p. 400 _Mrs. Behn’s Satyr on Dryden._ This acrid attack upon the great laureate is ungenerous to a degree, and Mrs. Behn’s jibes are the more surprising, inasmuch as she had always been Tory to the backbone and a particular partisan of King James II. No doubt continued ill health and a hard struggle are largely responsible for her bad temper. There can be no question that Dryden’s conversion was absolutely conscientious, and his line of action at the Revolution amply proves his sincerity. Few, if any, critics would to-day venture to echo Macaulay’s discredited pronouncements, doubly dangerous that they are from the vigour and charm of their expression. Burnet’s partisan libels and denunciation of Dryden can be dismissed as impertinent and groundless. It is not to be supposed that on such an occasion the whole horde of waspish Lilliputians, who hated the genius of glorious John, would not pour forth a very torrent of venom and slime. Such impotent pasquils as _The Renegado Poet_, and _To Mr._ Dryden _upon his declaring himself a Roman Catholic_ abound. Dryden, so far as we know, had always shown himself kindly to Mrs. Behn. He included her paraphrase of Ovid’s _OEnone to Paris_ in the translation of Ovid’s Epistles ‘by several Hands’ (1680), and took care to pay her a graceful compliment in the preface. Further, he allowed a prologue of his own to be used at the production of her posthumous play, _The Widow Ranter_, in 1690. His letter of advice to Corinna (Mrs. Thomas), which, with an acknowledgement of the freedom of some of his own scenes, bids her refrain from following the carelessness of the illustrious Astrea, was written with reference to the mitigated taste of the last years of the seventeenth century when Collier had already penned his diatribe of decorum, rather than as a rebuke of, or a reflection upon Mrs. Behn.