it to those of his own sect.  It is more than probable, though only a conjecture, that Dryden might be made the subject of those private exhortations, which in that reign were called closeting; and, predisposed as he was, he could hardly be supposed capable of resisting the royal eloquence.  For, while pointing out circumstances of proof, that Dryden’s conversion was not made by manner of bargain and sale, but proceeded upon a sincere though erroneous conviction, it cannot be denied, that his situation as poet-laureate, and his expectations from the king, must have conduced to his taking his final resolution.  All I mean to infer from the above statement is, that his interest and internal conviction led him to the same conclusion.

If we are to judge of Dryden’s sincerity in his new faith, by the determined firmness with which report retained it through good report and bad report we must allow him to have been a martyr, or at least a confessor, in the Catholic cause.  If after the Revolution, like many greater men, he had changed his principles with the times, he was not a person of such mark as to be selected from all the nation, and punished for former tenets.  Supported by the friendship of Rochester, and most of the Tory nobles who were active in the Revolution, of Leicester, and many Whigs, and especially of the Lord-Chamberlain Dorset, there would probably have been little difficulty in his remaining poet-laureate, if he had recanted the errors of Popery.  But the Catholic religion, and the consequent disqualifications, was an insurmountable obstacle to his holding that or any other office under government; and Dryden’s adherence to it, with all the poverty, reproach, and even persecution which followed the profession, argued a deep and substantial conviction of the truth of the doctrines it inculcated.  So late as 1699, when an union, in opposition to King William, had led the Tories and Whigs to look on each other with some kindness, Dryden thus expresses himself in a letter to his cousin, Mrs. Steward:  “The court rather speaks kindly of me, than does anything for me, though they promise largely; and perhaps they think I will advance as they go backward, in which they will be much deceived:  for I can never go an inch beyond my conscience and my honour.  If they will consider me as a man who has done my best to improve the language, and especially the poetry, and will be content with my acquiescence under the present government, and forbearing satire on it, that I can promise, because I can perform it:  but I can neither take the oaths, nor forsake my religion; because I know not what Church to go to, if I leave the Catholic:  they are all so divided amongst themselves in matters of faith, necessary to salvation, and yet all assuming the name of Protestants.  May God be pleased to open your eyes, as he has opened mine!  Truth is but one, and they who have once heard of it, can plead no excuse if they do not embrace it.  But these are things too serious for a trifling letter."[7] If, therefore, adherence to the communion of a falling sect, loaded too at the time with heavy disqualifications, and liable to yet more dangerous suspicions, can be allowed as a proof of sincerity, we can hardly question that Dryden was, from the date of his conviction, a serious and sincere Roman Catholic.