" They
were performed in 1669-70, and received with unbounded applause. Before
we consider the effect which they, and similar productions, produced on
the public, together with the progress and decay of the taste for heroic
dramas, we may first notice the effect which the ascendency of our
author's reputation had produced upon his situation and fortunes.
Whether we judge of the rank which Dryden held in society by the
splendour of his titled and powerful friends, or by his connections
among men of genius, we must consider him as occupying at this time, as
high a station in the very foremost circle as literary reputation could
gain for its owner. Independent of the notice with which he was honoured
by Charles himself, the poet numbered among his friends most of the
distinguished nobility. The great Duke of Ormond had already begun that
connection which subsisted between Dryden and three generations of the
house of Butler; Thomas Lord Clifford, one of the Cabal ministry, was
uniform in patronising the poet, and appears to have been active in
introducing him to the king's favour; the Duke of Newcastle, as we have
seen, loved him sufficiently to present him with a play for the stage;
the witty Earl of Dorset, then Lord Buckhurst, and Sir Charles Sedley,
admired in that loose age for the peculiar elegance of his loose poetry,
were his intimate associates, as is evident from the turn of the "Essay
of Dramatic Poesy," where they are speakers; Wilmot Earl of Rochester
(soon to act a very different part) was then anxious to vindicate
Dryden's writings, to mediate for him with those who distributed the
royal favour, and was thus careful, not only of his reputation, but his
fortune.
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