396

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

III.

characters to Spain, to France, and to the old English masters:but whatever our dramatists touched they tainted. In theirimitations the houses of Calderon’s stately and high spiritedCastilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakspeare’s Violaa procuress, Moliere’s Misanthrope a ravisher, Moliere’sAgnes an adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroicbut that it became foul and ignoble by transfusion throughthose foul and ignoble minds.

Such was the state of the drama; and the drama was thedepartment of polite literature in which a poet had the bestchance of obtaining a subsistence by his pen. The sale ofbooks was so small that a man of the greatest name couldexpect only a pittance for the copyright of the best per-formance. There cannot be a stronger instance than the fateof Dryden’s last production, the Fables. That volume waspublished when he was universally admitted to be the chief ofliving English poets. It contains about twelve thousand linesThe versification is admirable; the narratives and descrip-tions full of life. To this day Palamon and Arcite, Cymonand Iphigenia, Theodore and Honoria, are the delight bothof critics and of school-boys. The collection includes Alexan-der’s Feast, the noblest ode in our language. For the copy-right Dryden received two hundred and fifty pounds, lessthan in our days has sometimes been paid for two articles in areview. * Nor does the bargain seem to have been a hard one.For the book went off slowly; and the second edition was notrequired till the author had been ten years in his grave. Bywriting for the theatre it was possible to earn a much largersum with much less trouble. Southern made seven hundredpounds by one play.*’ Otway was raised from beggary totemporary affluence by the success of his Don Carlos.***Shadwell cleared a hundred and thirty pounds by a single

• The contract will be found in Sir Waller Scott's edition of Dryden.

'* See the Life of Southern, by Shiels.

See Rochester’s Trial of the Poets.