The "Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer," was Dryden's next composition. It is an imitation of "_Le Feint Astrologue_" of [T.] Corneille, which is founded upon Calderon's "_El Astrologo Fingido_." Several of the scenes are closely imitated from Molière's "_Dépit Amoureux_." Having that lively bustle, intricacy of plot, and surprising situation, which the taste of the time required, and being enlivened by the characters of Wildblood and Jacinta, the "Mock Astrologer" seems to have met a favourable reception in 1668, when it first appeared. It was printed in the same, or in the following year, and inscribed to the Duke of Newcastle, to whom Dryden had been indebted for the sketch of "Sir Martin Mar-all." It would seem, that this gallant and chivalrous peer was then a protector of Dryden, though he afterwards seems more especially to have patronised his enemy Shadwell; upon whose _northern_ dedications, inscribed to the duke and his lady, our author is particularly severe. In the preface to the "Evening's Love," Dryden anxiously justifies himself from the charge of encouraging libertinism, by crownings rake and coquette with success. But after he has arrayed all the authority of the ancient and modern poets, and has pleaded that these licentious characters are only made happy after being reclaimed in the last scene, we may be permitted to think, that more proper heroes may be selected than those, who, to merit the reward assigned them, must announce a violent and sudden change from the character they have sustained during five acts; and the attempt to shroud himself under authority of others, is seldom resorted to by Dryden when a cause is otherwise tenable. In this preface also he justified himself from the charge of plagiarism by showing that the mere story is the least part either of the labour of the poet, or of the graces of the poem; quoting against his critics the expression of the king, who had said, he wished those, who charged Dryden with theft, would always steal him plays like Dryden's. The "Royal Martyr" was acted in 1668-9, and printed in 1670. It is, in every respect, a proper heroic tragedy, and had a large share of the applause with which those pieces were then received. It abounds in bombast, but is not deficient in specimens of the sublime and of the tender. The preface is distinguished by that tone of superiority, which Dryden often assumed over the critics of the time. Their general observations he cut short, by observing, that those who make them produce nothing of their own, or only what is more ridiculous than any thing they reprehend. Special objections are refuted, by an appeal to classical authority. Thus the couplet, "And he, who servilely creeps after sense, Is safe, but ne'er will reach an excellence," is justified from the "_serpit humi tutus_" of Horace; and, by a still more forced derivation, the line, "And follow fate which does too fast pursue," is said to be borrowed from Virgil,