to William a descent

on En. gland.

conceived that they acted according to a bolder course. This adviser was the their principles in paying profound re- young Lord Mordaunt. That Mordaunt spect to a Prince so near to the throne. age had produced no more proposes At this conjuncture it was of the highest inventive genius, and no more moment that there should be entire daring spirit. But, if a design union between William and Mary. A was splendid, Mordaunt seldom misunderstanding between the pre- inquired whether it were practicable. sumptive heiress of the crown and her His life was a wild romance made up husband must have produced a schism of mysterious intrigues, both political in that vast mass which was from all and amorous, of violent and rapid quarters gathering round one common changes of scene and fortune, and of rallying point. Happily all risk of victories resembling those of Amadis such misunderstanding was averted in and Launcelot rather than those of the critical instant by the interposition Luxemburg and Eugene. The episodes of Burnet; and the Prince became the interspersed in this strange story were unquestioned chief of the whole of that of a piece with the main plot. Among party which was opposed to the govern- them were midnight encounters with ment, a party almost coextensive with generous robbers, and rescues of noble the nation. and beautiful ladies from ravishers. Mordaunt, having distinguished himself by the eloquence and audacity with which, in the House of Lords, he had opposed the court, repaired, soon after the prorogation, to the Hague, and strongly recommended an immediate descent on England. He had persuaded himself that it would be as easy to surprise three great kingdoms as he long afterwards found it to surprise Barcelona. William lis- William tened, meditated, and replied, rejects the in general terms, that he took a great interest in English affairs, and would keep his attention fixed on them.* Whatever his purpose had been, it is not likely that he would have chosen a rash and vainglorious knighterrant for his confidant. Between the two men there was nothing in common

advice.

There is not the least reason to believe that he at this time meditated the great enterprise to which a stern necessity afterwards drove him. He was aware that the public mind of England, though heated by grievances, was by no means ripe for revolution. He would doubtless gladly have avoided the scandal which must be the effect of a mortal quarrel between persons bound together by the closest ties of consanguinity and affinity. Even his ambition made him unwilling to owe to violence that greatness which might soon be his in the ordinary course of nature and of law. For he well knew that, if the crown descended to his wife regularly, all its prerogatives would descend unimpaired with it, and that, if it were obtained by election, it must be taken subject to such con-except personal courage, which rose in ditions as the electors might think fit to impose. He meant, therefore, as it appears, to wait with patience for the day when he might govern by an undisputed title, and to content himself in the meantime with exercising a great influence on English affairs, as first Prince of the blood, and as head of the party which was decidedly preponderant in the nation, and which was certain, whenever a Parliament should meet, to be decidedly prepon-a canal strain against an adverse eddy, derant in both Houses.

Already, it is true, he had been urged by an adviser, less sagacious and more impetuous than himself, to try

both to the height of fabulous heroism. Mordaunt wanted merely to enjoy the excitement of conflict, and to make men stare. William had one great end ever before him. Towards that end he was impelled by a strong passion which appeared to him under the guise of a sacred duty. Towards that end he toiled with a patience resembling, as he once said, the patience with which he had seen a boatman on

often swept back, but never ceasing to pull, and content if, by the labour of

* Burnet, i. 762.

hours, a few yards could be gained.* | as Deputy was Tyrconnel. His brutal Exploits which brought the Prince no manners made him unfit to represent. nearer to his object, however glorious the majesty of the crown. The feethey might be in the estimation of the bleness of his understanding and the vulgar, were in his judgment boyish violence of his temper made him unfit vanities, and no part of the real busi- to conduct grave business of state. ness of life. The deadly animosity which he felt towards the possessors of the greater part of the soil of Ireland made him especially unfit to rule that kingdom. But the intemperance of his bigotry was thought amply to atone for the intemperance of all his other passions; and, in consideration of the hatred which he bore to the reformed faith, he was suffered to indulge without restraint his hatred of the English name. This, then, was the real meaning of His Majesty's respect for the rights of conscience. He wished his Parliament to remove all the disabilities which had been imposed on Papists, merely in order that he might himself impose disabilities equally galling on Protestants. It was plain that, under such a prince, apostasy was the only road to greatness. It was a road, however, which few ventured to take. For the spirit of the nation was thoroughly roused; and every renegade had to endure such an amount of public scorn and detestation as cannot be altogether unfelt even by the most callous natures.

