third five when the second edition was exhausted, and a fourth five when the third edition was exhausted. The first edition was in the hands of the public in the autumn of 1667. At the time of his death, Milton had actually received ten pounds under this contract.

It is conventional to cite the reception of Milton's epic as an example of the neglect accorded to a great work upon its appearance, but the sale of thirteen hundred copies of such a poem in less than a year and a half shows a reasonably wide circle of readers. Its publication restored his fame among a generation with whom he had become almost a stranger. His house became the resort of the notables of the time, his group of friends broadened, his eminence as man of letters and poet was acknowledged.

In the mean while, he did not cease from his labors upon the publication of Paradise Lost. A remark of Ellwood when he returned the manuscript to the poet - "Thou hast said much here of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?"— is said to have started him upon the composition of Paradise Regained. This sequel to Paradise Lost, together with Samson Agonistes, was published in the autumn of 1670.

His years were numbered now, but his work continued, although, except for the editions of his early poems, he published no more poetry. He issued his Latin letters to his foreign friends, he labored over a Compendium of Theology, a History of Britain, and a new type of geography textbook. He could not bear to be idle.

His life during these latter years was simple. His daughters had left him in 1669 and the modest household consisted of himself, his wife, a single maidservant, and an amanuensis who came in by day. One account tells how Milton “used to sit in a gray, coarse cloth coat, at the door of his house in Bunhill Fields, in warm, sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air; and so, as well as in his room, received the visits of people of distinguished parts as well as quality"; and another tells us how he "rose commonly in the summer at four, and in the winter at five in the morning. . . . At his first rising he had usually a chapter read to him out of the Hebrew Bible; and he commonly studied all the morning till twelve.” It was a quiet, sober, regular household in which Milton passed his last years.

Milton died November 8, 1674, of gout. He was buried on the 12th in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, beside his father.

JOHN DRYDEN

A FEW years before Milton's death, he was visited by a young poet of rising renown who requested Milton's permission to put Paradise Lost into rhyme for public performance as an opera. Milton granted the request with a contemptuous, "Yes, you may tag my verses." This meeting between John Milton and John Dryden has a peculiar interest in setting before us the sharp contrast between the aged giant of an age that had passed and the vigorous young representative of the new age. Dryden's character suffers from the contrast. The stern and inflexibly moral Puritan, faithful to his religious and political principles amid the ruin of all that he had labored to upbuild, compels our admiration, whereas the pliant and morally loose Dryden, with weak political and religious convictions, adapting himself to the changing spirit of his time, lays himself open to charges of hypocrisy and time-serving.

John Dryden was born in the little village of Aldwincle, in Northamptonshire, August 9, 1631. His family was a notable one in the country, his grandfather being Sir Erasmus Dryden, Bart., and his mother, Mary Pickering, the daughter of the Reverend Henry Pickering, pastor of Aldwincle All Saints'. His childhood was passed amid Puritan influences, for both his father's and mother's family sided with the Parliament.

Of his youth we know little. He studied at the famed Westminster School in London and matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1650. We catch only two fleeting glimpses of him at college, on one occasion when he was disciplined for "disobedience" and "contumacy," and on another when he received his bachelor's degree in 1654. There is some ground for believ

ing that he did not look back with pleasure upon his own university career, for in later years he seems actually to have preferred Oxford to his own university:

Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
Than his own mother university.

Dryden's father died in 1654 and Dryden's share of the estate has been estimated to have yielded him the equivalent to-day of a thousand dollars a year. He was thus, at an early age, freed from the fear of starvation while he sought to make a place for himself in literature. Dryden left the university some time between 1654 and 1658 and went to London. His family's politics and the ascendancy of Cromwell would naturally lead the stranger to ally himself with the Puritans, and we know that at first he was under the patronage of his uncle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, a great favorite with Cromwell, and that upon Cromwell's death he actually wrote his notable heroic stanzas on the Death of His Late Highness Oliver, Lord Protector. His sojourn in London as a bookseller's hack, however, threw him into contact with men of royalist sympathies. The prominent writers of the day were all Cavaliers. Hobbes, Cowley, Herrick, Denham, the fickle Waller, and the preeminent Davenant all looked forward to a restoration of literary taste with a restoration of Charles. Dryden's religious and political convictions, never apparently very deep, speedily succumbed to his environment and he celebrated the return of Charles in three poems (Astræa Redux, To His Sacred Majesty, To My Lord Chancellor) between 1660 and 1662.

