I must ever acknowledge, to the honor of your Lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that, since this revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence I had from two kings, whom I served more faithfully than profitably to myself,—­then your Lordship was pleased, out of no other motive than your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which, in that time when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief.”  This passage was the sole authority, we suspect, Prior had for a story which was nevertheless sufficiently true to figure in an adulatory dedication; and, indeed, Prior may have used the word “equivalent” loosely, and had Dorset’s gift been more than a year’s income, Dryden would hardly have called it a “present,”—­a phrase scarcely applicable to the grant of a pension.[22]

Dismissed from office and restored to labors more congenial than the dull polemics which had recently engaged his mind, Dryden found himself obliged to work vigorously or starve.  He fell into the hands of the booksellers.  The poems, it deserves remark, upon which his fame with posterity must finally rest, were all produced within the period bounded by his deposition and his death.  The translations from Juvenal, the versions of Persius and of Virgil, the Fables, and the “Ode upon St. Cecilia’s Day,” were the works of this period.  He lived to see his office filled successively by a rival he despised and a friend who had deserted him, and in its apparently hopeless degradation perhaps found consolation for its loss.

Thomas Shadwell was the Poet-Laureate after Dryden, assuming the wreath in 1689.  We have referred to his origin; Langbaine gives 1642 as the date of his birth; so that he must have set up as author early in life, and departed from life shortly past middle-age.  Derrick assures us that he was lusty, ungainly, and coarse in person,—­a description answering to the full-length of Og.  The commentators upon “MacFlecknoe” have not made due use of one of Shadwell’s habits, in illustration of the reason why a wreath of poppies was selected for the crown of its hero.  The dramatist, Warburton informs us, was addicted to the use of opium, and, in fact, died of an overdose of that drug.  Hence

  “His temples, last, with poppies were o’er-spread,
  That nodding seemed to consecrate his head.”

A couplet which Pope echoes in the “Dunciad":—­

  “Shadwell nods, the poppy on his brows.”

A similar allusion may be found in the character of Og:—­

  “Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink,” etc.