[36]
While these controversies were raging, Dryden's time was occupied with
the translations or imitations of Chaucer and Boccacio. Among these, the
"Character of the Good Parson" is introduced, probably to confute
Milbourne, Blackmore, and Collier, who had severally charged our author
with the wilful and premeditated contumely thrown upon the clergy in
many passages of his satirical writings. This too seems to have inflamed
the hatred of Swift, who, with all his levities, was strictly attached
to his order, and keenly jealous of its honours.[37] Dryden himself
seems to have been conscious of his propensity to assail churchmen. "I
remember," he writes to his sons, "the counsel you gave me in your
letter; but dissembling, although lawful in some cases, is not my
talent; yet, for your sake, I will struggle with the plain openness of
my nature, and keep in my just resentments against that _degenerate
order_."[38] Milbourne, and other enemies of our author, imputed this
resentment against the clergy, to his being refused orders when he
wished to take them, in the reign of Charles, with a view to the
Provostship of Eton, or some Irish preferment.[39] But Dryden assures
us, that he never had any thoughts of entering the Church. Indeed, his
original offences of this kind may be safely ascribed to the fashionable
practice, after the Restoration, of laughing at all that was accounted
serious before that period.
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