age." Pitiful apology! since, being the ablest man of his day, and
therefore bound to be before it, he was in reality behind it, his plays
excelling all contemporary productions in wickedness as well as in wit.
But his own "conduct was latterly irreproachable." This we doubt, and
Scott doubts so too. But even though it were true, it were damaging,
because it would deprive him of the plea of passion, and reduce him from
the warm human painter to the cold demon-like sculptor of unclean and
abominable ideas. It never can be forgotten, that whenever Dryden
translated a filthy play, he made it filthier than in the original, and
that he has once and again scattered his satyr-like fancies in spots
such as the Paradise of Milton, and the Enchanted Isle of Shakspeare,
which every imagination and every heart previously had regarded as holy
ground. The only extenuating circumstance we can mention is, that his
pruriency was latterly in part relinquished and much deplored by
himself, and that his poetry is, on the whole, free from it. In our
critical paper, prefixed to the Second Volume, we intend to examine the
question, how far an author's faults are, or are not, to be charged upon
his age.

His next poem was "Annus Mirabilis," published in 1667, and counted
justly one of his most vigorous, though also one of the faultiest of his
poems. It includes glowing, although somewhat quaint and fantastic,
descriptions of the Dutch War and the Great Fire in London. In 1668, by
the death of Sir William Davenant, the post of Poet-Laureate became
vacant, and Dryden was appointed to it. He was also appointed
historiographer-royal. The salary of these two offices amounted to £200
a year, besides the famous annual butt of canary, while his profits from
the theatre were equivalent to £300. His whole income was thus, at the
very least, equal to a thousand pounds of our money--a great sum for a
poet in that or in any age. He published, the same year, an Essay on