dramatists touched they tainted. In their imitations the houses of
Calderon's stately and highspirited Castilian gentlemen became sties of
vice, Shakspeare's Viola a procuress, Moliere's Misanthrope a ravisher,
Moliere's Agnes an adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic but
that it became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul and
ignoble minds.

Such was the state of the drama; and the drama was the department of
polite literature in which a poet had the best chance of obtaining a
subsistence by his pen. The sale of books was so small that a man of the
greatest name could hardly expect more than a pittance for the copyright
of the best performance. There cannot be a stronger instance than the
fate of Dryden's last production, the Fables. That volume was published
when he was universally admitted to be the chief of living English
poets. It contains about twelve thousand lines. The versification is
admirable, the narratives and descriptions full of life. To this day
Palamon and Arcite, Cymon and Iphigenia, Theodore and Honoria, are
the delight both of critics and of schoolboys. The collection includes
Alexander's Feast, the noblest ode in our language. For the copyright
Dryden received two hundred and fifty pounds, less than in our days has
sometimes been paid for two articles in a review. [175] Nor does the
bargain seem to have been a hard one. For the book went off slowly; and
the second edition was not required till the author had been ten years
in his grave. By writing for the theatre it was possible to earn a much
larger sum with much less trouble. Southern made seven hundred pounds by
one play. [176] Otway was raised from beggary to temporary affluence
by the success of his Don Carlos. [177] Shadwell cleared a hundred and
thirty pounds by a single representation of the Squire of Alsatia. [178]
The consequence was that every man who had to live by his wit wrote
plays, whether he had any internal vocation to write plays or not.
It was thus with Dryden. As a satirist he has rivalled Juvenal. As a
didactic poet he perhaps might, with care and meditation, have rivalled
Lucretius. Of lyric poets he is, if not the most sublime, the most
brilliant and spiritstirring. But nature, profuse to him of many rare
gifts, had withheld from him the dramatic faculty. Nevertheless all the
energies of his best years were wasted on dramatic composition. He
had too much judgment not to be aware that in the power of e