He determined to reject Mordaunt's advice; and there can be no doubt that the determination was wise. Had William, in 1686, or even in 1687, attempted to do what he did with such signal success in 1688, it is probable that many Whigs would have risen in arms at his call. But he would have found that the nation was not yet prepared to welcome a deliverer from a foreign country, and that the Church had not yet been provoked and insulted into forgetfulness of the tenet which had long been her peculiar boast. The old Cavaliers would have flocked to the royal standard. There would probably have been in all the three kingdoms a civil war as long and fierce as that of the preceding generation. While that war was raging in the British Isles, what might not Lewis attempt on the Continent? And what hope would there be for Holland, drained of her troops, and abandoned by her Stadtholder?

Diseon

tent in England after the

Hydes.

Conver

William therefore contented himself for the present with taking measures to unite and animate It is true that several remarkable that mighty opposition of conversions had recently taken fall of the which he had become the place; but they were such as sions to head. This was not difficult. did little credit to the Church Popery. The fall of the Hydes had excited of Rome. Two men of high rank had throughout England extreme alarm joined her communion; Henry Morand indignation. Men felt that the daunt, Earl of Peterborough, Peterquestion now was, not whether Pro- and James Cecil, Earl of borough. testantism should be dominant, but Salisbury. But Peterborough, who whether it should be tolerated. The had been an active soldier, courtier, Treasurer had been succeeded by a and negotiator, was now broken down board, of which a Papist was the head. by years and infirmities; and those The Privy Seal had been entrusted to who saw him totter about the galleries a Papist. The Lord Lieutenant of of Whitehall, leaning on a stick and Ireland had been succeeded by a man swathed up in flannels and plasters, who had absolutely no claim to high comforted themselves for his defection place except that he was a Papist. by remarking that he had not changed The last person whom a government his religion till he had outlived his having in view the general interests of faculties.* Salisbury was foolish to a the empire would have sent to Dublin proverb. His figure was so bloated by * See the poems entitled The Converts and The Delusion.

VOL. II.

*Temple's Memoirs.

C

sensual indulgence as to be almost in- | professed himself a Roman Catholic, capable of moving; and this and went to Italy in the retinue of Salisbury. sluggish body was the abode Castelmaine, but was soon dismissed of an equally sluggish mind. He was for misconduct. If any credit be due represented in popular lampoons as to a tradition which was long preserved a man made to be duped, as a man in the green room, Haines had the who had hitherto been the prey of impudence to affirm that the Virgin gamesters, and who might as well Mary had appeared to him and called be the prey of friars. A pasquinade, him to repentance. After the Revoluwhich, about the time of Rochester's tion, he attempted to make his peace retirement, was fixed on the door of with the town by a penance more Salisbury House in the Strand, de- scandalous than his offence. One scribed in coarse terms the horror with night, before he acted in a farce, he which the wise Robert Cecil, if he appeared on the stage in a white sheet could rise from his grave, would see to with a torch in his hand, and recited what a creature his honours had some profane and indecent doggerel, descended.* which he called his recantation.*

ley.

