Dryden's Change of Religion. 141 reputation derived, until quite recently, in the main from the composition of love-plays, should appear before his public of pleasure-seekers with a serious argument in verse on the credibility of the Christian religion and the merits of the Anglican form of doctrine and church government, would nowadays be something more than a nine days' wonder. In Dryden's time it was somewhat less surprising. The spirit of theological controversy was bred in the bone of the seventeenth century." "Religio Laici" is a fine specimen of Dryden's talent for reasoning in verse; but he was soon to show that the arguments in it as to the superiority of the Church of England over other ecclesiastical institutions had not convinced himself. In 1685 Charles II. died, and James II. ascended the throne. Every one knows how sincere a Catholic the new sovereign was, and how assiduously he strove that all around him should conform to his own faith. In 1686 Dryden joined the Church of Rome. It was so obviously Dryden's interest, both from pecuniary and from other points of view, to become a Catholic at this time, that the sincerity of his conversion has naturally been much discussed. Some critics have thought they discovered in the "Religio Laici," where he says "Such an omniscient Church we wish indeed, 'Twere worth both Testaments cast in the Creed," an indication of dissatisfaction with the Church of England; but this is very doubtful. The true explanation of Dryden's sudden change of religion seems to be that, prompted at first by self-interest to favour the Church of Rome, he at length became really attached to it. With characteristic readiness he now set himself to defend Catholicism. The "Hind and the Panther," in which he defends his newly adopted faith so well that Hallam declares that no candid mind could doubt the sincerity of one who could argue so powerfully and subtly in its favour, appeared in 1687. It is an allegory; "the milkwhite hind, unspotted and unchanged," representing the Church of Rome; "the panther, sure the noblest, next the hind, and fairest creature of the spotted kind," the Church of England; a bear, the Independents; a boar, the Baptists, and so on. When the Revolution came, in 1688, Dryden had an opportunity of proving the sincerity of his convictions. Had he apostatised, there is little doubt that he might have retained his offices of historiographer-royal and poet laureate; but, to the credit of his fair fame, he remained constant to the faith he had adopted. His prospects were now gloomy enough, and he was obliged to labour hard to earn a living by his pen. In 1697 he published his translation of Virgil, the result of three years' toil. Previous to its publication he had translated Persius and part of Juvenal, as well as other scattered pieces, but these efforts were thrown into the shade by his Virgil, which, though freely translated and very little imbued. with the spirit of the original, is nevertheless a noble achieveThe chief works of the remaining years of Dryden's life are the well-known ode commonly called "Alexander's Feast" and his "Fables," stories paraphrased from Chaucer and Boccaccio, interesting not only on account of their intrinsic merits, which are in many respects great, but also as showing the extraordinary versatility of Dryden's genius, which enabled him, when an old man of sixty-eight, to win laurels in a new field of literature. They were published in 1699, a few months before his death, which occurred in April 1700. The splendid literary services which he had rendered to his country were recognised by his being buried in Westminster Abbey, where he was laid in Poet's Corner, beside Chaucer and Cowley. "We are enabled, from the various paintings and engravings of Dryden, as well as from the less flattering delineations of the satirists of his time, to form a tolerable idea of his face and person. In youth he appears to have been handsome and of a pleasing countenance; when his age was more advanced, he was corpulent and florid, which procured him the nickname attached to him by Rochester ['Poet Squab'] In his latter days, distress and disappointment probably chilled the fire of his eye, and the advance of age destroyed the animation of his countenance. Still, however, his portraits Dryden's Characteristics. · 143 bespeak the look and features of genius; especially that in which he is drawn with his waving grey hairs."1 During his lifetime and afterwards, Dryden's moral character was fiercely assailed by a crowd of opponents, including Bishop Burnet, who went so far as to describe him as "a monster of impurity of all sorts." Very little credence, however, is to be placed in such statements; and there is every reason to believe that Dryden's life compared very favourably with that of most of his literary contemporaries. Of his habits not much has been related. He was fond of snuff, in which he indulged largely. Fishing was the only sport which he practised, and in it he attained considerable proficiency. After spending the morning in study, he would adjourn to Will's Coffee-house, where he occupied the same undisputed pre-eminence which Addison afterwards held at Button's, and where his dicta as to the literary matters of the day were eagerly listened to and carefully treasured up. In his disposition