By birth, by nature, and by education Dryden was fitted to associate with the aristocracy of the time, and his change of politics threw him among the Cavalier nobles. His status was fully established by his marriage, in 1663, to Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of a royalist earl. Dryden never refers to his wife with any special marks of affection, and he is known to have carried on a long intrigue with the actress Anne Reeve, but there is no decisive proof that the marriage and his mode of life were different from those of other men of fashion in his age. Three sons were born of this marriage and survived to maturity.

Dryden made his bid for literary fame in the field of the drama, not apparently because he felt a special inspiration toward that literary form, but because he foresaw with the return of Charles a demand for plays. For twenty years, until 1681, he wrote almost solely for the stage, achieving great success. His Conquest of Granada and All for Love stand foremost among the plays of their respective types. During this period he also produced his greatest prose works of criticism, of importance now, not because of the principles set forth, but because of the pros style. In his critical essays is found the beginning of modern clear vigorous simple prose.

His success during these years established his fame and financial position on seemingly sure foundations. He was elected (1662) a member of the Royal Society; he was, at the king's recommendation, given the degree of Master of Arts by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1668; he became (1668) a shareholder in the King's Company, agreeing to supply to the company three plays a year; he was appointed (1670) Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal; he was given a pension of one hundred pounds a year; he was recognized throughout England as the most eminent man of letters of the day, and must have been in receipt of an annual income equivalent to-day to fifteen thousand dollars. His personal associates were among the most conspicuous literary men of the court circles.

At the age of fifty, Dryden turned from the field in which he had achieved his success to write poetry. In the dedication to Aureng-Zebe (1676) he hints at the change: "I never thought myself very fit for an employment where many of my predecessors have excell'd me in all kinds; and some of my contemporaries, even in my own partial judgment, have outdone me in comedy. Some little hopes I have yet remaining, and those, too, considering my abilities, may be vain, that I may make the world some part of amends for many ill plays, by an heroic poem." The "heroic poem" to which he alludes was never written, but upon the poetry which he produced after 1680 rests his reputation to-day as one of the leading English poets.

According to tradition, Dryden received from Charles personally the encouragement to take

up the cudgels of party strife in England. Party feeling was intense. A great Popish plot had been unearthed in 1678; the Whigs, led by the Earl of Shaftesbury, stood in opposition to the Tories, led by Charles himself; the question at issue was the English throne, the Whigs favoring the exclusion of the Duke of York for the Duke of Monmouth, and Charles using his influence and French subsidies to favor his brother, the Duke of York. Civil war seemed imminent. In March of 1681 Charles dissolved the Oxford Parliament and appealed to the nation. On the charge of high treason the Earl of Shaftesbury was arrested and confined in the Tower of London. In November his case was taken up by the London grand jury. Just a week before the decision in Shaftesbury's case appeared Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, the finest political satire in English. Absalom represented the Duke of Monmouth, Achitophel was Shaftesbury, and Zimri was the Duke of Buckingham.

Dryden's entrance into politics was the signal for attacks by the Whig writers. Envy had been busy with his career before, but partisanship added a new sting to the utterances of the poetasters. Goaded by the scurrilous lines of a former friend, Shadwell, Dryden in the autumn of 1682 published MacFlecknoe, in which he pilloried Shadwell before the London world as the heir to the abilities of a dull and stupid Irishman by the name of Flecknoe. For biting satire this short poem has no equal. Shadwell lives in literature to-day by virtue of Dryden's attack. In sharp contrast to the violence of these satires appeared from Dryden's pen in 1682 Religio Laici, a defense of the doctrines of the Established Church from the layman's standpoint. This didactic poem, called by Scott one of the most admirable poems in English, was written in a style very effective for its purpose, simple and almost conversationally easy-going. Its view of religion is that of the ordinary Englishman. Its arguments are not novel or deep, it shows no grand inspiration or power of thought, but it reveals a kindly, honest nature endowed with much sound common sense.

It is curious that this worldly poet and man of letters should have lived to be fifty before his interest in the pregnant political and religious problems of his time developed, but our wonder is stirred by the versatility of the man in his poetic treatment of them. In his youth and young manhood he had written a few poems; then for twenty years he devoted himself to the stage, and when over fifty he turns to political and religious discussion and produces unrivaled satirical and didactic poetry.

