of Shaftesbury and his adherents, who were seeking to secure the succession to the throne for the Duke of Monmouth, Charles's eldest son. It has been called the best political satire ever written. There is no effort at playful and delicate art; the poem was composed in earnest, and it abounds in hard, sweeping, stunning blows. It was eagerly seized upon by the public, and in a year no fewer than nine editions were called for. The Earl of Shaftesbury figures as Achitophel :

"A name to all succeeding ages cursed:

For close designs, and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfix'd in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay,

And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay;
A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high,

He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit."

The Duke of Buckingham is Zimri, whose character is outlined with astonishing power:

"A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was every thing by starts, and nothing long:
But in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon:
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Bless'd madman, who could every hour employ,
With something new to wish, or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes;

And both, to show his judgment, in extremes."

In 1682 appeared the "Religio Laici," which is appended for special study. As an exposition of a layman's faith, it was

probably an honest presentation of Dryden's beliefs at the time. Whether intended to serve a political purpose or not, is a matter of dispute; but it attacks the Papists, and at the same time declares the "Fanatics," by whom are meant the Nonconformists, still more dangerous - a declaration that accorded well with Charles's policy of persecution. It is entirely didactic in character, and deservedly ranks as one of the very best poems of its class in English. Though it is closely argumentative throughout, it still contains passages of much beauty. The opening lines are justly admired:

"Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars

To lonely, weary, wandering travellers
Is Reason to the soul: and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here, so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear

When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere,
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight,

So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light."

In the preface to the poem, Dryden has given us the ideal of style at which he aimed and which he largely realized: "If any one be so lamentable a critic as to require the smoothness, the numbers, and the turn of heroic poetry in this poem, I must tell him, that, if he has not read Horace, I have studied him, and hope the style of his Epistles is not ill imitated here. The expressions of a poem designed purely for instruction. ought to be plain and natural, and yet majestic for here the poet is presumed to be a kind of lawgiver, and those three. qualities which I have named are proper to the legislative style. The florid, elevated, and figurative way is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul by showing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life or less; but instruction is to be

given by showing them what they naturally are. A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth."

On the accession of James in 1685, Dryden became a Roman Catholic. This conversion has given rise to considerable discussion. Did it result from conviction or from self-interest? It is impossible to determine. But, in the moderate language of Johnson, "That conversion will always be suspected that apparently concurs with interest. He that never finds his error till it hinders his progress towards wealth or honor, will not be thought to love truth only for herself. Yet it may easily happen that information may come at a commodious time, and as truth and interest are not by any fatal necessity at variance, that one may by accident introduce the other. When opinions are struggling into popularity, the arguments by which they are opposed or defended become more known, and he that changes his profession would perhaps have changed it before, with the like opportunities of instruction. This was then the state of popery; every artifice was used to show it in its fairest form; and it must be owned to be a religion of external appearance sufficiently attractive."

As a result of this conversion we have the "Hind and Panther," a poem of twenty-five hundred lines, which is devoted to the defence of the Roman Church. This church is represented by the "milk-white hind," and the Church of England by the panther, a beautiful but spotted animal. Published at a time of heated religious controversy, it had a wide circulation. It was regarded by Pope as the most correct specimen of Dryden's versification; and there can be no doubt that the author, knowing it would be criticised with the most unfriendly rigor, elaborated it with unusual care. The opening lines are beautiful:

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,

She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.

Yet hath she oft been chased with horns and hounds
And Scythian shafts, and many winged wounds
Aimed at her heart; was often forced to fly,

And doomed to death, though fated not to die."

At the Revolution, Dryden did not abjure his faith, and, as a consequence, lost his office as poet laureate. In addition to the loss of his pension, which he could ill afford to suffer, he had the chagrin of seeing his rival, Shadwell, elevated to his place. Against him he wrote at this time one of his keenest satires, entitled, "Mac Flecknoe." Flecknoe, who had governed long, and —

• In prose
and verse was owned, without dispute,
Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute,”

at length decides to settle the succession of the state,

"And, pondering, which of all his sons was fit
To reign, and wage immortal war with wit,
Cried, "Tis resolved; for nature pleads, that he
Should only rule, who most resembles me.
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dullness from his tender years:
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he,
Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.'"

Once more thrown upon his pen for support, Dryden turned to the stage, but chiefly to translation. In 1693 he published

a volume of miscellanies, which contained translations from Homer and Ovid; and a little later appeared the satires of Juvenal and Persius. His theory of translation, as set forth in his prefaces, is better than his practice. He takes liberties with his author; and, as was the case with him in all his writings, he is far from painstaking. Besides, instead of mitigating, he magnified their obscenity. But, upon the whole, the translations are of high excellence. The most important of his

translations was that of Virgil's "Eneid," on which he labored three years. The public expectation was great, and it was not disappointed. Pope pronounced it "the most noble and spirited translation that I know in any language."

Among his songs and odes, the best known is "Alexander's Feast." He wrote it at a single sitting, and afterwards spent a fortnight in polishing it. It is justly considered one of the finest odes in our language. Dryden himself declared that it would never be surpassed. It was, perhaps, the last effort of his poetic genius, composed amid the pressing infirmities of age. It was fitting, to use the beautiful words of one of his heroes, that,

"A setting sun

Should leave a track of glory in the skies."

He died May 1, 1700, and was buried with imposing pomp ir Westminster Abbey.

Dryden's prose is scarcely less excellent than his verse. He wrote much on criticism in the form of prefaces to his vari ous works. He avoided, as a rule, the common mistakes in the

prose of his time inordinately long sentences and tedious parenthetic clauses. He says he formed his prose style on Tillotson; but Tillotson never had the ease, point, and brilliancy of Dryden. He was a clear, strong thinker, with a great deal to say; and often compressing his thought into a few wellchosen words, he sent them forth like shots from a rifle. He delighted in argument; and on either side of a question, he could marshal his points with almost matchless skill. Whether attacking or defending the Roman Church, he showed equal power.

Dryden did not attain to the highest regions of poetry. He could not portray what is deepest and finest in human experience. His strong, masculine hands were too clumsy. He has no charm of pathos; he does not touch that part of our nature where "thoughts do often lie too deep for tears." But he was a virile thinker, and a master of the English tongue.