In Dumbleton the third[41], each doughty knight,
In spite of nature, was resolved to write.
The first in penury of thought surpassed,
The next in rambling cant; in both the last.
The force of dulness could no further go,
To make the third she joined the former two.
By Dr. James Drake, then an Undergrad of St. John’s College, Cambridge, printed in Anonymiana, 1809.
Biographies of John Dryden are so numerous and accessible that it is unnecessary here to discuss the weak points of his character. To use the mildest language possible, he was a time-server, a turncoat, and a court sycophant. He had written in praise of Oliver Cromwell, he wrote equally laudatory verses on Charles II., he had strongly defended the Protestant religion, yet within a twelvemonth of the accession of the Catholic James II. the following entry appeared in Evelyn’s Diary, January 19, 1686: “Dryden, the famous play writer, and his two sons, and Mrs. Nelly (Miss to the late King) were said to go to mass; such proselytes were no great loss to the Church.” His conversion brought him Court patronage, and in April 1687 he published a defence of his new religion in verse, entitled “The Hind and the Panther.” This was a long allegorical poem in which the Hind represented the Catholic Church, and the Panther the Protestant Church of England. It gave rise to much controversy, and many burlesques were written upon it, ridiculing the work, and the character of its author. The most famous of these parodies was one of exquisite humour, the joint production of Charles Montague (the future Earl of Halifax) and Matthew Prior. This was called “The Hind and the Panther Transversed to the story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse.” The principal characters in the famous farce The Rehearsal, Bayes, Smith, and Johnson, were revived in this witty production, which is unfortunately much too long to reprint. Dryden’s poem commences:—
A milk white Hind, immortal and unchanged,