FOOTNOTES:
[1] It was intimated by Dryden's enemies, that he chose this religious and grave subject with a view to smooth the way to his taking orders, and obtaining church preferment—See a quotation from the Religio Laici, by J. R. subjoined to these introductory remarks. But our author, in the preface to the "Fables," declares, that going into the church was never in his thoughts.
[2] The reader will find this opinion more fully expressed in the observations on Dryden's conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, given in the Life.
Such an omniscient church we wish indeed;
'Twere worth both Testaments, cast in the creed.
[4] Johnson's Life of Dryden.
[5] Malone, Vol. III. p. 310.
[6] "The Revolter, a Tragi-Comedy, acted between the Hind and Panther and Religio Laici. London. 1687."
[7] As will appear from the following extracts:—"While he sat thus in his poetical throne, or rather acting upon the stage of fable and pagan mythology, and transfiguring into beasts almost all mankind, but Turks and infidels, that were out of his road, he never considered what a monster he was himself; a second Gorgon with three heads, for each of which he had a particular employment; with the one, to fawn upon the most infamous usurpers; with the other, at one time to lick the beneficent hands of his Protestant mother, and, bye and bye, to court the charity of his Catholic mamma; while, with the third, he barked and snarled, not only at his first deserted female parent, but also at all other differing sentiments and opinions, which his sovereign had so graciously and generously indulged."