This hind is a symbol for the Roman Church; and the Anglicans, as a panther, are represented as persecuting the faithful.  Numerous other sects—­Calvinists, Anabaptists, Quakers—­were represented by the wolf, boar, hare, and other animals, which gave the poet an excellent chance for exercising his satire.  Dryden’s enemies made the accusation, often since repeated, of hypocrisy in thus changing his church; but that he was sincere in the matter can now hardly be questioned, for he knew how to “suffer for the faith” and to be true to his religion, even when it meant misjudgment and loss of fortune.  At the Revolution of 1688 he refused allegiance to William of Orange; he was deprived of all his offices and pensions, and as an old man was again thrown back on literature as his only means of livelihood.  He went to work with extraordinary courage and energy, writing plays, poems, prefaces for other men, eulogies for funeral occasions,—­ every kind of literary work that men would pay for.  His most successful work at this time was his translations, which resulted in the complete Aeneid and many selections from Homer, Ovid, and Juvenal, appearing in English rimed couplets.  His most enduring poem, the splendid ode called “Alexander’s Feast,” was written in 1697.  Three years later he published his last work, Fables, containing poetical paraphrases of the tales of Boccaccio and Chaucer, and the miscellaneous poems of his last years.  Long prefaces were the fashion in Dryden’s day, and his best critical work is found in his introductions.  The preface to the Fables is generally admired as an example of the new prose style developed by Dryden and his followers.

From the literary view point these last troubled years were the best of Dryden’s life, though they were made bitter by obscurity and by the criticism of his numerous enemies.  He died in 1700 and was buried near Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.

WORKS OF DRYDEN.  The numerous dramatic works of Dryden are best left in that obscurity into which they have fallen.  Now and then they contain a bit of excellent lyric poetry, and in All for Love, another version of Antony and Cleopatra, where he leaves his cherished heroic couplet for the blank verse of Marlowe and Shakespeare, he shows what he might have done had he not sold his talents to a depraved audience.  On the whole, reading his plays is like nibbling at a rotting apple; even the good spots are affected by the decay, and one ends by throwing the whole thing into the garbage can, where most of the dramatic works of this period belong.