“The Hind and the Panther” was written with a view to obviate the objections of the English clergy and people to the power of dispensing with the test laws, usurped by James II.  A change of political measures, which took place while the poem was composing, has greatly injured its unity and consistence.  In the earlier part of his reign, James endeavoured to gain the Church of England, by fair means and flattery, to submit to the remission which he claimed the liberty of granting to the Catholics.  The first part of Dryden’s poem is written upon this soothing plan; the Panther, or Church of England, is

          “sure the noblest next the Hind,
  And fairest offspring of the spotted kind. 
  Oh could her inborn stains be washed away,
  She were too good to be a beast of prey.”

The sects, on the other hand, are characterised, wolves, bears, boars, foxes,—­all that is odious and horrible in the brute creation.  But ere the poem was published, the king had assumed a different tone with the established church.  Relying upon the popularity which the suspension of the penal laws was calculated to procure among the Dissenters, he endeavoured to strengthen his party by making common cause between them and the Catholics, and bidding open defiance to the Church of England.  For a short time, and with the most ignorant of the sectaries, this plan seemed to succeed; the pleasure of a triumph over their ancient enemies rendering them blind to the danger of the common Protestant cause.  During this interval the poem was concluded; and the last book seems to consider the cause of the Hind and Panther as gone to a final issue, and incapable of any amicable adjustment.  The Panther is fairly resigned to her fate: 

  “Her hour of grace was passed,”

and the downfall of the English hierarchy is foretold in that of the Doves, who, in a subaltern allegory, represent the clergy of the established church: 

  “Tis said, the Doves repented, though too late,
  Become the smiths of their own foolish fate: 
  Nor did their owner hasten their ill hour,
  But, sunk in credit, they decreased in power;
  Like snows in warmth that mildly pass away,
  Dissolving in the silence of decay.”

In the preface, as well as in the course of the poem, Dryden frequently alludes to his dispute with Stillingfleet; and perhaps none of his poems contain finer lines than those in which he takes credit for the painful exertion of Christian forbearance when called by injured feeling to resent personal accusation:—­

  “If joys hereafter must be purchased here
  With loss of all that mortals hold so dear,
  Then welcome infamy and public shame,
  And last, a long farewell to worldly fame! 
  ’Tis said with ease; but, oh, how hardly tried
  By haughty souls to human honour tied! 
  O sharp convulsive pangs of agonising pride! 
  Down then, rebel, never more to rise!