From

These were the highest in station With the name of Haines was joined, among the proselytes of James. There in many libels, the name of Dryden. were other renegades of a very different a more illustrious renegade, kind, needy men of parts who were de- John Dryden. Dryden was now apstitute of principle and of all sense of proaching the decline of life. After Wycher personal dignity. There is many successes and many failures, he reason to believe that among had at length attained, by general these was William Wycherley, the consent, the first place among living most licentious and hardhearted writer English poets. His claims on the of a singularly licentious and hard- gratitude of James were superior to hearted school.† It is certain that those of any man of letters in the Matthew Tindal, who, at a kingdom. But James cared little for Tindal. later period, acquired great verses and much for money. notoriety by writing against Christi- the day of his accession he set himself anity, was at this time received into to make small economical reforms, the bosom of the infallible Church, a such as bring on a government the fact which, as may easily be supposed, reproach of meanness without prothe divines with whom he was subse- ducing any perceptible relief to the quently engaged in controversy did finances. One of the victims of this not suffer to sink into oblivion. A injudicious parsimony was Dryden. A still more infamous apostate was pension of a hundred a year which had Joseph Haines, whose name is been given to him by Charles and had now almost forgotten, but who expired with Charles was not renewed was well known in his own time as an The demise of the Crown made it adventurer of versatile parts, sharper, necessary that the Poet Laureate coiner, false witness, sham bail, dan- should have a new patent; and orders cing master, buffoon, poet, comedian. were given that, in this patent, the Some of his prologues and epilogues annual butt of sack, originally granted were much admired by his contempo- to Jonson, and continued to Jonson's raries and his merit as an actor was successors, should be omitted. This universally acknowledged. This man was the only notice which the King, * The lines are in the Collection of State during the first year of his reign, deigned to bestow on the mighty

Haines.

Poems.

Our information about Wycherley is very scanty but two things are certain, that in his later years he called himself a Papist, and that he received money from James. I have very little doubt that he was a hired convert.

See the article on him in the Biographia Britannica.

*See James Quin's account of Haines ir Davies's Miscellanies; Tom Brown's Works: Lives of Sharpers; Dryden's Epilogue to the Secular Masque.

This fact, which escaped the minute researches of Malone, appears from the Treasury Letter Book of 1685.

satirist who, in the very crisis of the countervail this presumption. His great struggle of the Exclusion Bill, theological writings abundantly prove had spread terror through the Whig that he had never sought with diligence ranks. Dryden was poor and impatient and anxiety to learn the truth, and that of poverty. He knew little and his knowledge both of the Church which cared little about religion. If any he quitted and of the Church which he sentiment was deeply fixed in him, entered was of the most superficial kind. that sentiment was an aversion to Nor was his subsequent conduct that of priests of all persuasions, Levites, a man whom a strong sense of duty had Augurs, Muftis, Roman Catholic di- constrained to take a step of awful imvines, Presbyterian divines, divines of portance. Had he been such a man, the Church of England. He was not the same conviction which had led naturally a man of high spirit; and him to join the Church of Rome would his pursuits had been by no means surely have prevented him from violatsuch as were likely to give elevation ing grossly and habitually rules which or delicacy to his mind. He had, that Church, in common with every during many years, earned his daily other Christian society, recognises as bread by pandering to the vicious binding. There would have been a taste of the pit, and by grossly flatter-marked distinction between his earlier ing rich and noble patrons. Self-re- and his later compositions. He would spect and a fine sense of the becoming were not to be expected from one who had led a life of mendicancy and adulation. Finding that, if he continued to call himself a Protestant, his services would be overlooked, he declared himself a Papist. The King's parsimony speedily relaxed. Dryden's pension was restored the arrears were paid up; and he was employed to defend his new religion both in prose and

verse.*

Two eminent men, Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott, have done their best to persuade themselves and others that this memorable conversion was sincere. It was natural that they should be desirous to remove a disgraceful stain from the memory of one whose genius they justly admired, and with whose political feelings they strongly sympathised; but the impartial historian must with regret pronounce a very different judgment. There will always be a strong presumption against the sincerity of a conversion by which the convert is directly a gainer. In the case of Dryden there is nothing to

It has lately been asserted that Dryden's

pension was restored long before he turned Papist, and that therefore it ought not to be considered as the price of his apostasy. But this is an entire mistake. Dryden's pension

have looked back with remorse on a literary life of near thirty years, during which his rare powers of diction and versification had been systematically employed in spreading moral corruption. Not a line tending to make virtue contemptible, or to inflame licentious desire, would thenceforward have proceeded from his pen. The truth unhappily is that the dramas which he wrote after his pretended. conversion are in no respect less impure or profane than those of his youth. Even when he professed to translate he constantly wandered from his originals in search of images which, if he had found them in his originals, he ought to have shunned. What was bad became worse in his versions. What was innocent contracted a taint from passing through his mind. He made the grossest satires of Juvenal more gross, interpolated loose descriptions in the tales of Boccaccio, and polluted the sweet and limpid poetry of the Georgics with filth which would have moved the loathing of Virgil.

