a Hind and a Panther, who vary between their typical character of animals and their real character as the Catholic and English Church.  In this piece, Prior, though the younger man, seems to have had by far the larger share.  Lord Peterborough, on being asked whether the satire was not written by Montague in conjunction with Prior, answered, “Yes; as if I, seated in Mr. Cheselden’s chaise drawn by his fine horse, should say, Lord! how finely we draw this chaise!” Indeed, although the parody was trite and obvious, the satirists had the public upon their side; and it now seems astonishing with what acclamations this attack upon the most able champion of James’s faith was hailed by his discontented subjects.  Dryden was considered as totally overcome by his assailants; they deemed themselves, and were deemed by others, as worthy of very distinguished and weighty recompence;[13] and what was yet a more decisive mark, that their bolt had attained its mark, the aged poet is said to have lamented, even with tears, the usage he had received from two young men, to whom he had been always civil.  This last circumstance is probably exaggerated.  Montague and Prior had doubtless been frequenters of Will’s coffee-house, where Dryden held the supreme rule in criticism, and had thus, among other rising wits, been distinguished by him.  That he should have felt their satire is natural, for the arrow flew with the wind, and popularity amply supplied its deficiency in real vigour; but the reader may probably conclude with Johnson, that Dryden was too much hackneyed in political warfare to suffer so deeply from the parody, as Dr. Lockier’s anecdote would lead us to believe.  “If we can suppose him vexed,” says that accurate judge of human nature, “we can hardly deny him sense to conceal his uneasiness.”

Although Prior and Montague were first in place and popularity, there wanted not the usual crowd of inferior satirists and poetasters to follow them to the charge.  “The Hind and the Panther” was assailed by a variety of pamphlets, by Tom Brown and others, of which an account, with specimens perhaps more than sufficient, is annexed to the notes on the poem in this edition.  It is worth mentioning, that on this, as on a former occasion, an adversary of Dryden chose to select one of his own poems as a contrast to his latter opinions.  The “Religio Laici” was reprinted, and carefully opponed to the various passages of “The Hind and the Panther,” which appeared most contradictory to its tenets.  But while the Grub-street editor exulted in successfully pointing out the inconsistency between Dryden’s earlier and later religious opinions, he was incapable of observing, that the change was adopted in consequence of the same unbroken train of reasoning, and that Dryden, when he wrote the “Religio Laici” was under the impulse of the same conviction, which, further prosecuted, led him to acquiesce in the faith of Rome.