And when Dryden became a convert to the Catholic faith, he was, we have
seen, involved in an immediate and furious controversy with the clergy
of the Church of England. Thus, an unbeseeming strain of raillery,
adopted in wantonness, became aggravated, by controversy, into real
dislike and animosity. But Dryden, in the "Character of a Good Parson,"
seems determined to show that he could estimate the virtue of the
clerical order. He undertook the task at the instigation of Mr. Pepys,
the founder of the Library in Magdalen College, which bears his
name;[40] and has accomplished it with equal spirit and elegance; not
forgetting, however, to make his pattern of clerical merit of his own
jacobitical principles.
Another very pleasing performance, which entered [into] the Miscellany
called "The Fables," is the epistle to John Driden of Chesterton, the
poet's cousin. The letters to Mrs. Steward show the friendly intimacy in
which the relations had lived, since the opposition of the Whigs to King
William's government in some degree united that party in conduct, though
not in motive, with the favourers of King James. Yet our author's strain
of politics, as at first expressed in the epistle, was too severe for
his cousin's digestion. Some reflections upon the Dutch allies, and
their behaviour in the war, were omitted, as tending to reflect upon
King William; and the whole piece, to avoid the least chance of giving
offence, was subjected to the revision of Montague, with a deprecation
of his displeasure, an entreaty of his patronage, and the humiliating
offer, that, although repeated correction had already purged the spirit
out of the poem, nothing should stand in it relating to public affairs.
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