Sir John Driden, he must have at least professed, but probably seriously entertained.  It must be remembered, that the poet was thirty years of age at the Restoration, so that a considerable space of his full-grown manhood had passed while the rigid doctrines of the fanatics were still the order of the day.  But the third state of his opinions, those “sparkles which his pride struck out,” after the delusions of puritanism had vanished; in other words, those sentiments which he imbibed after the Restoration, and which immediately preceded his adoption of the Catholic faith, cannot be ascertained without more minute investigation.  We may at the outset be easily permitted to assume, that the adoption of a fixed creed of religious principles was not the first business of our author, when that merry period set him free from the rigorous fetters of fanaticism.  Unless he differed more than we can readily believe from the public feeling at that time, Dryden was satisfied to give to Caesar the things that were Caesar’s, without being in a hurry to fulfil the counterpart of the precept.  Foremost in the race of pleasure, engaged in labours alien from serious reflection, the favourite of the most lively and dissolute nobility whom England ever saw, religious thoughts were not, at this period, likely to intrude frequently upon his mind, or to be encouraged when they did so.  The time, therefore, when Dryden began seriously to compare the doctrines of the contending sects of Christianity, was probably several years after the Restoration, when reiterated disappointment, and satiety of pleasure, prompted his mind to retire within itself, and think upon hereafter.  The “Religio Laici” published in 1682, evinces that, previous to composing that poem, the author had bestowed serious consideration upon the important subjects of which it treats:  and I have postponed the analysis of it to this place, in order that the reader may be able to form his own conjecture from what faith Dryden changed when he became a Catholic.

The “Religio Laici” has indeed a political tendency, being written to defend the Church of England against the sectaries:  it is not therefore, so much from the conclusions of the piece, as from the mode of the author’s deducing these conclusions, that Dryden’s real opinions may he gathered;—­as we learn nothing of the bowl’s bias from its having reached its mark, though something may be conjectured by observing the course which it described in attaining it.  From many minute particulars, I think it almost decisive, that Dryden, when he wrote the “Religio Laici,” was sceptical concerning revealed religion.  I do not mean, that his doubts were of that fixed and permanent nature, which have at different times induced men, of whom better might have been hoped, to pronounce themselves freethinkers on principle.  On the contrary, Dryden seems to have doubted with such a strong wish to believe, as, accompanied with circumstances of