perhaps an artful pilot, chanced to convey his bark.  We may indeed regret, that, having to choose between two religions, he should have adopted that which our education, reason, and even prepossessions, combine to point out as foully corrupted from the primitive simplicity of the Christian Church.  But neither the Protestant Christian, nor the sceptic philosopher, can claim a right to despise the sophistry which bewildered the judgment of Chillingworth, or the toils which enveloped the active and suspicious minds of Bayle and of Gibbon.  The latter, in his account of his own conversion to the Catholic faith, fixes upon the very arguments pleaded by Dryden, as those which appeared to him irresistible.  The early traditions of the Church, the express words of the text, are referred to by both as the grounds of their conversion; and the works of Bossuet, so frequently referred to by the poet, were the means of influencing the determination of the philosopher.[5] The victorious argument to which Chillingworth himself yielded, was, “that there must be somewhere an infallible judge, and the Church of Rome is the only Christian society, which either does or can pretend to that character.”

It is also to be observed, that towards the end of Charles II.’s reign, the High Churchmen and the Catholics regarded themselves as on the same side in political questions, and not greatly divided in their temporal interests.  Both were sufferers in the Plot, both were enemies of the sectaries, both were adherents of the Stuarts.

Alternate conversion had been common between them, so early as since Milton made a reproach to the English universities of the converts to the Roman faith daily made within their colleges; of those sheep,

     “Whom the grim wolf with privy paw
  Daily devours apace and nothing said.”

In approaching Dryden, therefore, a Catholic priest had to combat few of those personal prejudices which, in other cases, have been impediments to their making converts.  The poet had, besides, before him the example of many persons both of rank and talent, who had adopted the Catholic religion.

Such being the disposition of Dryden’s mind, and such the peculiar facilities of the Roman Churchmen in making proselytes, it is by no means to be denied, that circumstances in the poet’s family and situation strongly forwarded his taking such a step.  His Wife, Lady Elizabeth, had for some time been a Catholic; and though she may be acquitted of any share in influencing his determination, yet her new faith necessarily brought into his family persons both able and disposed to do so.  His eldest and best beloved son, Charles, is also said, though upon uncertain authority, to have been a Catholic before his father, and to have contributed to his change.[6] Above all, James his master, to whose fortunes he had so closely attached himself, had now become as parsimonious of his favour as his Church is of salvation, and restricted