We must, at the same time, recollect that though Dryden is
nowhere censured for extravagance, poets are seldom capable of minute
economy, and that Lady Elizabeth was by education, and perhaps by
nature, unfitted for supplying her husband's deficiencies. These halcyon
days, too, were but of short duration. The burning of the theatre, in
1670,[32] greatly injured the poet's income from that quarter; his
pension, like other appointments of the household establishment of
Charles II., was very irregularly paid; and thus, if his income was
competent in amount, it was precarious and uncertain.
Leaving Dryden for the present in the situation which we have described,
and which he occupied during the most fortunate period of his life, the
next Section may open with an account of the public taste at this time,
and of the revolution in it which shortly took place.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Malone's "History of the Stage."
[2] [Although criticism of the purely literary kind has been as much as
possible avoided in these notes, it seems necessary to say a few words
here to put the reader on his guard. Scott's acquaintance with the
English drama was extensive, but he was not equally well acquainted with
the French, and (as almost all persons in France as well as in England
were till recently) was all but ignorant of French drama before
Corneille The attribution of the French classical drama to the Scudery
romance and the influence of Louis XIV.
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