career of Dryden began and closed with bad suc

cess.

This Section cannot be more properly concluded than with the list which Mr Malone has drawn out of Dryden's plays, with the respective dates of their being acted and published; which is a correction and enlargement of that subjoined by the author himself to the opera of "Prince Arthur." Henceforward we are to consider Dryden as unconnected with the stage.

5. SIR MARTIN MARALL. C.

Acted by

Hall.

in

8. TYRANNIC LOVE, OR THE ROYAL MARTYR. T.... K. S.

12. THE ASSIGNATION, OR LOVE IN A NUNNERY. C..K. S.

Mar. 18, 1672-3. 1673.

SECTION VII.

State of Dryden's Connections in Society after the Revolu tion-Juvenal and Persius—Smaller Pieces −1 leanora -Third Miscellany-Virgil-Ode to St Cecilia-Dispute with Milbourne-With Blackmore-Fables-The Author's Death and Funeral-His private CharacterNotices of his Family.

THE evil consequences of the Revolution upon Dryden's character and fortunes, began to abate sensibly within a year or two after that event. It is well known, that King William's popularity was as short-lived as it had been universal. All parties gradually drew off from the king, under their ancient standards. The clergy returned to their maxims of hereditary right, the Tories to their attachment to the house of Stuart, the Whigs to their jealousy of the royal authority. Dryden, we have already observed, so lately left in a small and detested party, was now associated among multitudes, who, from whatever contradictory motives, were joined in opposition to the government. A reconciliation took place betwixt him and some of his kinsmen; particularly with John

Driden of Chesterton, his first cousin; with whom, from about this period till his death, he lived upon terms of uninterrupted friendship. The influence of Clarendon and Rochester, the Queen's uncles, were, we have seen, often exerted in the poet's favour; and through them, he became connected with the powerful families with which they were allied. Dorset, by whom he had been deprived of his office, seems to have softened this harsh, though indispensible, exertion of authority, by a liberal present; and to his bounty Dryden had frequently recourse in cases of emergency. Indeed, upon one occasion it is said to have been

* Such, I understand, is the general purport of some letters of Dryden's, in possession of the Dorset family, which contain certain particulars rendering them unfit for publication. Our author himself commemorates Dorset's generosity in the Essay on Satire, in the following affecting passage: "Though I must ever acknowledge to the honour of your lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that since this Revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence which I had from two kings, whom I had served more faithfully than profitable to myselfthen your lordship was pleased, out of no other motive but your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which at that time, when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief. That favour, my lord, is of itself sufficient to bind any grateful man to a perpetual acknowledgment, and to all the future service which one of my mean condition can be ever able to perform. May the Almighty God