Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/472

452 probable he gave him the profits of his two plays, The She Gallants, and Heroick Love, the former acted in 1696, the latter in Jan. 1697–8. Before Heroick Love were some encomiastic verses by Dryden. In the preface to the She Gallants Granville says that he gave the benefit of it to a friend; and that if his friend had a third day to his satisfaction he had obtained his end.

(Of the correctness of this story he afterwards found some reason to doubt; but the main facts are probably true.)

Dryden, it appears, was not displaced from his offices by the strong hand of authority as generally supposed; but as he himself has told us, conscientiously relinquished them on the lst August, 1689, by refusing to take the oaths of supremacy and abjuration which were appointed by the first parliament of King William to be taken by every person holding office under the Crown.

Addison, in his  Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, has admitted the following lines, which were supplied by Hughes, as ascertained by a manuscript note in my possession.

Wycherley married twelve days before his death Elizabeth Jackson, one of the daughters and co