JAMES THE SECOND.

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and recited some profane and indecent doggrel, which he chap.called his recantation. * ~IgstT

With the name of Haines was joined, in many libels, the Dryden.name of a more illustrious renegade, JohnDryden. Drydenwas now approaching the decline of life. After many suc-cesses and many failures, he had at length attained, by gene-ral consent, the first place among living English poets. Hisclaims on the gratitude of James were superior to those of anyman of letters in the kingdom. But James cared little forverses and much for money. From the day of his accessionhe set himself to make small economical reforms, such asbring on a government the reproach of meanness without pro-ducing any perceptible relief to the finances. One of thevictims of his injudicious parsimony was the Poet Laureate.Orders were given that, in the new patent which the demiseof the crown made necessary, the annual butt of sack, origi-nally granted to Jonson, and continued to Jonson’s succes-sors, should be omitted.** This was the only notice whichthe King, during the first year of his reign, deigned to bestowon the mighty satirist who, in the very crisis of the greatstruggle of the Exclusion Bill, had spread terror through theWhig ranks. Dryden was poor and impatient of poverty. Heknew little and cared little about religion. If any sentimentwas deeply fixed in him, that sentiment was an aversion topriests of all persuasions, Levites, Augurs, Muftis, RomanCatholic divines, Presbytei’ian divines, divines of the Churchof England. He was not naturally a man of high spirit; andhis pursuits had been by no means such as were likely to giveelevation or delicacy to his mind. He had, during manyyears, earned his daily bread by pandaring to the vicioustaste of the pit, and by grossly flattering rich and noble pa-trons. Self-respect and a fine sense of the becoming were notto be expected from one who had led a life of mendicancy and

* See James Quin’s account of Haines in Davies’s Miscellanies;

Tom Brown’s Works; Lives of Sharpers; Dryden’s Epilogue to theSecular Masque.

'* This fact, which escaped the minute researches of Malone, appearsfrom the Treasury Letter Book of 1085.

Macaulay, History. III.

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