upon with suspicion. The candour evinced by Dr Johnson on this subject, and the patient inquiry of Sir Walter Scott, have settled the point. We may lament the fall of the great poet, but his conduct is not fairly open to the charge of sordid and unprincipled selfishness. He brought up his family and died in his new belief. The first public fruits of Dryden's change of creed were his allegorical poem of the Hind and Panther, in which the main argument of the Roman church, all that has or can be said for tradition and authority, is fully stated. 'The wit in the Hind and Panther,' says Hallam, 'is sharp, ready, and pleasant; the reasoning is sometimes admirably close and strong; it is the energy of Bossuet in verse.' The Hind is the church of Rome, the Panther the church of England, while the Independents, Quakers, Anabaptists, and other sects, are represented as bears, hares, boars, &c. The Calvinists are strongly but coarsely caricaturedMore haughty than the rest, the wolfish race Appear, with belly gaunt and famish'd faceNever was so deform'd a beast of grace. His ragged tail betwixt his legs he wears, Close clapp'd for shame, but his rough crest he rears, And pricks up his predestinating ears.

The obloquy and censure which Dryden's change of religion entailed upon him, is glanced at in the 'Hind and Panther, with more depth of feeling than he usually evinced

If joys hereafter must be purchas'd here
With loss of all that mortals hold so dear,
Then welcome infamy and public shame,
And last, a long farewell to worldly fame!
'Tis said with ease, but, oh, how hardly tried
By haughty souls to human honour tied !
O sharp convulsive pangs of agonizing pride!
Down, then, thou rebel, never more to rise,
And what thou did'st, and dost so dearly prize,
That fame, that darling fame, make that thy sacrifice!
'Tis nothing thou hast given; then add thy tears
For a long race of unrepenting years:
'Tis nothing yet, yet all thou hast to give;
Then add those may-be years thou hast to live:
Yet nothing still; then poor and naked come;
Thy Father will receive his unthrift home,
And thy blest Saviour's blood discharge the mighty sum.
He had previously, in the same poem, alluded to the
'weight of ancient witness,' or tradition, which had
prevailed over private reason; and his feelings were
strongly excited-

But, gracious God! how well dost thou provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide!
Thy throne is darkness in th' abyss of light,
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.

O teach me to believe thee thus conceal'd,
And search no farther than thyself reveal'd;
But her alone for my director take,

Whom thou hast promised never to forsake!
My thoughtless youth was wing'd with vain desires,
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,
Follow'd false lights, and when their glimpse was gone,
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
Such was I; such by nature still I am;
Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame!

The Revolution in 1688 deprived Dryden of his office of laureate. But the want of independent income seems only to have stimulated his faculties, and his latter unendowed years produced the noblest of his works. Besides several plays, he now gave to the world versions of Juvenal and Persius, and-a still weightier task-a translation of Virgil. The latter is considered the least happy of all his great works. Dryden was deficient in sensibility, while

where part of the translation of Virgil was executed. took care to make the engraver aggravate the nose of Æneas in the plates, into a sufficient resemblance of the hooked promontory of the Deliverer's countenance.' The immortal Ode to St Cecilia, commonly called Alexander's Feast, was Dryden's next work; and it is the loftiest and most imaginative of all his compositions. No one has ever qualified his admiration of this noble poem.' In 1699 Dryden published his Fables, 7500 verses, more or less, as the contract with Tonson bears, being a partial delivery to account of 10,000 verses, which he agreed to furnish for the sum of 250 guineas, to be made up to £300 upon publication of a second edition. The poet was now in his sixty-eighth year, but his fancy was brighter and more prolific than ever; it was like a brilliant sunset, or a river that expands in breadth, and fertilises a wider tract of country, ere it is finally engulfed in the ocean. The Fables' are imitations of Boccaccio and Chaucer, and afford the finest specimens of Dryden's happy versification. No narrative-poems in the language have been more generally admired or read. They shed a glory on the last days of the poet, who died on the 1st of May 1700. A subscription was made for a public funeral; and his remains, after being embalmed, and lying in state minster Abbey. twelve days, were interred with great pomp in West

Dryden has been very fortunate in his critics, annotators, and biographers. His life by Johnson is the most carefully written, the most eloquent and discriminating of all the Lives of the Poets.' Malone collected and edited his essays and other prose writings; and Sir Walter Scott wrote a copious life of the poet, and edited a complete edition of his works, the whole extending to eighteen volumes.

It has become the fashion to print the works of some of our poets in the order in which they were written, not as arranged and published by themselves. Cowper and Burns have been presented in this shape,

Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate;
He laugh'd himself from court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;
For, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom and wise Achitophel:
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.