The help of Dryden was welcome to those Roman Catholic divines who were painfully sustaining a conflict against all that was most illustrious in the Established Church. They could not was restored by letters patent of the 4th of disguise from themselves the fact that March 1689; and his apostasy had been the their style, disfigured with foreign talk of the town at least six weeks before. idioms which had been picked up at See Evelyn's Diary, January 19. 1685. (1857.) | Rome and Douay, appeared to little

The Hind and Panther.

The absurdity of this plan is obvious. In truth the allegory could not be preserved unbroken through ten lines together. No art of execution could redeem the faults of such a design. Yet the Fable of the Hind and Panther is undoubtedly the most valuable addition which was made to English literature during the short and troubled reign of James the Second. In none of Dryden's works can be found passages more pathetic and magnificent, greater ductility and energy of language, or a more pleasing and various music.

advantage when compared with the | pamphlets, and Burnet's broad shouleloquence of Tillotson and Sherlock.ders and fortunate matrimonial specuIt seemed that it was no light thing lations. to have secured the cooperation of the greatest living master of the English language. The first service which he was required to perform in return for his pension was to defend his Church in prose against Stillingfleet. But the art of saying things well is useless to a man who has nothing to say; and this was Dryden's case. He soon found himself unequally paired with an antagonist whose whole life had been one long training for controversy. The veteran gladiator disarmed the novice, inflicted a few contemptuous scratches, and turned away to encounter more formidable combatants. Dryden then betook himself to a weapon at which he was not likely to find his match. He retired for a time from the bustle of coffeehouses and theatres to a quiet retreat in Huntingdonshire, and there composed, with unwonted care and labour, his celebrated poem on the points in dispute between the Churches cf Rome and England. The Church of Rome he represented under the similitude of a milk-white hind, ever in peril of death, yet fated not to die. The beasts of the field were bent on her destruction. The quaking hare, indeed, observed a timorous neutrality: but the Socinian fox, the Presbyterian wolf, the Independent bear, the Anabaptist boar, glared fiercely at the spotless creature. Yet she could venture to drink with them at the common watering place under the protection of her friend, the kingly lion. The Church of England was typified by the panther, spotted indeed, but beautiful, too beautiful for a beast of prey. The hind and the panther, equally hated by the ferocious population of the forest, conferred apart on their common danger. They then proceeded to discuss the points on which | they differed, and, while wagging their tails and licking their jaws, held a long dialogue touching the real presence, the authority of Popes and Councils, the penal laws, the Test Act, Oates's perjuries, Butler's unrequited services to the Cavalier party, Stillingfleet's

The poem appeared with every advantage which royal patronage could give. A superb edition was printed for Scotland at the Roman Catholi press established in Holyrood House. But men were in no humour to be charmed by the transparent style and melodious numbers of the apostate. The disgust excited by his venality, the alarm excited by the policy of which he was the eulogist, were not to be sung to sleep. The just indignation of the public was inflamed by many who were smarting from his ridicule, and by many who were envious of his renown. In spite of all the restraints under which the press lay, attacks on his life and writings appeared daily. Sometimes he was Bayes, sometimes Poet Squab. He was reminded that in his youth he had paid to the House of Cromwell the same servile court which he was now paying to the House of Stuart. One set of his assailants maliciously reprinted the sarcastic verses which he had written against Popery in days when he could have got nothing by being a Papist. Of the many satirical pieces which appeared on this occasion, the most successful was the joint work of two young men who had lately com pleted their studies at Cambridge, and had been welcomed as promising novices in the literary coffeehouses of London, Charles Montague and Matthew Prior. Montague was of noble descent: the origin of Prior was so obscure that no biographer has been able to trace it: but both the adventurers were poor and