was all but an actual martyr. There are other considerations, however, greatly qualifying the conclusions which might be drawn from these suspicious circumstances, and tending to show, that Dryden's conversion was at least in a great measure effected by sincere conviction. The principal clew to the progress of his religious principles is to be found in the poet's own lines in "The Hind and the Panther," and may, by a very simple commentary, be applied to the state of his religious opinions at different periods of his life:-- "My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires; My manhood, long misled by wandering fires, Followed false lights, and, when their glimpse was gone, My pride struck out new sparkles of her own. Such was I, such by nature still I am; Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame!" The "vain desires" of Dryden's "thoughtless youth" require no explanation: they obviously mean, that inattention to religious duties which the amusements of youth too frequently occasion. The "false lights" which bewildered the poet's manhood, were, I doubt not, the puritanical tenets, which, coming into the world under the auspices of his fanatical relations, Sir Gilbert Pickering and Sir John Driden, he must have at least professed, but probably seriously entertained. It must be remembered, that the poet was thirty years of age at the Restoration, so that a considerable space of his full-grown manhood had passed while the rigid doctrines of the fanatics were still the order of the day. But the third state of his opinions, those "sparkles which his pride struck out," after the delusions of puritanism had vanished; in other words, those sentiments which he imbibed after the Restoration, and which immediately preceded his adoption of the Catholic faith, cannot be ascertained without more minute investigation. We may at the outset be easily permitted to assume, that the adoption of a fixed creed of religious principles was not the first business of our author, when that merry period set him free from the rigorous fetters of fanaticism. Unless he differed more than we can readily believe from the public feeling at that time, Dryden was satisfied to give to Caesar the things that were Caesar's, without being in a hurry to fulfil the counterpart of the precept. Foremost in the race of pleasure, engaged in labours alien from serious reflection, the favourite of the most lively and dissolute nobility whom England ever saw, religious thoughts were not, at this period, likely to intrude frequently upon his mind, or to be encouraged when they did so. The time, therefore, when Dryden began seriously to compare the doctrines of the contending sects of Christianity, was probably several years after the Restoration, when reiterated disappointment, and satiety of pleasure, prompted his mind to retire within itself, and think upon hereafter. The "_Religio Laici_" published in 1682, evinces that, previous to composing that poem, the