[8] [Grounds have already been shown for thinking that Scott is mistaken here.  I owe it to an accomplished critic of my former work in the Saturday Review to take more notice than I did in that work of Evelyn’s entry in his diary, January 19, 1686.  “Dryden, the famous play-writer and his two sons, and Mrs. Nelly, miss to the late king, were said to go to mass.  Such proselytes are no great loss to the Church.”  I need only say, first, that it is obviously a mere rumour; secondly, that it is known to be false as to Nell Gwynne, who abode in that purity of the Protestant faith which had already differentiated her from others of Charles’s favourites.  As Evelyn’s anonymous informer was wrong in one part of his evidence, the error vitiates the other.  It may perhaps be noted here that Scott’s positive assertion that Lady Elizabeth had been converted before her husband is based only on a supposition of Malone’s.—­ED.]

[9] The grant bears this honourable consideration, which I extract from Mr. Malone’s work:  “Pat. 2.  Jac. p. 4. n. 1.  Know ye, that we, for and in consideration of the many good and acceptable services done by John Dryden, Master of Arts, to our late dearest brother King Charles the Second, as also to us done and performed, and taking notice of the learning and eminent abilities of the said J.D.” etc.

[10] “Absalom and Achitophel,” Part i. vol. ix.

[11] I am indebted for this anecdote to Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, the editor of the poems of the witty Bishop Corbet. [No solid foundation for this tradition is known, though there is a certain circumstantial verisimilitude about it.  Rushton was and is in the midst of forest scenery such as the poem describes, and it had been the seat of the persecuted Roman Catholic family of Tresham, some of whose buildings, covered with emblems of their faith, survive to this day.  Here perhaps maybe mentioned another of the few local traditions respecting Dryden, one too which has, I think, escaped mention as a rule hitherto.  It was brought to my notice by my friends Mrs. Hubbard and Dr. Sebastian Evans that there is a “Dryden’s Walk” at Croxall near Lichfield.  I consulted guide-books and county histories in vain.  But Lysons’ “Magna Britannia” informed me that Croxall passed from the Curzons to the Sackvilles early in the seventeenth century, that the family occasionally lived there, and that Dryden is traditionally said to have visited Dorset there.  Croxall is now a station on the Midland Railway between Burton and Tamworth.—­ED.]

[12] See a long note upon this subject, vol. x.

[13] That Prior was discontented with his share of preferment, appears from the verses entitled, “Earl Robert’s Mice,” and an angry expostulation elsewhere: 

  “My friend Charles Montague’s preferred;
  Nor would I have it long observed,
  That one mouse eats while t’other’s starved.’

There is a popular tradition, but no farther to be relied on than as showing the importance attached to the “Town and Country Mouse,” which says, that Dorset, in presenting Montague to King William, said, “I have brought a Mouse to wait on your Majesty.”  “I will make a man of him,” said the king; and settled a pension of L500 upon the fortunate satirist.