Deprived now of royal patronage and pensions, Dryden turned again to the stage, his old-time purse-filler; and he produced two of his best plays, _Don Sebastian_ and _Amphitryon_. The rest of his life, however, was to be spent, not with the drama, but in translation and paraphrase. Since 1684 he had several times published _Miscellanies_, collections of verse in which had appeared fragments of translations. With that indefatigable energy which characterized him, he now devoted himself to sustained effort. In 1693 he published a translation of _Juvenal_, and in the same year began his translation of _Virgil_, which was published in 1697. The work was sold by subscription, and the poet was fairly well paid. Dryden's translations are by no means exact; but he caught the spirit of his poet, and carried something of it into his own effective verse. Dryden was not great in original work, but he was particularly happy in adaptation; and so it happened that his best play, _All for Love_, was modeled on Shakspere's _Antony and Cleopatra_, and his best poem, _Palamon and Arcite_, was a paraphrase of the _Knight's Tale_ of Chaucer. Contrary to the general taste of his age, he had long felt and often expressed great admiration for the fourteenth-century poet. His work on Ovid had first turned his thought to Chaucer, he tells us, and by association he linked with him Boccaccio. As his life drew near its close he turned to those famous old story-tellers, and in the _Fables_ gave us paraphrases in verse of eight of their most delightful tales, with translations from Homer and Ovid, a verse letter to his kinsman John Driden, his second _St. Cedlia's Ode_, entitled _Alexander's Feast_, and an _Epitaph_. The _Fables_ were published in 1700. They were his last work. Friends of the poet, and they were legion, busied themselves at the beginning of that year in the arrangement of an elaborate benefit performance for him at the Duke's Theater; but Dryden did not live to enjoy the compliment. He suffered severely from gout; a lack of proper treatment induced mortification, which spread rapidly, and in the early morning of the first of May, 1700, he died. He had been the literary figurehead of his generation, and the elaborate pomp of his funeral attested his great popularity. His body lay in state for several days and then with a great procession was borne, on the 13th of May, to the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. The last years of his life had been spent in fond study of the work of Chaucer, and so it happened that just three hundred years after the death of elder bard Dryden was laid to rest by the side of his great master. PALAMON AND ARCITE