e
stirred up a posse of his creatures to assist him in seeking, by
falsehoods, hypercriticisms, and abuse, to diminish the influence and
take away the good name of his opponent. The Satanic spirit is always
the same--its weapons and instruments are continually changing.

Soon after this, Dryden translated the Epistles of Ovid, thus breathing
himself for the far greater efforts which were before him. His mind
seems, for a season, to have balanced between various poetic plans. On
the one hand, the finger of his good genius showed him the fair heights
of epic song, waiting to be crowned by the coming of a new Virgil; on
the other side, the fierce fires of his passions pointed him downwards
to his many rivals and foes--the Cliffords, Leighs, Ravenscrofts,
Rochesters, and Settles--who seemed lying as a mark for his satiric
vengeance. He meditated, we know, an epic on Arthur, the hero of the
Round Table, and had, besides, many arrears of wrath lying past for
discharge; but circumstances arose which turned his thoughts away, for a
season, in a different direction from either Arthur or his personal
foes.

The political aspects of the times were now portentous in the extreme.
Charles II. had, partly by crime, partly by carelessness, and partly by
ill-fortune, become a most unpopular monarch, and the more so, because
the nation had no hope even from his death, since it was sure to hand
them over to the tender mercies of his brother, who had all his faults,
and some, in addition, of his own, without any of his merits. There was
but one hope, and that turned out a mere aurora borealis, connected with
the Duke of Monmouth, who, through his extraction by a bend sinister
from Charles, as well as through his popular manners, Protestant
principles, and gracious exterior, had become such a favourite with the
people, that strong efforts were made to exclude the Duke of York, and
to exalt him to the succession. These, however, were unsuccessful; and
Shaftesbury, their leading spirit, was accused of treason, and confined
to the Tower. It was at this crisis, when the nobility of the land were
divided, when its clergy were divided, when its literary men were
divided,--not in a silent feud, but in a raging rupture, that Dryden,
partly at the instigation of the Court, partly from his own impulse,
lifted up his powerful pen,--the sceptre of the press,--and, with
wonderful facility and felicity, wrote, and on the 17th November 1681,
published,