February 6, 1685, Charles II, Dryden's patron and friend, died, and James II, an avowed Catholic, took the throne. The influence of the king and of his supporters in spreading Catholicism reached Dryden among the first. Never steadfast in his convictions, Dryden was early converted, and in the very year that James acceded to the throne, Dryden professed the Catholic faith. This easy thinker, bred up in Puritan surroundings, converted to the Established Church and the Cavalier movement at the first contact with the London world, now with easy grace adopted the professed faith of the new court circles. Excuses a-plenty have been offered for him, - for example, lack of any real religious emotion and hence a failure to attribute any importance to the change; sincere conversion to Catholic tenets as proved by his not changing back to the Established Church after the Revolution of 1688, — but they are not convincing. The stigma of time-serving has clung to Dryden to this day.

A curious immediate literary result of his conversion was the long poem The Hind and the Panther (April, 1687) in which the gentle Catholic Church (the Hind) discusses divinity with the fierce Church of England (the Panther). The contrast of attitude between this poem and the Religio Laici, published five years before, brings inevitably to mind the somewhat similar contrast at the beginning of his career between his verses to Cromwell and his subsequent welcome to the restored Charles.

To a certain extent Dryden's character was retrieved by the events following the Revolution of 1688. His well-known professed Catholicism caused him to be deprived of all the official positions and pensions he had enjoyed under Charles II and James II. He had the bitterness of seeing the laureateship pass to Shadwell, whom he had held up to ridicule in MacFlecknoe. He himself, living the life of his circle, had saved nothing. At the age of fifty-seven he was

thrown wholly on his own resources. He naturally worked the harder with his pen to earn his livelihood.

His chief productions of these latter years are his translations and his fables. No man was better fitted than he to render the Latin classics into English verse. Juvenal, Persius, selections from Ovid, and the complete works of Virgil kept him engaged until 1697. His work was the success that was to be expected. His translation of Virgil is still the standard.

In 1700 he published Fables, Ancient and Modern. These were tales from Chaucer and Boccaccio paraphrased in modern English. The success of this book was immediate. Theodore and Honoria, paraphrased from Boccaccio, has been assigned a high place in poetry.

With this triumph Dryden's career closed. On May 1, 1700, only a few months after the publication of the fables, he died. With appropriate ceremony he was buried in Westminster Abbey near the graves of Chaucer and Cowley.

In poetry, Dryden was preeminent as a satirist, and it is by his poetry that he ranks to-day as the greatest man of letters of the Restoration period. In his plays, notable as they are, he is matched by a number of his contemporaries; in his odes and occasional poems he is far excelled by the poets of the Romantic movement, but in his satires he is without a rival in English literature. His perfection of versification, its variety now vigorous and epigrammatic and again easy and flowing; his attitude of studied and polished contempt, not bursting with an assumed righteous indignation like the classical Romans, but marked with the cool scorn of a superior to his inferior; his careful identification of individual and type, thus losing nothing of the personal bite and force and gaining much of dignity and perpetual interest; his mastery of invective; his manipulation of argument these qualities raise Absalom and Achitophel and MacFlecknoe into a class by themselves.

ALEXANDER POPE

ALEXANDER POPE was born May 21, 1688, the year of the bloodless revolution that placed William of Orange on the English throne. His father, Alexander Pope, was a prosperous linen merchant of London, and, in religion, a stanch Catholic. His mother, Edith Turner, was one of the seventeen children of a Yorkshire gentleman. The child inherited from his parents, who were forty-six years old at his birth, the double curse of a deformed body and a feeble constitution. Throughout his whole life his career was marked by the morbid sensitiveness to praise or blame and by the nervous irritability of temper that so often accompany physical weaknesses or peculiarities.

Pope's youth and education were strongly affected by his family's religious faith. Catholics were at the time forbidden public worship, were barred from public office, and were socially handicapped. As a child of Catholic parents, Pope could not have the benefits of the great schools of England. Eton, Westminster, and the like were closed to him, and the universities likewise. He was taught for a while by a priest, for a while in a small private school in London; but from a very early age he educated himself by omnivorous reading, lightly in philosophy, theology, and the languages, deeply in literature and poetry.

