But the reign of James II was short.  The “Glorious Revolution” came, and with a Protestant King and Queen upon the throne, the Catholic Poet Laureate lost his post and pension and all his other appointments.  Dryden was now nearly sixty; and although he had made what was then a good deal of money by his plays and other poems he had spent it freely, and always seemed in need.  Now he had to face want and poverty.  But he faced them bravely.  Dryden all his life had been a flatterer; he had always sailed with the wind.  Now, whether he could not or would not, he changed no more, he flattered no more.  A kind friend, it is said, still continued to pay him the two hundred pounds he had received as Poet Laureate, and he now wrote more plays which brought him money.  Then, thus late in life, he began the work which for you at present will have the greatest interest.  Dryden was a great poet, but he could create nothing, he had to have given him ideas upon which to work.  Now he began translations from Latin poets, and for those who cannot read them in the original they are still a great pleasure and delight.

True, Dryden did not translate literally, that is word for word.  He paraphrased rather, and in doing so he Drydenized the originals, often adding whole lines of his own.  Among his translations was Virgil’s Aeneid, which long before, you remember, Surrey had begun in blank verse.  But blank verse was not what the age in which Dryden lived desired, and he knew it.  So he wrote in rimed couplets.  Long before this he had turned Milton’s Paradise Lost into rimed couplets, making it into an opera, which he called The State of Innocence.  An opera is a play set to music, but this opera was never set to music, and never sung or acted.  Dryden, we know, admired Milton’s poetry greatly.  “This man cuts us all out,” he had said.  Yet he thought he could make the poem still better, and asked Milton’s leave to turn it into rime.  “Ay, you may tag my verses if you will,” replied the great blind man.

It is interesting to compare the two poems, and when you come to read The State of Innocence you will find that not all the verses are “tagged.”  So that in places you can compare Milton’s blank verse with Dryden’s.  And although Dryden must have thought he was improving Milton’s poem, he says himself:  “Truly I should be sorry, for my own sake, that any one should take the pains to compare them (the poems) together, the original being, undoubtedly, one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced.”

Dryden begins his poem with the speech of Satan, Lucifer he calls him, on finding himself cast out from heaven:—­

    “Is this the seat our conqueror has given? 
    And this the climate we must change for heaven? 
    These regions and this realm my wars have got;
    This mournful empire is the loser’s lot;
    In liquid burnings, or on dry, to dwell,
    Is all the sad variety of hell.”