Dryden ought, out of generosity, at least to throw him in something to the bargain, especially as he had used him more kindly in Juvenal, which, saith the said Jacob, is not reckoned so easy to translate as Ovid.  What weight was given to this supplication does not appear; probably very little, for the translations were not extended, and as to getting back any part of the copy-money, it is not probable Tonson’s most sanguine expectation ever reached that point.  Perhaps the songs were thrown in as a make-weight.  There was a Fourth Miscellany published in 1694; but to this Dryden only gave a version of the third Georgic, and his Epistle to Sir Godfrey Kneller, the requital of a copy of the portrait of Shakespeare.[9]

In 1963, Dryden addressed the beautiful lines to Congreve, on the cold reception of his “Double Dealer.”  He was himself under a similar cloud, from the failure of “Love Triumphant,” and therefore in a fit mood to administer consolation to his friend.  The epistle contains, among other striking passages, the affecting charge of the care of his posthumous fame, which Congreve did not forget when Dryden was no more.

But, independently of occasional exertions, our author, now retired from the stage, had bent his thoughts upon one great literary task, the translation of Virgil.  This weighty and important undertaking was probably suggested by the experience of Tonson, the success of whose “Miscellanies” had taught him the value placed by the public on Dryden’s translations from the classics.  From hints thrown out by contemporary scheme was meditated, even before 1964; but in that year the poet, in a letter to Dennis, speaks of it as under his immediate contemplation.  The names of Virgil and Dryden were talismans powerful to arrest the eyes of all that were literary in England, upon the progress of the work.  Mr. Malone has recorded the following particulars concerning it, with pious enthusiasm.

“Dr. Johnson has justly remarked, that the nation seemed to consider its honour interested in the event.  Mr. Gilbert Dolben gave him the various editions of his author:  Dr. Knightly Chetwood furnished him with the life of Virgil, and the Preface to the Pastorals; and Addison supplied the arguments of the several books, and an Essay on the Georgics.  The first lines of this great poet which he translated, he wrote with a diamond on a pane of glass in one of the windows of Chesterton House, in Huntingdonshire, the residence of his kinsman and namesake, John Driden, Esq.[10] The version of the first Georgic, and a great part of the last Aeneid, was made at Denham Court, in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir William Bowyer, Baronet; and the seventh AEneid was translated at Burleigh, the noble mansion of the Earl of Exeter.  These circumstances, which must be acknowledged to be of no great importance, I yet have thought it proper to record, because they will for ever endear those places to the votaries of the Muses, and add to them a kind of celebrity, which neither the beauties of nature, nor the exertions of art, can bestow.”