[Shaftesbury's Address to Monmouth.]
[From the same.]

Auspicious prince, at whose nativity
Some royal planet rul'd the southern sky,
Thy longing country's darling and desire,
Their cloudy pillar and their guardian fire;
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas, and shows the promis'd land;
Whose dawning day in every distant age
Has exercis'd the sacred prophet's rage:
The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,

The
young men's vision, and the old men's dream!
Thee, saviour, thee, the nation's vows confess,
And, never satisfied with seeing, bless :
Swift unbespoken pomps thy steps proclaim,
And stammering babes are taught to lisp thy name :
How long wilt thou the general joy detain,
Starve and defraud the people of thy reign;
Content ingloriously to pass thy days,
Like one of Virtue's fools, that feed on praise;
Till thy fresh glories, which now shine so bright,
Grow stale, and tarnish with our daily sight;
Believe me, royal youth, thy fruit must be
Or gather'd ripe, or rot upon the tree:
Heaven has to all allotted, soon or late,
Some lucky revolution of their fate;

Whose motions, if we watch and guide with skill
(For human good depends on human will),
Our fortune rolls as from a smooth descent,
And from the first impression takes the bent;
But if unseiz'd, she glides away like wind,
And leaves repenting folly far behind.

Now, now she meets you with a glorious prize,
And spreads her locks before you as she flies!
Had thus old David, from whose loins you spring,
Not dared, when fortune call'd him to be king,
At Gath an exile he might still remain,
And heaven's anointing oil had been in vain.
Let his successful youth your hopes engage,
But shun th' example of declining age;
Behold him setting in his western skies,
The shadows lengthening as the vapours rise.
He is not now as when on Jordan's sand,
The joyful people throng'd to see him land,
Covering the beach, and blackening all the strand!

All human things are subject to decay;

And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.
This Flecknoel found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long;
In prose and verse was own'd, without dispute,
Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute.
This aged prince, now flourishing in peace,
And blest with issue of a large increase,
Worn out with bus'ness, did at length debate
To settle the succession of the state;

Richard Flecknoe, an Irish Roman Catholic priest, and a well-known hackneyed poetaster of the day.

And pond'ring which of all his sons was fit
To reign, and wage inmortal 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 dulness from his tender years:
Shadwell, alone, of all my sons, was he,
Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence;
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through, and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray;
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.
Besides, his goodly fabric fills the
eye,
And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty:
Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain,
And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.
Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee,
Thou last great prophet of Tautology!
Ev'n I, a dunce of more renown than they,
Was sent before but to prepare thy way;
And, coarsely clad in Norwich drugget, came
To teach the nations in thy greater name.
My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung,
When to King John of Portugal I sung,
Was but the prelude to that glorious day,
When thou on silver Thames didst cut thy way,
With well-tim'd oars, before the royal barge,
Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge;
And, big with hymn, commander of a host,
The like was ne'er in Epsom-blankets toss'd.
Methinks I see the new Arion sail,

The lute still trembling underneath thy nail.
At thy well-sharpen'd thumb, from shore to shore,
The trebles squeak for fear, the bases roar:
About thy boat the little fishes throng,
As at the morning toast that floats along.
Sometimes, as prince of thy harmonious band,
Thou wield'st thy papers in thy thrashing hand.
St Andre's feet? ne'er kept more equal time;
Not e'en the feet of thine own Psyche's rhyme :3
Though they in number as in sense excel;
So just, so like Tautology they fell,
That, pale with envy, Singleton4 forswore
The lute and sword, which he in triumph bore,
And vow'd he ne'er would act Villerius more.

Here stopp'd the good old sire, and wept for joy,
In silent raptures of the hopeful boy.
All arguments, but most his plays, persuade,
That for anointed dulness he was made.

Close to the walls which fair Augusta bind
(The fair Augusta, much to fears inclin'd)
An ancient fabric, raised t' inform the sight,
There stood of yore, and Barbican it hight,
A watch-tower once; but now, so fate ordains,
Of all the pile an empty name remains:
Near these a nursery erects its head,
Where queens are form'd, and future heroes
bred;

Where unfledg'd actors learn to laugh and cry,
Where infant punks their tender voices try,
And little Maximins the gods defy.
Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here,
Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear;
But gentle Simkin just reception finds
Amidst this monument of vanish'd minds;