His ambition to be a man of letters, a poet, was fully formed at a very early age, and developed with no deviations through his whole life. His ultimate triumph was an example of the power of intellect over physical, political, and social obstacles. He rose to be the acknowledged poet of England, the man whose work was the dominating influence in his time.

The period was really a period of prose. The clear, easy style begun by Dryden flowered in Addison's essays, Swift's satires, Fielding's stories, Gibbon's history, and Burke's speeches. The poetry, in comparison with that of great inspirational ages, seems prosaic. It was witty, clever, ornate, correct, but lacked the enthusiastic fire of the Elizabethan age or the high moral spirit of the Miltonic. The tendency in poetry was toward the didactic and satirical verse rather than the lyrical, the epic, or the dramatic.

Pope's earliest work worth attention was written and published when he was in his teens. These "Pastorals," modeled upon Theocritus and Virgil according to the fast-dying fashion of the time, hardly deserve attention except for the evidence they bear as to their author's precocity. They comply with the poetic conventions and refer to nymphs, and swains, Daphnis, Damon, Sylvia, Delia, Colin, Daphne, etc., but they are artificial forms, cold and uninteresting.

Of far greater importance were the Essay on Criticism, written in 1709 and published two years later, and the Rape of the Lock, written and published in 1711 and 1712. By these two poems Pope gained at a stroke a commanding place among the poets of his time. The Essay on Criticism, was applauded by his contemporaries as a masterpiece. They marveled at the wisdom, taste, and metrical skill of the new poet, as exhibited in this review of the art of poetry as set forth in Horace, Boileau, and the classicists of the 18th century. An unusual number of its lines and phrases have, by their perfection of expression, become a part of our store of aphorisms, as "To err is human, to forgive divine," "A little learning is a dangerous thing,” “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” etc.

The second of these early works stands far higher in our estimation to-day. The Rape of the Lock is unique in our literature. It is a trifle, to be sure, based on a quarrel between a maid of honor and a courtier who, without permission snipped off a lock of her hair, but the incident is so exquisitely handled, the treatment is so polished, witty, and vivacious that its popularity has persisted. In his long mock-heroic poem, Pope satirizes the court life of the time, revealing the mannerisms of society and giving to us of a later age a lively picture of the card-playing, tea-drinking, dresses, parties, and other frivolities which occupied the days of the society beaux and belles.

One other publication of this early period of Pope's development deserves mention. The Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady and Eloisa to Abelard, which both appeared in 1717, remain Pope's chief poems of a sentimental type. They are technically perfect, with that same perfection which is one of the most marked characteristics of all of Pope's poetry, and are vivid in their portrayal of pathetic situations. They never, however, rise from pathos to tragedy; it seems as though the artist in Pope overcame the emotional inspiration, for we always seem to discern beneath the cleverly treated situations the moving finger of the author.

Pope's prominence gained by these poems brought him into immediate contact with some of the chief figures of his age. Still a young man - he was less than thirty upon the publication of Eloisa to Abelard - he had every prospect of a long, successful, and happy career, but his acutely sensitive nature prevented. His personal history from the first days of his literary renown is a wearisome and disgusting succession of petty squabbles and intrigues. Much can be excused the morbidly irritable cripple, but his character can never be wholly cleared from the meannesses, the vanities, the personal spites and fits of ill-temper, the unworthy jealousies that stain his relations with his fellow authors. He alienated his friends and gave weapons to his enemies by his quarrel with the easy-natured Addison, by his attacks upon the poet Dennis, by his abnormal sensitiveness to well-intentioned criticism, by his shameless falsehoods and subterfuges where he saw an opportunity to increase his reputation for brilliancy or precocity, by his inadequate acknowledgment of the assistance of his collaborators in the translation of the Odyssey, by his conspiracy to have his correspondence published and his subsequent attacks upon the publisher. During all the years of his literary supremacy the sordid record of his weaknesses and littlenesses runs parallel.

In the flush of his early success, Pope was encouraged to undertake the great task of rendering Homer into English verse. His friends helped along the subscription list. He took his task with great seriousness and put his best effort into it. The project must have been suggested about 1713 and the last volume of the Odyssey appeared in 1726, so that for a dozen years he gave his time undividedly to his work. His success was immediate. Johnson calls the rendering “the noblest version of poetry the world has ever seen," and succeeding critics have acknowledged the force and liveliness of its style. The pecuniary reward which Pope received was enormous