343


The  movements  that  led  immediately  to  the  Revo-
lution after  the  lirst  sharp  conflict  for  the  exclusion
of  James,  Duke  of  York,  from  the  succession  to  the
throne,  are  expressed  vigorously  in  the  literature
of  the  time ;  in  Dryden's  "Absalom  and  Achitophel,"
Samuel  Pordage's  "  Azaria  and  Husliai,"  Dryden's
"  Medal,"  Samuel  Pordage's  "  Medal  Reversed,"  and
many  other  pieces  upon  the  endeavour  of  the
king  to  crush  opposition  in  the  person  of  Lord
Shaftesburj'.  The  reasoning  on  Church  questions
in  Dryden's  "  Religio  Laici,"  though  nominally  Pro-
testant, maintained  the  same  principle  of  authoiity
as  the  safeguard  of  unity  that  he  asserted  live
years  later  in  the  "  Hind  and  Panther,"  when  the
natural  bias  of  his  mind  towards  that  i^rinciple  of
authority  which  had  brought  him  to  the  king's  side
carried  him  on  into  sincere  Catholicism.  Every
change  in  Dryden's  mind  was  natural  as  that  of
a  ball  placed  on  a  high  slope,  stationary  till  the
impulse  came  that  set  it  mo^Tug,  and  then  true  to
its  one  possible  course.  There  is  no  instance  in  his
life  of  change  against  the  bias,  and  he  stood  fitrm  on
the  gi'ound  to  which  he  at  last  came,  when  others,
■svhom  none  blame  for  it,  varied  opinions  with  the
times.  After  the  Revolution  John  Drydeu  ceased  to
be  laureate,  by  his  own  act,  because  he  would  not
take  the  formal  oaths  required  of  one  who  held  a
post  under  the  crown  upon  the  change  of  sovereign.
Charles  Montague,  who  was  to  be  a  foremost
statesman  of  the  Whigs,  first  earned  his  credit  as
a  wit  by  fulsome  verses  on  the  death  of  Charles  II.,
at  the  beginning  of  whose  reign  he  had  been  born.
