us 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 completed their studies at Cambridge, and had been
welcomed as promising novices in the literary coffee-houses 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 aspiring; both had keen
and vigorous minds; both afterwards climbed high; both united in a
remarkable degree the love of letters with skill in those departments of
business for which men of letters generally have a strong distaste. Of
the fifty poets whose lives Johnson has written, Montague and Prior were
the only two who were distinguished by an intimate knowledge of trade
and finance. Soon their paths diverged widely. Their early friendship
was dissolved. One of them became the chief of the Whig party, and was
impeached by the Tories. The other was entrusted with all the mysteries
of Tory diplomacy, and was long kept close prisoner by the Whigs. At
length, after many eventful years, the associates, so long parted, were
reunited in Westminster Abbey.

Whoever has read the tale of the Hind and Panther with attention must
have perceived that, while that work was in progress, a great alteration
took place in the views of those who used Dryden as their interpreter.
At first the Church of England is mentioned with tenderness and respect,
and is exhorted to ally herself with the Roman Catholics against the
Puritan sects: but at the close of the poem, and in the preface, which
was written after the poem had been finished, the Protestant Dissenters
are in