DEATH OF CHARLES.—­At length, in 1685, Charles II., after a sudden and short illness, was gathered to his fathers.  His life had been such that England could not mourn:  he had prostituted female honor, and almost destroyed political virtue; sold English territory and influence to France for beautiful strumpets; and at the last had been received, on his death-bed, into, the Roman Catholic Church, while nominally the supreme head of the Anglican communion.  England cannot mourn, but Dryden tortures language into crocodile tears in his Threnodia Augustalis, sacred to the happy memory of King Charles II.  A few lines will exhibit at once the false statements and the absolute want of a spark of sorrow—­dead, inanimate words, words, words!

    Thus long my grief has kept me drunk: 
    Sure there ’s a lethargy in mighty woe;
    Tears stand congealed, and cannot flow.
    ........ 
    Tears for a stroke foreseen, afford relief;
      But unprovided for a sudden blow,
      Like Niobe, we marble grow,
    And petrify with grief!

DRYDEN’S CONVERSION.—­The Duke of York succeeded as James II.:  he was an open and bigoted Roman Catholic, who at once blazoned forth the death-bed conversion of his brother; and who from the first only limited his hopes to the complete restoration of the realm to popery.  Dryden’s course was at once taken; but his instinct was at fault, as but three short years were to show.  He gave in his adhesion to the new king’s creed; he who had been Puritan with the commonwealth, and churchman with the Restoration, became Roman Catholic with the accession of a popish king.  He had written the Religio Laici to defend the tenets of the Church of England against the attacks of papists and dissenters; and he now, to leave the world in no doubt as to his reasons and his honesty, published a poem entitled the Hind and Panther, which might in his earlier phraseology have been justly styled “The Christian experience of pious John Dryden.”  It seems a shameless act, but it is one exponent of the loyalty of that day.  There are some critics who believe him to have been sincere, and who insist that such a man “is not to be sullied by suspicion that rests on what after all might prove a fortuitous coincidence.”  But such frequent changes with the government—­with a reward for each change—­tax too far even that charity which “thinketh no evil.”  Dryden’s pen was eagerly welcomed by the Roman Catholics.  He began to write at once in their interest, and thus to further his own.  Dr. Johnson says:  “That conversion will always be suspected which apparently concerns with interest.  He that never finds his error till it hinders his progress toward wealth or honor, will not be thought to love truth only for herself.”

In this long poem of 2,000 lines, we have the arguments which conducted the poet to this change.  The different beasts represent the different churches and sects.  The Church of Rome is thus represented: