Dryden gained by this writing an income of a couple of thousand pounds a year, which was the top-notch for a literary fellow in England. Also he became poet laureate, and an intimate of the king; in short, he reached the heights. But alas, greatness has its penalties, as the poet soon discovered, caught in the poisonous intrigues of a vile court. He was accused of having written a slanderous poem, and one of his noble enemies hired some bullies to beat him up one night. Also, a muck-raking parson by the name of Jeremy Collier came along and lashed him in a book entitled “A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage.” To all his other literary and political enemies the poet showed himself a voluble antagonist; but to the Reverend Jeremy he had nothing to answer. He began, apparently, to realize the seriousness of life, and took to writing propaganda for his gang. He produced a series of political tracts, satirical and didactic verses upon which he expended great technical skill. Professor Saintsbury points out these literary beauties; but again he specifies: in appreciating them, the reader has to bear in mind that what Dryden proved today he may have disproved yesterday, and he may prove something different tomorrow. Lacking this acrobatic ability, I can only record my opinion, that these most famous verses are snarling and odious quarrels, of exactly as much importance to mankind as the yelps in a dog-fight. One of them was a poem full of enraptured praise for the Anglican church. The poet at this time was listed for a salary of a hundred pounds a year as poet laureate; but the salary was badly in arrears, and somebody must have pointed out to him that his new sovereign, King James II, was an ardent Catholic. So the poet became converted to Catholicism, and wrote an equally enraptured poem in praise of that. But, alas! it was a bad guess; shortly afterwards His Most Catholic Majesty was kicked out of England, and William of Orange was brought over, and the country was Protestant again. This was the period when the Vicar of Bray had such a hard time holding his job; and our court poet also suffered, losing most of his perquisites, and having to go to work again. He was an old man now, and decided to play safe; he made a verse translation of Virgil, for which nobody could scold him. Nobody did, and he died full of honors, and had a “sufficiently splendid funeral” in Westminster Abbey, “with a great procession, preceded at the College by a Latin oration, and by the singing of Exegi Monumentum to music.” And so, if you like that sort of thing, there you have what you like; and if you have Dryden’s talents, and are willing to sell them to the ruling classes, I can drive you over to Hollywood any day, and introduce you to the fellows who will start you off at twenty thousand a year, and raise you to two hundred thousand as soon as you have begun to deliver the goods. CHAPTER XL GLORY PROPAGANDA