Cromwellian backslidings by the "Astraea Redux," and the "Annus
Mirabilis." He had risen to high favor with the king. His tragedies
in rhyming couplets were all the vogue. Already his fellow-playwrights
deemed their success as fearfully uncertain, unless they had secured,
price three guineas, a prologue or epilogue from the Laureate. So
fertile was his own invention, that he stood ready to furnish by
contract five plays a year,--a challenge fortunately declined by the
managers of the day. Thus, if the Laureate stipend were not punctually
paid, as was often the case, seeing the necessitous state of the royal
finances and the bevy of fair ladies, whose demands, extravagant as
they were, took precedence of all others, his revenues were adequate
to the maintenance of a family, the matron of which was a Howard,
educated, as a daughter of nobility, to the enjoyment of every
indulgence. These were the Laureate's brightest days. His popularity
was at its height, a fact evinced by the powerful coalitions deemed
necessary to diminish it. Indeed, the laurel had hardly rested upon
Dryden's temples before he experienced the assaults of an organized
literary opposition. The Duke of Buckingham, then the admitted leader
of fashionable prodigacy, borrowed the aid of Samuel Butler, at whose
"Hudibras" the world was still laughing,--of Thomas Sprat, then on the
high-road to those preferments which have given him an important place
in history,--of Martin Clifford, a familiar of the green-room and
coffee-house,--and concocted a farce ridiculing the person and office
of the Laureate. "The Rehearsal" was acted in 1671. The hero,
_Mr. Bayes_, imitated all the personal peculiarities of Dryden,
used his cant phrases, burlesqued his style, and exposed, while
pretending to defend, his ridiculous points, until the laugh of the
town was fairly turned upon the "premier-poet of the realm." The wit
was undoubtedly of the broadest, and the humor at the coffee-room
level; but it was so much the more effective. Dryden affected to be