To Dryden, as a writer of plays, we shall recur in a later chapter, when the other dramatists of the age will be considered.

A concurrence of unusual events in 1665, brought forth the next year the “Annus Mirabilis,” or Wonderful Year, in which these events are recorded with the minuteness of a chronicle.  This is indeed its chief value; for, praised as it was at the time, it does not so well bear the analysis of modern criticism.

ANNUS MIRABILIS.—­It describes the great naval battle with the Dutch; the fire of London; and the ravages of the plague.  The detail with which these are described, and the frequent felicity of expression, are the chief charm of the poem.  In the refreshingly simple diary of Pepy’s, we find this jotting under date of 3d February, 1666-7:  “Annus Mirabilis.  I am very well pleased this night with reading a poem I brought home with me last night from Westminster Hall, of Dryden’s, upon the present war:  a very good poem.”

Dryden’s subserviency, aided by the power of his pen, gained its reward.  In 1668, on the death of Sir William Davenant, he was appointed Laureate, and historiographer to the king, with an annual salary of L200.  He soon became the most famous literary man in England.  Milton, the Puritan, was producing his wonderful visions in darkened retirement, while at court, or in the seat of honor on the stage, or in his sacred chair at Will’s Coffee-house in Covent Garden (near the fire-place in winter, and carried into the balcony in summer), “Glorious John” was the observed of all observers.  Of Will’s Coffee-house, Congreve says, in Love for Love, “Oh, confound that Will’s Coffee-house; it has ruined more young men than the Royal Oak Lottery:”  this speaks at once of the fashion and social license of the time.

Charles II. was happy to have so fluent a pen, to lampoon or satirize his enemies, or to make indecent comedies for his amusement; while Dryden’s aim seems to have been scarcely higher than preferment at court and honored contemporary notoriety for his genius.  But if the great majority lauded and flattered him, he was not without his share in those quarrels of authors, which were carried on at that day not only with goose-quills, but with swords and bludgeons.  It is recorded that he was once waylaid by the hired ruffians of the Earl of Rochester, and beaten almost to death:  these broils generally had a political as well as a social significance.  In his quarrels with the literary men, he used the shafts of satire.  His contest with Thomas Shadwell has been preserved in his satire called McFlecknoe.  Flecknoe was an Irish priest who wrote dull plays; and in this poem Dryden proposes Shadwell as his successor on the throne of dulness.  It was the model or suggester of Pope’s Dunciad; but the model is by no means equal to the copy.