l withdraw
himself from his ancient standard when the tide of battle beats against
it. On the other hand, those who at such a period admit conviction to
the better and predominant doctrine, are viewed with hatred by the
members of the deserted creed, and with doubt by their new brethren in
faith. Many who adopted Christianity in the reign of Constantine were
doubtless sincere proselytes, but we do not find that any of them have
been canonised. These feelings must be allowed powerfully to affect the
mind, when we reflect that Dryden, a servant of the court and zealously
attached to the person of James, to whom he looked for the reward of
long and faithful service, did not receive any mark of royal favour
until he professed himself a member of the religion for which that king
was all but an actual martyr. There are other considerations, however,
greatly qualifying the conclusions which might be drawn from these
suspicious circumstances, and tending to show, that Dryden's conversion
was at least in a great measure effected by sincere conviction. The
principal clew to the progress of his religious principles is to be
found in the poet's own lines in "The Hind and the Panther," and may, by
a very simple commentary, be applied to the state of his religious
opinions at different periods of his life:--

"My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires;
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,
Followed false lights, and, when their glimpse was gone,
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
Such was I, such by nature still I am;
Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame!"

The "vain desires" of Dryden's "thoughtless youth" require no
explanation: they obviously mean, that inattention to religious duties
which the amusements of youth too frequently occasion. The "false
lights" which bewildered the poet's manhood, were, I doubt not, the
puritanical tenets, which, coming into the world under the auspices of
his fanatical relations, Sir Gilbert Pickering and Sir John Driden, he
must have at least professed, but probably seriously entertained. It
must be remembered, that the poet was thirty years of age at the
Restoration, so that a considerable space of his full-grown manhood had
passed while the rigid doctrines of the fanatics were still the order of
the day. But the third state of his opinions, those "sparkles which his
pride struck out," after the delusions of puritanism had vanished; in
other words, those