I.