titude. It is a
censure which might be bestowed with as much propriety upon the whole
population of England. The joyful expectations to which he gave
utterance were almost universal; and no other charge can well be
brought against him than that he had the ability and took the occasion
to express sentiments which were felt by nearly the entire nation.

From this time on, Dryden appears more and more in the public eye, and
slowly but steadily forged his way to the front as the representative
man of letters of his time. In 1670 he was appointed to the two
distinct offices of poet laureate and historiographer royal.
Thenceforward his relations with the court became close, and so they
did not cease to be until the expulsion of James II. In 1683 he
received a further mark of royal favor, in being made collector of
customs of the port of London. In the political controversies which
subsequently arose, Dryden's writings faithfully represented the
sentiments of the side he had chosen, and expressed their prejudices
and aversions not merely with force but also with virulence. His first
literary activity, however, was on neutral ground. After eighteen
years of compulsory closing, the Restoration opened wide once more the
doors of the theatre. Dryden, like every one else possessed of
literary ability, began to write for the stage. His first play, a
comedy entitled 'The Wild Gallant,' was brought out in February 1663;
and for the eighteen years following, it was compositions of such
nature that occupied the main portion of his literary life. During
that time he produced wholly or in part twenty-two comedies and
tragedies. His pieces must from the outset have met with a fair degree
of success, otherwise the King's Company would not have entered into a
contract with him, as it did in 1667, to furnish for them each year a
fixed number of plays, in consideration of his receiving a certain
share of the profits of the theatre.

Yet it cannot be said that Dryden was in any respect a dramatist of
a high order. As a writer of comedy he was not only inferior to
contemporaries and immediate successors like Wycherley, Congreve,
Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, but in certain ways he was surpassed by
Shadwell, the very man whom he himself has consigned to a disagreeable
immortality as the hero of the 'MacFlecknoe.' His comedies are not
merely full of obscenity,--which seems to have been a necessary
ingredient to suit them to the taste of the age,--but