he was kind and generous, "ready and gentle," says Congreve, "in his correction of the errors of any writer who thought fit to consult him, and full as ready and patient to admit of the reprehension of others in respect of his own oversights and mistakes." Dryden was the first poet and the first prose writer of his time. There is no other English author of whom this could be said, but it is strictly and literally true of him. As a poet, indeed, he stood so far above his contemporaries that there is none fit to be mentioned in the same breath with him. Satire was his peculiar province, but he also won distinction in other fields. His didactic poems are among the best of their kind, and his odes, especially the one "To the Memory of Miss Anne Killegrew" (1686), which Johnson called the noblest in the language, as perhaps it was in his time, and "Alexander's Feast," are fine pieces of concerted music. There was in Dryden's nature a certain coarseness of moral fibre, very disagreeably apparent in his plays, which occasionally detracts from the value of his poems; but this is atoned 1 Scott. for by his masculine strength, his width of range, and his rich command of expression. As a prose writer, his works of most abiding value are the "Essay on Dramatic Poesy," already mentioned, and the prefaces which he almost invariably added to his publications. "Read all the prefaces of Dryden, For these the critics much confide in, These doggerel lines of Swift show the esteem in which the critical remarks on his art with which Dryden was wont to enrich his poems were held by his contemporaries. Occasionally they are found embedded in the very fulsome dedications with which, after the fashion of his age, he addressed his patrons, occasionally in explanatory or apologetic prefaces. Dryden's criticisms are often inconsistent; he wrote hastily, and was apt to put down whatever occurred to him at the moment, without reflecting that he had elsewhere expressed different opinions; but they are generally excellent, and his admiration of Shakespeare and Milton at a time when their praise was not, as now, in every one's mouth, shows his good taste and discernment. His style is clear, easy, and flexible; rather unmethodical, but quite free from the involutions and long-windedness which had almost invariably marked the prose of the preceding generations. "At no time that I can think of," says Mr. Saintsbury, "was there any Englishman who, for a considerable period, was so far in advance of his contemporaries in almost every branch of literary work as Dryden was during the last twenty years of the seventeenth century. . . But his representative character in relation to the men of his time was almost more remarkable than his intellectual and artistic superiority to them. Other great men of letters, with perhaps the single exception of Voltaire, have usually, when they represented their time at all, represented but a small part of it. With Dryden this was not the case. Not only did the immense majority of men of letters in his later days directly The Dramatists of the Restoration. 145 imitate him, but both then and earlier most literary Englishmen, even when they did not imitate him, worked on the same lines and pursued the same objects. The eighteen volumes of his works contain a faithful representation of the whole literary movement in England for the best part of half a century; and what is more, they contain the germs and indicate the direction of almost the whole literary movement for nearly a century to come." Bearing in mind these remarks as to Dryden's representative character, the reader will readily infer, from what has been said as to Dryden's comedies, the leading features of the "dramatists of the Restoration," as they are somewhat loosely styled. Of these, Wycherley, Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh were the chief, and Congreve the greatest. Charles Lamb, in his amusing and paradoxical essay "On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," mentions a characteristic of Congreve's plays which applies also to the plays of all the other members of the group. "Judged morally, every character in these plays [he is speaking of the Restoration comedy generally the few exceptions are only mistakes-is alike essentially vain and worthless. The great art of Congreve is especially shown in this, that he has entirely excluded from his scenes some little generosities on the part of Angelica perhaps excepted-not only anything like a faultless character, but any pretensions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did this designedly or instinctively, the effect is as happy as the design (if design) was bold. I used to wonder at the strange power which his Way of the World,' in particular, possesses of interesting you all along in the pursuit of characters for whom you absolutely care nothing-for you neither hate nor love his personages—and I think it is owing to this very indifference for any that you endure the whole. He has spread a privation of moral light, I will call it, rather than by the ugly name of palpable darkness, over his creations; and his shadows flit before you without distinction or prefer. ence. Had he introduced a good character, a single gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the judgment to actual life and |