"
There were also prefixed to the "Fables," those introductory verses
addressed to the beautiful Duchess of Ormond,[43] which have all the
easy, felicitous, and sprightly gallantry, demanded on such occasions.
The incense, it is said, was acknowledged by a present of L500; a
donation worthy of the splendid house of Ormond. The sale of the
"Fables" was surprisingly slow: even the death of the author, which has
often sped away a lingering impression, does not seem to have increased
the demand; and the second edition was not printed till 1713, when,
Dryden and all his immediate descendants being no more, the sum
stipulated upon that event was paid by Tonson to Lady Sylvius, daughter
of one of Lady Elizabeth Dryden's brothers, for the benefit of his
widow, then in a state of lunacy.--See Appendix, vol. xviii.
The end of Dryden's labours was now fast approaching; and, as his career
began upon the stage, it was in some degree doomed to terminate there.
It is true, he never recalled his resolution to write no more plays; but
Vanbrugh having about this time revised and altered for the Drury-lane
theatre, Fletcher's lively comedy of "The Pilgrim," it was agreed that
Dryden, or, as one account says, his son Charles,[44] should have the
profits of a third night on condition of adding to the piece a Secular
Masque, adapted to the supposed termination of the seventeenth
century;[45] a Dialogue in the Madhouse between two Distracted Lovers;
and a Prologue and Epilogue.
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