to promote this undertaking because you were the first who gave me the opportunity of discoursing it to his majesty, and his royal highness; they were then pleased both to commend the design, and to encourage it by their commands; but the unsettledness of my condition has hitherto put a stop to my thoughts concerning it.  As I am no successor to Homer in his wit, so neither do I desire to be in his poverty.  I can make no rhapsodies, nor go a begging at the Grecian doors, while I sing the praises of their ancestors.  The times of Virgil please me better, because he had an Augustus for his patron; and, to draw the allegory nearer you, I am sure I shall not want a Maecenas with him.  It is for your lordship to stir up that remembrance in his majesty, which his many avocations of business have caused him, I fear, to lay aside; and, as himself and his royal brother are the heroes of the poem, to represent to them the images of their warlike predecessors; as Achilles is said to be roused to glory with the sight of the combat before the ships.  For my own part, I am satisfied to have offered the design; and it may be to the advantage of my reputation to have it refused me."[26]

Dr. Johnson and Mr. Malone remark, that Dryden observes a mystery concerning the subject of his intended epic, to prevent the risk of being anticipated, as he finally was by Sir Richard Blackmore on the topic of Arthur.  This, as well as other passages in Dryden’s life, allows us the pleasing indulgence of praising the decency of our own time.  Were an author of distinguished merit to announce his having made choice of a subject for a large poem, the writer would have more than common confidence who should venture to forestall his labours.  But, in the seventeenth century, such an intimation would, it seems, have been an instant signal for the herd of scribblers to souse upon it, like the harpies on the feast of the Trojans, and leave its mangled relics too polluted for the use of genius:—­

  “Turba sonans praedam pedibus circumvolat uncis;
  Polluit ore dopes.

  Semesam praedam et vestigia foeda relinquunt.”

“Aureng-Zebe” was followed, in 1678, by “All for Love,” the only play Dryden ever wrote for himself; the rest, he says, were given to the people.  The habitual study of Shakespeare, which seems lately to have occasioned, at least greatly aided, the revolution in his taste, induced him, among a crowd of emulous shooters, to try his strength in this bow of Ulysses.  I have, in some preliminary remarks to the play, endeavoured to point out the difference between the manner of these great artists in treating the misfortunes of Antony and Cleopatra.[27] If these are just, we must allow Dryden the praise of greater regularity of plot, and a happier combination of scene; but in sketching the character of Antony, he loses the majestic and heroic tone which Shakespeare has assigned him.  There is too much of the love-lorn