the admiration that the poem
received when such allegories were in fashion. It was the chief cause of
the veneration with which Dryden was regarded by Pope, who, himself
educated in the Roman Catholic faith, was taken as a boy of twelve to
see the veteran poet in his chair of honour and authority at Wills's
coffee-house. It was also very open to ridicule, and was treated in this
spirit by Prior and Montagu, the future earl of Halifax, in _The Hind
and the Panther transversed to the story of the Country Mouse and the
City Mouse_. Dryden's other literary services to James were a savage
reply to Stillingfleet--who had attacked two papers published by the
king immediately after his accession, one said to have been written by
his late brother in advocacy of the Church of Rome, the other by his
late wife explaining the reasons for her conversion--and a translation
of a life of Xavier in prose. He had written also a panegyric of
Charles, _Threnodia Augustalis_, and a poem in honour of the birth of
James II.'s heir, under the title of _Britannia rediviva_ (1688).

Dryden did not abjure his new faith on the Revolution, and so lost his
office and pension as laureate and historiographer royal. For this act
of constancy he deserves credit, if the new powers would have considered
his services worth having after his frequent apostasies. His rival
Shadwell reigned in his stead. Dryden was once more thrown mainly upon
his pen for support. He turned again to the stage and wrote the plays
already enumerated. A great feature in the last decade of his life was
his translations from the classics. _Ovid's Epistles translated_
appeared in 1680; and numerous translations from Virgil, Horace, Ovid,
Lucretius and Theocritus appeared in the four volumes of _Miscellany
Poems_--_Miscellany Poems_ (1684), _Sylvae_ (1685), _Examen poeticum_
(1693), _The Annual Miscellany_ (1694 by the "most eminent hands"); in
1693 was published the verse translation of the _Satires_ of Juvenal and
of Persius by "Mr Dryden and several other eminent hands," which
contained his "Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of
Satire"; and in 1697 Jacob Tonson published his most important
translation, _The Works of Virgil_. The book, which was the result of
three years' labour, was a vigorous, rather than a close, rendering of
Virgil into the style of Dryden. Among other notable poems of this
period are the two "Songs for St Cecilia's Day," written for a London
musica