Not long after the accession of James II., Dryden, true to his policy of being always on the side of the ruling party, became a Catholic, and wrote "The Hind and the Panther," in which he eulogized many things that, in the former poem, he had ridiculed. His political career ended with the overthrow of James II., in 1688; but his literary activity continued unabated. The last years of his life were occupied in translating the works of Persius and Juvenal and the Æneid of Virgil. In 1697 he wrote "Alexander's Feast"; and his "modernizations" of some of Chaucer's poems appeared in 1700, the year of his death. "If there is grandeur in the pomp of kings and the march of hosts," says A. W. Ward, "in the 'trumpet's loud clangor' and in tapestries and carpetings of velvet and gold, Dryden is to be ranked with the grandest of English poets. The irresistible impetus of an invective which never falls short or flat, and the savor of a satire which never seems dull or stale, give him an undisputed place among the most glorious of English wits." "His descriptive power was of the highest," says Hales. "Our literature has in it no more vigorous portrait-gallery than that he has bequeathed it. His power of expression is beyond praise. There is always a singular _fitness_ in his language: he uses always the right word. He is one of our greatest masters of metre: metre was, in fact, no restraint to him, but rather it seems to have given him freedom. It has been observed that he argues better in verse than in prose; verse was the natural costume of his thoughts." Professor Masson says: "Not only is Dryden the largest figure in one era of our literature: he is a very considerable figure also in our literature as a whole. Of all that he wrote, however, there is but a comparatively small portion that has won for itself a permanent place in our literature." =Other Poems to be Read:= Absalom and Achitophel; Mac Flecknoe; Religio Laici; Threnodia Augustalis. REFERENCES: Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_; Hazlitt's _English Poets_; Lowell's _Among My Books_; Macaulay's _Essay on John Dryden_; Taine's _English Literature_; Masson's _Three Devils and Other Essays_; Thackeray's _English Humorists_. John Milton. ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY. I. This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heav'ns eternal King, Of wedded Maid and Virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring: For so the holy Sages once did sing: That he our deadly forfeit should release,{1} And with his Father work us a perpetual peace. II. The glorious form, that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of majesty, Wherewith he wont{2} at Heav'ns high council-table To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, He laid aside; and, here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.{3} III.