"Heav'n in his portrait showed a workman's hand,
And drew it perfect, yet without a shade."
His very next poem, and that of some length, was "Astræa Redux; a Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of his Sacred Majesty Charles II.," immediately followed by "A Panegyric on his Coronation," in which he heaps still more glowing praise on the young royal libertine, and flings dust as liberally at his late idol:—
"While our cross stars denied us Charles's bed,
Whom our first flames and virgin love did wed,
For his long absence Church and State did groan,
Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne;
Experienced age in deep despair was lost,
To see the rebel thrive, the loyal crossed."
The accomplished sycophant received as his reward the office of Poet Laureate, with three hundred pounds a year; and he paid officiously more than his peppercorn of praise in the "Annus Mirabilis, or Year of Wonders, 1666," in which the sea fights with the Dutch and the Fire of London were commemorated in elegiac stanzas, and the most fulsome and almost impious adulation was poured in showers on both the king and his heir apparent, the Duke of York—not forgetting an especial poetical address to the duchess on her husband's victories over the Hollanders. No doubt Dryden made himself sure that his Laureate salary was safe, but he was mistaken. James, though "the best who ever bore the name," could forget benefits, and even flatteries; but he never forgot an ill turn, or anything that endangered his great design of restoring Popery; and Dryden, to please the Church and the late king, whom he did not know to be at heart a Papist, had written his "Religio Laici," in which he had pulled the Catholic Church to pieces, and lauded superlatively the Anglican hierarchy. James first took away his butt of sack, and then his salary; whereupon Dryden directly turned Catholic, and wrote "The Hind and the Panther," to beslaver Popery, kick down Protestantism, and reconcile the public to James's invidious scheme of abolishing the Test Act for his own purposes. This succeeded, and Dryden continued to receive his pay, and do his dirty work during James's reign. It was expected that he would wheel round again on William and Mary's success; but he lived and died Catholic.