exiles, French influence upon English literature, especially upon the English drama, was strengthened. To their notions of refinement the license of the older dramatists seemed uncouth. "I have seen Hamlet," wrote Evelyn, "but now these old plays begin to disgust this refined century, since their majesties have been so long abroad."

The Heroic Couplet.-The most striking way in which English poetry reflected the spirit of the new era, was in its substitution of a single form for the lawless variety of the age which had gone before. This form, called the heroic couplet, consisted of two pentameter lines connected by rhyme. It had been used in earlier periods, for example by Chaucer; but in his hands the couplet had not been necessarily a unit, the thought having often been drawn out into the succeeding pair of verses, with no pause at the rhyming word. The literary ideals of the Restoration may be illustrated by the comparison of a few lines from the prologue to the Canterbury Tales,

"A knight ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To ryden out, he loved chivalrye,

Trouthe and honour, fredom, and curteisy,

with these from the chief poet of the Restoration, John Dryden:

"A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang'd;

Without unspotted, innocent within,

She fear'd no danger for she knew no sin."

In the first, it is clear, the couplet exerts little control over the thought, which runs on into the second pair of verses; in the second the thought is limited and regulated by the acceptance of a precise and narrow form; and this limitation and regulation were the chief qualities of Restoration poetry.

II. JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

Dryden's Early Life.-Dryden was born in 1631 at Aldwinkle, in Northamptonshire, his parents being of the upper middle class, and of Puritan sympathies. He was sent to Westminster School, and thence, in 1650, to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained seven years. During this time his father died, leaving him a small property. His first important verse was an elegy on the death of Cromwell, written in 1658. Two years later, however, Dryden, with the mass of Englishmen, had become an ardent royalist; and he welcomed the return of Charles, in a poem in couplets called "Astræa Redux" ("The Return of the Goddess of Justice"). In 1663 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, a woman of higher rank than his own. It may have been the desirability of increasing his income that, just before this marriage, drove Dryden to write his first comedy, The Wild Gallant. It certainly was his accumulating financial necessities that kept him writing for the stage constantly down to 1681. During this period his only poem of importance was "Annus Mirabilis" (1667), ("The Wonderful Year"), a chronicle of events of the preceding year, which had been distinguished by several victories at sea over the Dutch, and by the great London fire.

Dryden's Satires. In 1681 Dryden began the succession of political poems which have generally been accounted his best works. The times were troubled. The court and the country were divided between the partisans of the king's brother, who, though a Papist, was recognized as the heir to the throne, and those of the king's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, whom certain persons zealous for the Protestant faith were disposed to set up as a rival candidate. The leader of the latter party was the Earl of Shaftesbury. In the Bible story of the revolt of Absalom against King David, Dryden found an apt parallel to existing circumstances in England; and his satire Absalom and Achitophel exposed the relations of Monmouth, the prince, and Shaftesbury, the evil counsellor, with merciless humor. The poem became im

mensely popular. The next year Dryden followed it with a second blow at Shaftesbury in The Medal. Then he turned aside in MacFlecknoe to attack a rival poet, Shadwell, who had been employed by the Whigs to reply to The Medal. In this year, also, Dryden extended his range into the field of religious controversy, with Religio Laici ("The Religion of a Layman"), a very temperate statement of a layman's faith in the Church of England. Three years after this confession of faith Dryden became a Roman Catholic, and in 1687 he published a political defence of the Church of Rome called The Hind and the Panther.

Dryden's Later Life. This political and religious writing brought Dryden distinction and a modest income. In 1670 he was made Historiographer Royal and Poet Laureate, with a salary of two hundred pounds a year. Later he received a pension of a hundred pounds a year, and in 1683 he was made Collector of the Port of London. All these honors and emoluments he lost in consequence of the Revolution of 1688. He was obliged to betake himself again to the stage as the most lucrative department of literature, to accept aid from private patrons in place of the royal bounty, to contract with Tonson, the book-seller, to produce and deliver ten thousand lines of verse for three hundred guineas, and to undertake various jobs of translation for the same employer. In short, in his old age Dryden was compelled to attempt almost all the methods by which a literary man could live. Nevertheless, his production in these years added much to his fame. Whatever may be thought of his poetical qualities, at least his literary energy lasted well. His work of this time includes his translation of Virgil, and his renderings into modern English verse of stories from Chaucer, among which the Palamon and Arcite is best known. These twice-told tales were published in 1700, in a volume of Fables, which contained also his best lyrical poem, "Alexander's Feast."

Dryden as a Literary Dictator.-During these last years Dryden lived constantly in London. The coffee-house of that day was the chief place of resort for literary men, much as the tavern had been in Elizabeth's time. At Will's or Button's the wits gathered for exchange of courtesies or for

combat; there their admirers or patrons met them; and thence went forth the criticism that made or marred the fortunes of rising men. Dryden frequented Will's, where he was as much a monarch as Ben Jonson had been at the Mermaid, or as, a century later, Samuel Johnson was at the Literary Club. At Will's he is pictured for us by tradition, sitting in his arm-chair on the balcony in summer, and before the fire in winter, burly of figure, shrewd and kindly of feature, altogether a sound, stalwart, wholesome man. It was to Will's that young Pope was brought to gaze on greatness and be inspired; and it was there also that Dryden dismissed his youthful relative with the pitying words, “Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet." In an age when the form of poetry was all but rigidly fixed, the acknowledged master of that form could be as much of a despot as he chose.

Dryden's Character. The life of Dryden seems at first sight to have been an unheroic, and in some ways an ignoble one. His changes of side from Cromwellian to Royalist, from Protestant to Romanist, stand out in unfavorable contrast to the devotion of men like More and Milton. His concern with the details of party strife is sharply opposed to the ideal morality of Sidney and of Spenser. His indifference in matters of belief seems tame and watery after the flame-like faith of Bunyan. But we must not let such comparisons carry us too far. Dryden illustrates the change from the virtues of Elizabethan chivalry and Cromwellian fanaticism, to the sober commonplace ethics of an era of reason. His tendency to shift his influence to the winning side was in part the patriotism of a sensible man who argued that it mattered comparatively little whether the country was ruled by Protector or King, whether it worshipped according to Anglican or Catholic rites, so long as it was at peace under institutions which were strong enough to curb individual ambition.

Dryden's Poetry.-There is also a temptation to extend the first harsh judgment of Dryden's life, to his poetry. It, too, lacks elevation, and the subject-matter of much of it, the affairs of church and state, is remote from what we regard as poetic. But in his writing also Dryden responded