tariff had gone up from two guineas to three.

"Not out

of any disrespect to you, young man, but the players have had my goods too cheap." The figures two and three are replaced in some versions by four and six, in others by five and ten. This story gives the date of 1682, and it is remarkable that until 1690, when Dryden once more came on the stage himself with a new play, his prologues and epilogues are very few. Possibly the increased price was prohibitive, but it is more likely that the political struggles of the time put all but political verse out of fashion. These compositions had always been famous, or rather infamous, for their licence of language, and the political excesses of some of Dryden's few utterances of the kind at this time are not creditable to his memory. Hallam's phrase of "virulent ribaldry" is absurd as applied to Absalom and Achitophel, or to the Medal. It is only too well in place as applied to the stuff put in the mouth of the actress who spoke the epilogue to the Duke of Guise. The truth is that if they be taken as a whole these prologues and epilogues could be better spared by lovers of Dryden from his works than any other section thereof; and it is particularly to be regretted that Mr. Christie, in his excellent Globe edition of the poems, has admitted them, while excluding the always melodious, and sometimes exquisitely poetical songs from the plays, which certainly do not exceed the prologues in licence of language, while their literary merit is incomparably greater.

CHAPTER VI.

LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS.

Ir might have seemed, at first sight, that the Revolution would be a fatal blow to Dryden.. Being unwilling to take the oaths to the new Government, he lost at once the places and the pensions which, irregularly as they had been paid, had made up, since he ceased to write constantly for the stage, by far the greater part of his income. He was nearly sixty years old, his private fortune was, if not altogether insignificant, quite insufficient for his wants, and he had three sons to maintain and set out in the world. But he faced the ruin of his fortunes, and what must have been bitterer to him, the promotion of his enemies into his own place, with the steady courage and practical spirit of resource which were among his most creditable characteristics. Not all his friends deserted him, and from Dorset in particular he received great and apparently constant assistance. The story that this generous patron actually compensated Dryden by an annuity equal in value to his former appointments seems to rest on insufficient foundation. The story that when Dryden and Tom Brown dined with Dorset the one found a hundred-pound note and the other a fifty-pound note under his cover, does not do much credit to Dorset's powers of literary arithmetic,

I

nor, even allowing for the simpler manners of the time, to his delicacy of feeling. But Dryden's own words are explicit on the point of his having received assistance from this old friend, and it is said that in certain letters preserved at Knole, and not yet given to the world, there are still more definite acknowledgments. Dryden, however, was never disposed to depend on patrons, even though, like Corneille, he did not think it necessary to refuse their gifts when they presented themselves. Theatrical gains had, it has been said, decreased, unless dramatists took pains to increase them by dedication or by the growing practice of placing subscription copies among wealthy friends. Still, a hundred pounds could be depended upon from a good third night and from the bookseller's fee for the book, and a hundred pounds was a matter of considerable importance to Dryden just now. For full seven years he had all but abandoned dramatic composition. His contributions to Lee's Duke of Guise, which probably brought him no money, and certainly brought him a troublesome controversy, and the opera of Albion and Albanius had been his only attempts on the stage since the Spanish Friar. The Duke of Guise, though Dryden's part in it is of no little merit, hardly needs notice here, and Albion and Albanius was a failure. It was rather a masque than an opera, and depended, though there is some good verse in it, rather on elaborate and spiteful gibbeting of the enemies of the court than on poetical or dramatic merits. But Dryden's dramatic reputation was by no means impaired. The first play ordered to be performed by Queen Mary was the Spanish Friar, and this Protestant drama proved a most unfortunate one for her Majesty; for the audience at that time were extraordinarily quick to seize any kind of political allusion,

and, as it happened, there were in the Spanish Friar many allusions of an accidental but unmistakable kind to ungrateful children, banished monarchs, and so forth. The eyes of the whole audience were fixed on Mary, and she probably repented of her choice. But Dryden did not long depend on revivals of his old plays. The second year of the new régime saw the production of Don Sebastian, a tragi-comedy, one scene of which, that between Sebastian and Dorax, is famous in literature, and which as a whole is often ranked above all Dryden's other dramas, though for my own part I prefer All for Love. The play, though at first received with a certain lukewarmness, which may have been due to various causes, soon became very popular. It was dedicated to Lord Leicester, Algernon Sidney's eldest brother, a very old man, who was probably almost alone among his contemporaries (with the exception of Dryden himself) in being an ardent admirer of Chaucer. In the preface to the Fables the poet tells us that he had postponed his translation of the elder bard out of deference to Lord Leicester's strongly expressed opinion that the text should be left. alone. In the same year was produced a play less original, but perhaps almost better, and certainly more popular. This was Amphitryon, which some critics have treated most mistakenly as a mere translation of Molière. The truth is that the three plays of Plautus, Molière, and Dryden are remarkable examples of the power which great writers have of treading in each other's steps without servile imitation. In a certain dry humour Dryden's play is inferior to Plautus, but, as compared with Molière, it has two features which are decided improvements —the introduction of the character of Judge Gripus and the separation of the part of the Soubrette into two. As Don

Sebastian had been dedicated to Lord Leicester, an old Cromwellian, so Amphitryon was dedicated to Sir William Leveson Gower, a prominent Williamite. Neither dedication contains the least truckling to the powers that were, but Dryden seems to have taken a pleasure in showing that men of both parties were sensible of his merit and of the hardship of his position. Besides these two plays an alteration of The Prophetess was produced in 1690, in which Dryden is said to have assisted Betterton. In 1691 appeared King Arthur, a masque-opera on the plan of Albion and Albanius. Unlike the latter, it has no political meaning; indeed, Dryden confesses to having made considerable alterations in it, in order to make it non-political. The former piece had been set by a Frenchman, Grabut, and the music had been little thought of. Purcell undertook the music for King Arthur with much better success. Allowing for a certain absurdity which always besets the musical drama, and which is particularly apparent in that of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, King Arthur is a very good piece; the character of Emmeline is attractive, the supernatural part is managed with a skill which would have been almost proof against the wits of the Rehearsal, and many of the lyrics are excellent. Dryden was less fortunate with his two remaining dramas. In writing the first he showed himself, for so old a craftsman and courtier, very unskilful in the choice of a subject. Cleomenes, the banished King of Sparta, could not but awaken the susceptibilities of zealous revolution censors. After some difficulties, in which Lawrence Hyde once more did Dryden a good turn, the piece was licensed, but it was not very successful. It contains some fine passages, but the most remarkable thing about it is that there is a considerable relapse into rhyme, which Dryden