tempt to turn into rhyme the Paradise Lost. The story is told by the
elder Richardson, in his remarks on the tardy progress of Milton's great
work in the public opinion.[32] When Dryden did translate the First Book
of Homer, which he published with the Fables, he rendered it into rhyme;
nor have we sufficient ground to believe that he ever seriously
intended, in so large a work, to renounce the advantages which he
possessed, by his unequalled command of versification. That in other
respects the task was consonant to his temper, as well as talents, he
has himself informed us. "My thoughts," he says, in a letter to Halifax,
in 1699, "are at present fixed on Homer; and by my translation of the
first Iliad, I find him a poet more according to my genius than Virgil,
and consequently hope I may do him more justice, in his fiery way of
writing; which, as it is liable to more faults, so it is capable of more
beauties than the exactness and sobriety of Virgil. Since it is for my
country's honour, as well as for my own, that I am willing to undertake
this task, I despair not of being encouraged in it by your favour." But
this task Dryden was not destined to accomplish, although he had it so
much at heart as to speak of resuming it only three months before his
death.[33]

In the meanwhile, our author had engaged himself in making those
imitations of Boccacio and Chaucer, which have been since called the
"Fables;" and in spring 1699, he was in such forwardness, as to put into
Tonson's hands "seven thousand five hundred verses, more or less," as
the contract bears, being a partial delivery to account of ten thousand
verses, which by that deed he agreed to furnish, for the sum of two
hundred and fifty guineas, to be made up three hundred pounds upon
publication of the second edition. This second payment Dryden lived not
to receive. With the contents of this miscellaneous volume we are to
suppose him engaged, from the revisal of the Virgil, in 1697, to the
publication of the Fables, in March 1699-1700. This was the last period
of his labours, and of his life; and, like all the others, it did not
pass undisturbed by acrimonious criticism, and controversy. The dispute
with Milbourne we noticed, before dismissing the subject of Virgil; but
there were two other persons who, in their zeal for morality and
religion, chose to disturb the last years of the life of Dryden.

The indelicacy of the stage, being, in its earliest period, merely the