Great Plague, and Dryden and his wife fled to Charlton. While there, Dryden was busy with a poem called Annus Mirabilis, or The Year of Wonders. It was indeed a year of marvels-first the Plague, then the Great Fire, then a sea-fight with the Dutch. At Charlton, Dryden also discussed with his friend Sir Robert Howard whether blank verse or rhyme was better suited for plays, and other matters connected with the French style of drama. Dryden put the discussions into an Essay on Dramatic Poesie. 4. When the theatres were opened again, Dryden continued to write heroic plays. The Duke of Buckingham wrote a very funny play mocking that kind of drama, and showing how absurd it was. Yet it was still the fashion, and Dryden's heroic plays were very popular, and brought him in plenty of money; while Milton's Samson Agonistes, a real heroic play, attracted scarcely any notice. 5. After the Duke of Buckingham's mockery of the heroic play, Dryden wrote only one more. Indeed, the taste for such works began to die out. Dryden must always have felt that he was not doing so good work as he might have done, but was only working for money and to please a passing fashion. For a time he took to political writing. His great political work was a kind of allegory, a poem called Absalom and Achitophel. It was about the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, and all the characters were people of the time. Absalom was the Duke of Monmouth, the ungrateful son turning against his father. By David, Charles the Second was meant; Achitophel, the crafty counsellor, was the Earl of Shaftesbury, who sided with Monmouth. It was published without Dryden's name, and was very widely read. Perhaps Dryden hoped that his poem would influence the sentence against Shaftesbury, who was just then accused of high treason. But Shaftesbury was set free, and a medal was struck in honour of the event. This gave Dryden a title for his new satire, The Medal. 6. For a time after that Dryden was busy mocking a rather foolish poet called Shadwell, who had answered the satire called The Medal; but fortunately he did not spend much time on so worthless an object. Dryden, who had hitherto been a Puritan in religion, now went over to the Roman Catholic Church, and wrote several religious poems. One, praising the Roman Catholic Church, is called The Hind and Panther. The spotless milk-white hind represents the Romish Church; the panther, "The noblest next the hind, And fairest creature of the spotted kind," is the Church of England; the bear is the Independent religion; the wolf, the Presbyterian; and so on. The lion trying to protect the hind is James the Second, who, as you know, was a Roman Catholic, and tried to force his religion on the English people. The animals are made to walk and talk together, discussing religion. 7. When William and Mary came to the English throne, Dryden lost his office as poet-laureate, and his enemy Shadwell got the post. It must have been hard for the poet to find himself neglected and no longer needed; but he still worked bravely on at translations, or play-writing, or whatever he could get to do. His best-known poem, quite a short one, was written near the end of his life. It is the Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, generally called Alexander's Feast. St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music. People say she invented the organ, and played it so beautifully that an angel used to come down from heaven to listen to it. There was a musical society in England which gave a festival on St. Cecilia's day, and it was this society that asked Dryden to write the ode. He says it was troublesome to him to do; but he did it well, and was glad to hear afterwards that people thought it the best of all his poems. In this fine work he shows the power of music over the great conqueror Alexander. 8. Dryden, though now quite an old man, had still to write very busily, because of the illness of his eldest son, which added to his expenses. Yet the unselfish father wrote: "If it please God that I die of overstudy, I cannot spend my life better than in preserving his." So Dryden made a bargain with a publisher to write ten thousand verses. These verses were called Fables in Verse. Some were translated from Latin and Italian, others were stories from Chaucer. At the beginning of the book Dryden said how sorry he now was for any evil things he had put into his early plays, and hoped his enemy who attacked him about it would accept his repentance. 9. Dryden's favourite resort for a long time had been a place called Will's Coffee-house. Coffee-houses in those days were what clubs are now-places where gentlemen used to meet to read the papers and discuss the news. Will's was where young poets and authors especially used to gather. There Dryden went every afternoon, and he always found his chair set ready in the warmest corner in winter, and by the balcony in summer. The younger writers gathered around his chair, eager to hear him talk; while the old poet was always interested in the new writers, ever ready to welcome and help them. 10. The old man's last work was done for his invalid son's sake. He wrote some verses to be said before and after a mask which was to be performed, and his son was to have the profit of the third night. Three weeks after that the poet died, on May-day 1700. CHAPTER XVII. TWO SCHOLARS OF THE RESTORATION PERIOD. 1. Just about the time of Dryden, there was a warm discussion in England over some very important questions-such questions as who gave kings and rulers their authority over the people and the laws of a country. This had been a hot question since the days of Charles the First; and the Civil War and Commonwealth had not settled it. Other questions were as to whether the State should decide the customs of society. Still another was why God, who is a wise and good ruler, should allow evil and misery to exist in the world. Then, too, since Bacon had proposed that we should learn the things of nature only by observing and experimenting, people began to hold that Plato was wrong in saying that we brought certain knowledge and ideas of good and the beautiful into the world with us, and that we had no knowledge but what we gained by experience. 2. One of the wisest men of the time wrote a good deal about these matters. His name was JOHN LOCKE. He was born ten years before the Civil War broke out, just when Charles the First was provoking his subjects by breaking the laws of the country, which he should have obeyed as well as they. So even as a little boy Locke would hear such things talked about as the trial of Hampden1 for refusing to pay shipmoney; as the departure of the Puritans for America in the Mayflower; as the refusal of the Scottish people to use the English Prayer-book. Then the little boy would ask why his father left home to go and fight for Parliament against the king, so that he would begin early to think about the rights of the people and the rights of kings. When he left Westminster School and went to Oxford, he read Bacon's works, and began to try Bacon's new plan of getting knowledge by observation and experiment in the natural sciences, which he studied in order to become a physician. 3. Locke was not a physician for very long, as one of his patients (a nobleman, who afterwards became Earl of Shaftesbury) advised him to give up physic and take to politics. So, although he was always fond of natural science, and became a member of the Royal Society,2 Locke gave up his practice as a doctor and went to live with his friend and take charge of the education of Lord Ashley's only son. When Lord Shaftesbury was banished from England for proposing that James, Duke of York, should not be made king, Locke went with his friend and patron to Holland, and remained there even after Lord Shaftesbury died, until William the Third came to the throne, 1 Hampden, John, a famous English | the promotion of mathematical and phypatriot. Born 1594; died 1643. 'Ship- sical science. money" was a tax levied by the king for the alleged maintenance of his navy. 2 Royal Society, founded in 1660, for 3 Lord Ashley. He became Earl of Shaftesbury in 1672. |