So soon as this great work was off his hands, by way, we suppose, as Scott was used to say, of "refreshing the machiner," Dryden wrote his famous ode, "Alexander's Feast," for a meeting of the Musical Society on St Cecilia's day,--wrote it, according to Bolingbroke, at one sitting, although he spent, it is said, a fortnight in polishing it into its present rounded and perfect form. It took the public by storm, and excited a greater sensation than any of the poet's productions, except "Absalom and Achitophel." Dryden himself, when complimented on it as the finest ode in the language, owned the soft impeachment, and said, "A nobler ode never was produced, and never will;" and in a manner, if not absolutely, he was right. Dryden was now again at sea for a subject. Sometimes he revolved once more his favourite plan of an Epic poem, and "Edward the Black Prince" loomed for a season before him as its hero. Sometimes he looked up with an ambitious eye to Homer, and we see his hand "pawing" like the hoof of the war-horse in Job, as he smelled his battle afar off, and panted to do for Achilles and Hector what he had done for Turnus and Æneas. He meant to have turned the "Iliad" into blank verse; but, after all, translated the only book of it which he published into rhyme. But, in fine, he determined to modernise some of the fine old tales of Boccacio and Chaucer; and in March 1699-1700, appeared his brilliant "Fables," with some other poems from his pen, for which he received £300 at Jonson's hands. This was his last publication of size, although he was labouring on when death surprised him, and within the last three weeks of his life had written the "Secular Margin," and the prologue and the epilogue to Fletcher's "Pilgrim,"--productions remarkable as showing the ruling passion strong in death,--the squabbling litterateur and satirist combating and kicking his enemies to the last,--Jeremy Collier, for having accused him of licentiousness in his dramas; Milbourne, for having attacked his "Georgics;" and poor Blackmore for having doubted the orthodoxy of "Religio Laici," and the decency of "Amphitryon" and "Limberham." He had now to go a pilgrimage himself to a far country. He had long been troubled with gout and gravel; but next came erysipelas in one of his legs; and at last mortification, superinduced by a neglected inflammation in his toe, carried him off at three o'clock on Wednesday morning the 1st of May 1700. He died a Roman Catholic, and in "entire resignation to the Divine will." He died so poor, that he was buried by subscription, Lords Montague and Jeffries delaying the interment till the necessary funds were raised. The body, after lying embalmed and in state for ten days in the College of Physicians, was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, where now, between the graves of Chaucer and Cowley, reposes the dust of Dryden.