Brown does not wholly forget past transactions: "You began," says Crites to Bayes, "with a very indifferent religion, and have not mended the matter in your last choice. It was but reason that your muse, which appeared first in a tyrant's quarrel, should employ her last efforts to justify the usurpations of the hind." Next year the nation was summoned to celebrate the birth of the prince. Now was the time for Dryden to rouse his imagination, and strain his voice. Happy days were at hand, and he was willing to enjoy and diffuse the anticipated blessings. He published a poem, filled with predictions of greatness and prosperity; predictions of which it is not necessary to tell how they have been verified.
A few months passed after these joyful notes, and every blossom of popish hope was blasted for ever by the revolution. A papist now could be no longer laureate. The revenue, which he had enjoyed with so much pride and praise, was transferred to Shadwell, an old enemy, whom he had formerly stigmatised by the name of Og. Dryden could not decently complain that he was deposed; but seemed very angry that Shadwell succeeded him, and has, therefore, celebrated the intruder's inauguration in a poem exquisitely satirical, called Mac Flecknoe[114]; of which the Dunciad, as Pope himself declares, is an imitation, though more extended in its plan, and more diversified in its incidents.
It is related by Prior, that lord Dorset, when, as chamberlain, he was constrained to eject Dryden from his office, gave him, from his own purse, an allowance equal to the salary. This is no romantick or incredible act of generosity; a hundred a year is often enough given to claims less cogent, by men less famed for liberality. Yet Dryden always represented himself as suffering under a publick infliction; and once particularly demands respect for the patience with which he endured the loss of his little fortune. His patron might, indeed, enjoin him to suppress his bounty; but, if he suffered nothing, he should not have complained.
During the short reign of king James, he had written nothing for the stage[115], being, in his opinion, more profitably employed in controversy and flattery. Of praise he might, perhaps, have been less lavish without inconvenience, for James was never said to have much regard for poetry: he was to be flattered only by adopting his religion.
Times were now changed: Dryden was no longer the court-poet, and was to look back for support to his former trade; and having waited about two years, either considering himself as discountenanced by the publick, perhaps expecting a second revolution, he produced Don Sebastian in 1690; and in the next four years four dramas more.
In 1693 appeared a new version of Juvenal and Persius. Of Juvenal, he translated the first, third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires; and of Persius, the whole work. On this occasion, he introduced his two sons to the publick, as nurslings of the muses. The fourteenth of Juvenal was the work of John, and the seventh of Charles Dryden. He prefixed a very ample preface, in the form of a dedication to lord Dorset; and there gives an account of the design which he had once formed to write an epick poem on the actions either of Arthur or the Black Prince. He considered the epick as necessarily including some kind of supernatural agency, and had imagined a new kind of contest between the guardian angels of kingdoms, of whom he conceived that each might be represented zealous for his charge, without any intended opposition to the purposes of the supreme being, of which all created minds must in part be ignorant.
This is the most reasonable scheme of celestial interposition that ever was formed. The surprises and terrours of enchantments, which have succeeded to the intrigues and oppositions of pagan deities, afford very striking scenes, and open a vast extent to the imagination; but, as Boileau observes, (and Boileau will be seldom found mistaken,) with this incurable defect, that, in a contest between heaven and hell, we know at the beginning which is to prevail; for this reason we follow Rinaldo to the enchanted wood with more curiosity than terrour.
In the scheme of Dryden there is one great difficulty, which yet he would, perhaps, have had address enough to surmount. In a war, justice can be but on one side; and, to entitle the hero to the protection of angels, he must fight in the defence of indubitable right. Yet some of the celestial beings, thus opposed to each other, must have been represented as defending guilt.
That this poem was never written, is reasonably to be lamented. It would, doubtless, have improved our numbers, and enlarged our language; and might, perhaps, have contributed, by pleasing instruction, to rectify our opinions, and purify our manners.
What he required as the indispensable condition of such an undertaking, a publick stipend, was not likely, in those times, to be obtained. Riches were not become familiar to us; nor had the nation yet learned to be liberal.