The Muses’ sons all bowed and said Amen.
It is perhaps less commonly known that Dryden also owed, in another way, much to Dorset. The account is thus given by Macaulay:
Dorset became Lord Chamberlain, and employed his influence and patronage annexed to his functions, as he had long employed his private means, in encouraging genius and alleviating misfortune. One of the first acts which he was under the necessity of performing must have been painful to a man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish for whatever was excellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no longer remain Poet Laureate. The public would not have borne to see any papist among the servants of their Majesties; and Dryden was not only a papist, but an apostate. He had, moreover, aggravated the guilt of his apostacy by calumniating and ridiculing the Church which he had deserted. He had, it was facetiously said, treated her as the pagan persecutors of old treated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast, and then baited her for the public amusement. He was removed; but he received from the private bounty of the magnificent Chamberlain a pension equal to the salary which had been withdrawn.
Dryden, apparently, despite this generosity, continued to lament his ill-fortune, and his contemporary Blackmore, in a poem called Prince Arthur, satirises him in the character of Laurus for his assiduity at Dorset’s doors—Dorset being the Sakil of the poem, Sackville in transparent disguise:
The poets’ nation did obsequious wait
For the kind dole divided at his gate.
Laurus among the meagre crowd appeared,
An old, revolted, unbelieving bard,
Who thronged, and shoved, and pressed, and would be heard.
Sakil’s high roof, the Muses’ palace, rung