Pure clinches the suburban muse affords,
And Panton waging harmless war with words.
Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well-known,
Ambitiously design'd his Shadwell's throne:
For ancient Dekker prophesied, long since,
That in this pile should reign a mighty prince,
Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense;
To whom true dulness should some Psyches owe;
But worlds of misers from his pen should flow;
Humorists and hypocrites it should produce;
Whole Raymond families, and tribes of Bruce.2
Now empress Fame had publish'd the renown
Of Shadwell's coronation through the town.
Rous'd by report of Fame, the nations meet,
From near Bun Hill, and distant Watling Street;
No Persian carpets spread th' imperial way,
But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay:
Bilk'd stationers for yeomen stood prepar'd,
And Herringman3 was captain of the guard.
The hoary prince in majesty appear'd,
High on a throne of his own labours rear'd.
At his right hand our young Ascanius sat,
Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state;
His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace,
And lambent dulness play'd around his face.
As Hannibal did to the altars come,
Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome,

So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain,
That he, till death, true dulness would maintain;
And, in his father's right, and realm's defence,
Ne'er to have peace with Wit, nor truce with Sense.
The king himself the sacred unction made,
As king by office, and as priest by trade.
In his sinister hand, instead of ball,

He placed a mighty mug of potent ale;
Love's Kingdom'4 to his right he did convey
At once his sceptre and his rule of sway;

Whose righteous lore the prince had practis'd young,
And from whose loins recorded Psyche sprung:
His temples last with poppies were o'erspread,
That, nodding, seem'd to consecrate his head.
Just at the point of time, if fame not lie,
On his left hand twelve rev'rend owls did fly.
So Romulus, 'tis sung, by Tiber's brook,
Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.
Th' admiring throng loud acclamations make,
And omens of his future empire take.
The fire then shook the honours of his head,
And from his brows damps of oblivion shed
Full on the filial dulness: long he stood,
Repelling from his breast the raging god ;
At length burst out in this prophetic mood:
"Heav'n bless my son, from Ireland let him reign,
To far Barbadoes on the western main;
Of his dominion may no end be known,
And greater than his father's be his throne;
Beyond Love's Kingdom let him stretch his pen !'
He paus'd; and all the people cried, Amen.
Then thus continued he: My son, advance
Still in new impudence, new ignorance.
Success let others teach; learn thou, from me,
Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry.
Let Virtuosos in five years be writ;
Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit.
Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage,
Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage;
Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit,
And, in their folly, show the writer's wit.
Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence,
And justify their author's want of sense.

Let 'em be all by thy own model made
Of dulness, and desire no foreign aid;
That they to future ages may be known,
Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own.
Nay, let thy men of wit, too, be the same,
All full of thee, and diff'ring but in name.
But let no alien Sedley interpose,

To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose.1
And, when false flowers of rhet'ric thou wouldst cull,
Trust nature, do not labour to be dull;

But write thy best, and top; and, in each line,
Sir Formal's oratory will be thine:

Sir Formal, though unsought, attends thy quill,
And does thy northern dedications fill.
Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame,
By arrogating Jonson's hostile name.
Let father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise,
And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.
Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no part:
What share have we in nature or in art?
Where did his wit on learning fix a brand,
And rail at arts he did not understand?
Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein,
Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain?
When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin,
As thou whole Etherege dost transfuse to thine?
But so transfus'd as oil and waters flow;
His always floats above, thine sinks below.
This is thy province, this thy wondrous way,
New humours to invent for each new play:
This is that boasted bias of thy mind,
By which one way to dulness 'tis inclin'd;
Which makes thy writings lean on one side still,
And, in all changes, that way bends thy will.
Nor let thy mountain-belly make pretence
Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense.
A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ;
But sure thou'rt but a kilderkin of wit.
Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep;
Thy tragic muse gives smiles; thy comic, sleep.
With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write,
Thy inoffensive satires never bite.

In thy felonious heart, though venom lies,
It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies.
Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame
In keen lambics, but mild Anagram.
Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command
Some peaceful province in Acrostic land.
There thou may'st wings display, and altars raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
Or, if thou wouldst thy diff'rent talents suit,
Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.'

He said: but his last words were scarcely heard;
For Bruce and Longvil had a trap prepar'd;
And down they sent the yet declaiming bard.
Sinking, he left his drugget robe behind,
Borne upwards by a subterranean wind.
The mantle fell to the young prophet's part,
With double portion of his father's art.

The Hind and Panther.

A milk-white hind, immortal and unchang'd,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang'd;
Without, unspotted; innocent, within;
She fear'd no danger, for she knew no sin :
Yet had she oft been chas'd with horns and hounds,
And Scythian shafts, and many winged wounds
Aim'd at her heart; was often fore'd to fly,
And doom'd to death, though fated not to die.

1 Sir Charles Sedley was understood to have assisted Shadwell in his play of Epsom Wells.'

Two of the characters in Shadwell's Virtuoso,' who play a trick on Sir Formal Trifle by means of a trap-door. The conclusion of Dryden's satire, as well as the general design of the poem, was closely copied by Pope in his Dunciad.