of this tiresome comedy. Dryden was not daunted by the failure of this piece; but with the assistance of Lee, soon after produced "Œdipus," and soon after alone fitted "Troilus and Cressida," which, as Scott remarks, was left by Shakespeare in a "state of strange imperfection," for the stage.
Soon after this he gave to the world his best comedy—"The Spanish Friar." It is his last dramatic composition, except "The Duke of Guise" and "The Masque of Albion and Albanius," which he produced before the Revolution; and it was meant to have a strong political influence. Dryden himself ascribed it to Lord Haughton, as a Protestant play to a Protestant patron. It was consequently the work to which, after Dryden's conversion to the Roman Catholic religion, contemptuous allusions were, by his enemies, constantly made. It is difficult to estimate what effect it produced at Court, except that we know that it so offended the Duke of York that, after his accession, he never permitted it to be played. To the King himself it may have been obnoxious, but at that time he had given power into the hands of the Protestant party, and Dryden had almost grown callous to Court favour, as he had neither been encouraged in his projected epic, nor even received his official salary of late. Lord Mulgrave also had fallen into disgrace, and the protégé had suffered with the patron. Dryden's income was therefore, at this period, far narrower than when we before spoke of it; for we have seen what plays he had written during a long interval, in which he had occupied himself solely with dramatic composition, and it is stated—we think with accuracy—that he never received more than a hundred pounds for any one play.
He was destined, however, for a time to leave the stage, and mixed up with the political passions of the day to add to our literature those satirical poems by which he has
