The quails and manna should no longer rain:

Those miracles 'twas needless to renew;

The chosen flock has now the promised land in view.

Man was the first in God's design, and man was made the last.
False heroes, made by flattery so,

435

+ Cyclops serves for singular and plural with Dryden and in his time. It is the same with the word corps, now spelt corpse: an instance of the plural is in "The Hind and the Panther,"

part 1, 231:

"Their corps to perish, but their kind to last;"

and an instance of the singular in the Elegy on Lord Hastings:

"Whose corps might seem a constellation."

Alcides, Hercules, son of Jupiter and Alcmena; the jealous Juno sent two snakes to devour the infant in his cradle, and the infant seized the snakes and squeezed them to death.

Thus by degrees he rose to Jove's imperial seat;
Thus difficulties prove a soul legitimately great.'
Like his, our hero's infancy was tried;
Betimes the Furies did their snakes provide ;
And to his infant arms oppose

His father's rebels and his brother's foes;

The more oppressed, the higher still he rose.
Those were the preludes of his fate,
That formed his manhood, to subdue
The Hydra of the many-headed hissing crew.

17

As after Numa's peaceful reign

455

460

465

The martial Ancus did the sceptre wield,+
Furbished the rusty sword again,

Resumed the long-forgotten shield,

So James the drowsy genius wakes

And led the Latins to the dusty field;

470

Of Britain, long entranced in charms,
Restiff and slumbering on its arms;

'Tis roused, and with a new-strung nerve the spear already shakes,

No neighing of the warrior steeds,

No drum or louder trumpet needs

475

They lick the dust, and crouch beneath their fatal foe.

480

485

With conquest basely bought and with inglorious gain. 490

18

For once, O Heaven, unfold thy adamantine book;

And let his wondering senate see,

If not thy firm, immutable decree,

Compare with this passage the lines in "Britannia Rediviva" where the simile of the infant Alcides and the snakes is again introduced with a line much resembling this:

"For opposition makes a hero great."

Dryden is much at fault in this allusion to early Roman history, and, the mistakes being once made, it is strange that they were not corrected in his second edition, or in Jacob Tonson's third. "After Numa's peaceful reign" came the warlike Tullus Hostilius, who reigned thirty-two years; and then came Áncus Martius, who, so far from "leading the Latins to the dusty field," fought with the Latins, as Tullus Hostilius had done before, as the enemies of Rome.

At least the second page of strong contingency,
Such as consists with wills originally free.
Let them with glad amazement look

On what their happiness may be ;

Let them not still be obstinately blind,
Still to divert the good thou hast designed,
Or with malignant penury

495

500

To starve the royal virtues of his mind. +

Faith is a Christian's and a subject's test;

Oh give them to believe, and they are surely blest.

* Great in first edition instead of strong; and great reappeared in Tonson's folio volume of 1701. + The old spelling sterve occurs here in the two early editions. But starve is Dryden's usual spelling. The word is printed again sterve in the concluding couplet of a Prologue to the Univer sity of Oxford, as it appears in the first " Miscellany Poems," 1684:

"How ill soe'er our action may deserve,
Oxford's a place where wit can never sterve."

line 749

It is also so printed, rhyming with deserve, in "The Hind and the Panther," part 3.
But the pronunciation of sterve was doubtless starve, as of deserve and serve, desarve and sai
See desert rhyming with art in line 560 of “Absalom and Achitophel," and with part in line 169
of "The Medal."

The accent on the second syllable of retinue, as of revenue. So again,

Knights with a long retinue of their squires."
Palamon and Arcite, book 3, line 453-

"His house was stately, his retinue gay."

POPE, January and May, 445.

66

66

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

Within a twelvemonth after the accession of James II., the author of "Religio Laici" and of The Spanish Friar" became a Roman Catholic. James had succeeded to the throne February 6, 1685. There is an entry in Evelyn's Diary, January 19, 1686: 'Dryden, the famous play-writer, and his two sons and Mrs. Nelly (Miss to the late King) were said to go to mass; such proselytes were no great loss to the Church." It may be assumed that Dryden's conversion was influenced by a desire to ingratiate himself with the King. He was soon employed to defend, against Stillingfleet, the Reasons of James's first wife for becoming a Roman Catholic, which had been published by James since his accession to the throne. Then he set himself to compose a defence of his new religion in verse. "The Hind and the Panther" was published in April 1687; it was licensed April 11. Just one week before, April 4, James issued his famous Declaration of Indulgence for all dissenters from the Church of England, suspending all penal laws and abrogating all acts which imposed a religious test for any secular office. This indulgence for Protestant Dissenters as well as Roman Catholics was not in James's original intention; he began his reign by persecuting the former. His change of policy occurred after Dryden had begun his poem; and the Protestant Dissenters would not have been treated by him with the severity shown in the First Part of the Poem, if he had at first known James's intention. In the Preface he attempts to explain away this severity.

A second edition of "The Hind and the Panther" was published during the year 1687. The reprint of this poem in Tonson's folio collection of Dryden's poems published in 1701, thirteen years after the first appearance of "The Hind and the Panther," is there called the third edition. Some errors crept into this reprint and, as usual, some more have been added by subsequent editors.

Among many replies to "The Hind and the Panther" was one of exquisite humour, the joint production of two young men who afterwards attained celebrity, Charles Montague, the future Earl of Halifax, and Matthew Prior. This was a parody called "The Hind and the Panther Transversed to the Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse." The persona of "The Rehearsal," Bayes, Smith, and Johnson, were revived in this witty production.