Dryden's place, talents, and mode of thinking,
qualified him for this task. He was the poet-laureate and household
servant of the king thus tumultuously assailed. His vein of satire was
keen, terse, and powerful, beyond any that has since been displayed.
From the time of the Restoration, he had been a favourer of monarchy,
perhaps more so, because the opinion divided him from his own family. If
he had been for a time neglected, the smiles of a sovereign soon make
his coldness forgotten; and if his narrow fortune was not increased, or
even rendered stable, he had promises of provision, which inclined him
to look to the future with hope, and endure the present with patience.
If he had shared in the discontent which for a time severed Mulgrave
from the royal party, that cause ceased to operate when his patron was
reconciled to the court, and received a share of the spoils of the
disgraced Monmouth.[1] If there wanted further impulse to induce Dryden,
conscious of his strength, to mingle in an affray where it might be
displayed to advantage, he had the stimulus of personal attachment and
personal enmity, to sharpen his political animosity. Ormond, Halifax,
and Hyde, Earl of Rochester, among the nobles, were his patrons; Lee and
Southerne, among the poets, were his friends. These were partisans of
royalty. The Duke of York, whom the "Spanish Friar" probably had
offended, was conciliated by a prologue on his visiting the theatre at
his return from Scotland,[2] and it is said, by the omission of certain
peculiarly offensive passages, so soon as the play was reprinted.
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