ce,--his inability to subscribe the test oaths would have
done so much,--but he was to be replaced by that one of his political
and literary antagonists whom he most sincerely disliked, and who
still writhed under his lash. Dorset appears to have executed the
disagreeable task with real kindness. He is said to have settled upon
the poet, out of his own fortune, an annuity equal to the lost
pension,--a statement which Dr. Johnson and Macaulay have repeated
upon the authority of Prior. What Prior said on the subject may be
found in the Dedication of Tonson's noble edition of his works to the
second Earl of Dorset:--"When, as Lord Chamberlain, he was obliged to
take the king's pension from Mr. Dryden, (who had long before put
himself out of a possibility of receiving any favor from the court,)
my Lord allowed him an equivalent out of his own estate. However
displeased with the conduct of his old acquaintance, he relieved his
necessities; and while he gave him his assistance in private, in
public he extenuated and pitied his error." But there is some reason
for thinking this equivalent was only the equivalent of one year's
salary, and this assistance casual, not stated; else we are at a loss
to understand the continual complaints of utter penury which the poet
uttered ever after. Some of these complaints were addressed to his
benefactor himself, as in the Dedication to Juvenal and Persius,
1692:--"Age has overtaken me, and _want_, a more insufferable
evil, through the change of the times, _has wholly disenabled
me_. Though I must ever acknowledge, to the honor of your Lordship,
and the eternal memory of your charity, that, since this revolution,
wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and
the loss of that poor subsistence I had from two kings, whom I served
more faithfully than profitably to myself,--then your Lordship was
pleased, out of no other motive than your own nobleness, without any
desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most
bountiful _present_, which, in that time when I was most in want
of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief." This
passage was the sole authority, we suspect, Prior had for a story
which was nevertheless sufficiently true to figure in an adulatory
dedication; and, indeed, Prior may have used the word "equivalent"
loosely, and had Dorset's gift been more than a year's income, Dryden
would hardly have called it a "present,"--a phrase