With the return of the king, the fall of Dryden’s political patrons was necessarily involved.  Sir Gilbert Pickering, having been one of Charles’s judges, was too happy to escape into obscurity, under an absolute disqualification for holding any office, political, civil, or ecclesiastical.  The influence of Sir John Driden was ended at the same time; and thus both those relations, under whose protection Dryden entered life, and by whose influence he was probably to have been aided in some path to wealth or eminence, became at once incapable of assisting him; and even connection with them was rendered, by the change of times, disgraceful, if not dangerous.  Yet it may be doubted whether Dryden felt this evil in its full extent.  Sterne has said of a character, that a blessing which closed his mouth, or a misfortune which opened it with a good grace, were nearly equal to him; nay, that sometimes the misfortune was the more acceptable of the two.  It is possible, by a parity of reasoning, that Dryden may have felt himself rather relieved from, than deprived of, his fanatical patrons, under whose guidance he could never hope to have indulged in that career of literary pursuit, which the new order of things presented to the ambition of the youthful poet; at least, he lost no time in useless lamentation, but, now in his thirtieth year, proceeded to exert that poetical talent, which had heretofore been repressed by his own situation, and that of the country.

Dryden, left to his own exertions, hastened to testify his joyful acquiescence in the restoration of monarchy, by publishing “Astroea Redux,” a poem which was probably distinguished among the innumerable congratulations poured forth upon the occasion; and he added to those which hailed the coronation, in 1661, the verses entitled, “A Panegyric to his Sacred Majesty.”  These pieces testify, that the author had already made some progress in harmonising his versification.  But they also contain many of those points of wit, and turns of epigram, which he condemned in his more advanced judgment.  The same description applies, in a yet stronger degree, to the verses addressed to Lord Chancellor Hyde (Lord Clarendon) on the new-year’s-day of 1662, in which Dryden has more closely imitated the metaphysical poetry than in any poem, except the juvenile elegy on Lord Hastings.  I cannot but think, that the poet consulted the taste of his patron, rather than his own, in adopting this peculiar style.  Clarendon was educated in the court of Charles I., and Dryden may have thought it necessary, in addressing him, to imitate the “strong verses,” which were then admired.