heart, upon a Church that undertakes to assume the whole
responsibility for the man's future on condition of his yielding to it
an unquestioning faith in the present.

An immediate result of his conversion was the production in 1687 of
one of his most deservedly famous poems, 'The Hind and the Panther.'
He began it with the idea of assisting in bringing about the
reconciliation between the Panther, typifying the Church of England,
and the Hind, typifying the Church of Rome. It is apparent that
before he finished it he saw that the project was hopeless. It is a
poem of over twenty-five hundred lines, of which the opening up to
line 150 is printed in this volume. Part of the passage here cited
contains, without professing it as an object, and probably without
intending it, the best defense that could be made for his change of
religion. The production in its entirety is remarkable for the skill
which its author displayed in carrying on an argument in verse. In
this he certainly had no superior among poets, perhaps no equal. The
work naturally created a great sensation in those days of fierce
political and religious controversy. Both it and its writer were made
the object of constant attack. A criticism, in particular, appeared
upon it in the shape of a dialogue in prose with snatches of verse
interspersed. It is usually known by the title of 'The Town Mouse and
the Country Mouse,' and was exalted at the time by unreasoning
partisanship into a wonderful performance. Even to the present day,
this dreary specimen of polemics is described as a very witty work by
those who have never struggled to read it. It was the production of
Charles Montagu, the future Earl of Halifax, and of Matthew Prior. A
story too is still constantly repeated that Dryden was much hurt by
the attacks of these two young men, to whom he had been kind, and wept
over their ingratitude. If he shed any tears at all upon the occasion,
they must have been due to the mortification he felt that any two
persons who had been admitted to his friendship should have been
guilty of twaddle so desperately tedious.

The flight of James and the accession of William and Mary threw Dryden
at once out of the favor of the court, upon which to a large extent he
had long depended for support. As a Jacobite he could not take the
oath of allegiance; but there is hardly any doubt that under any
circumstances he would have been deprived of the offices of place and
profit he held