A messenger from high Olympus came
  To bear the tidings of thy life and name,
  And told thy sire each prodigy
  That Heaven designed to work in thee.

  Hearing the news, and doubting in surprise,
  His falt’ring speech in fettered accent dies;
  But Providence, with happy choice,
  In thee restored thy father’s voice.

  In the recess of Nature’s dark abode,
  Though still enclosed, yet knewest thou thy God;
  Whilst each glad parent told and blessed
  The secrets of each other’s breast.

A characteristic of James’s administration was rigid economy, not only in ordinary matters, but towards his own partisans;—­a wretched quality in a prince, who was attempting a great and unpopular revolution both in religion and politics, and ought, by his liberality, and even profusion, to have attached the hearts and excited the hopes of those fiery and unsettled spirits, who are ever foremost in times of national tumult.  Dryden, one of his most efficient and zealous supporters, and who had taken the step which of all others was calculated to please James, received only, as we have seen, after the interval of nearly a year from that prince’s accession, an addition of L100 to his yearly pension.  There may, however, on occasion of “The Hind and the Panther,” the controversy with Stillingfleet, and other works undertaken with an express view to the royal interest, have been private communications of James’s favour.  But Dryden, always ready to supply with hope the deficiency of present possession, went on his literary course rejoicing.  A lively epistle to his friend Etherege, then envoy for James at Ratisbon, shows the lightness and buoyancy of his spirits at this supposed auspicious period.[26]

An event, deemed of the utmost and most beneficial importance to the family of Stuart, but which, according to their usual ill-fortune, helped to precipitate their ruin, next called forth the public gratulation of the poet-laureate.  This was the birth of that “son of prayers” prophesied in the dedication to Xavier, whom the English, with obstinate incredulity, long chose to consider as an impostor, grafted upon the royal line to the prejudice of the Protestant succession.  Dryden’s “Britannia Rediviva” hailed, with the enthusiasm of a Catholic and a poet, the very event which, removing all hope of succession in the course of nature, precipitated the measures of the Prince of Orange, exhausted the patience of the exasperated people, and led them violently to extirpate a hated dynasty, which seemed likely to be protracted by a new reign.  The merits of the poem have been considered in the introductory remarks prefixed in this edition.[27]