[43] [This list requires a certain amount of correction and completion.  In the Appendix to the present edition (vol. xviii.) a separate article will be given to it.—­ED.]

SECTION VII.

State of Dryden’s Connections in Society after the Revolution—­Juvenal and Persius—­Smaller Pieces—­Eleonora—­Third Miscellany—­Virgil—­Ode to St. Cecilia—­Dispute with Milbourne—­With Blackmore—­Fables—­The Author’s Death and Funeral—­His private Character—­Notices of his Family.

The evil consequences of the Revolution upon Dryden’s character and fortunes began to abate sensibly within a year or two after that event.  It is well known, that King William’s popularity was as short-lived as it had been universal.  All parties gradually drew off from the king, under their ancient standards.  The clergy returned to their maxims of hereditary right, the Tories to their attachment to the house of Stuart, the Whigs to their jealousy of the royal authority.  Dryden, we have already observed, so lately left in a small and detested party, was now among multitudes who, from whatever contradictory motives, were joined in opposition to the government and some of his kinsmen; particularly with John Driden of Chesterton, his first cousin; with whom, till his death, he lived upon terms of uninterrupted friendship.  The influence of Clarendon and Rochester, the Queen’s uncles, were, we have seen, often exerted in the poet’s favour; and through them, he became connected with the powerful families with which they were allied.  Dorset, by whom he had been deprived of his office, seems to have softened this harsh, though indispensable, exertion of authority, by a liberal present; and to his bounty Dryden had frequently recourse in cases of emergency.[1] Indeed, upon one occasion it is said to have been administered in a mode savouring more of ostentation than delicacy; for there is a tradition that Dryden and Tom Brown, being invited to dine with the lord chamberlain, found under their covers, the one a bank-note for L100, the other for L50.  I have already noticed, that these pecuniary benefactions were not held so degrading in that age as at present; and, probably, many of Dryden’s opulent and noble friends, took, like Dorset, occasional opportunities of supplying wants, which neither royal munificence, nor the favour of the public, now enabled the poet fully to provide for.

If Dryden’s critical empire over literature was at any time interrupted by the mischances of his political party, it was in abeyance for a very short period; since, soon after the Revolution, he appears to have regained, and maintained till his death, that sort of authority in Will’s coffeehouse, to which we have frequently had occasion to allude.  His supremacy, indeed, seems to have been so effectually established, that a “pinch out of Dryden’s snuff-box"[2] was equal to taking a degree in that academy of wit.  Among those by whom it was frequented,