Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/160

146. Sir Gilbert had been one of the Judges who had condemned Charles I. to death. When Charles II. returned, the knight sought safety in obscurity and retired into private life. Dryden, therefore, had nothing to look to in this quarter, and so he paid his homage to the rising sun, and produced "Astrea Redux," and added a "Panegyric on his Sacred Majesty." He now seems to have determined on devoting himself to a literary life. The theatres, so long closed by the austerity of the Puritans, became popular places of amusement when the Merry Monarch was restored. He planned and wrote a portion of "The Duke of Guise," but was dissuaded from finishing it by the advice of some friends.

In the vindication of that play, which he published in the form of an appendix to it, he writes:

"In the year of his Majesty's happy return, the first play I undertook was 'The Duke of Guise,' as the fairest way which the act of indemnity had left of setting forth the rise of the late rebellion, and by exploding the villanies of it upon the stage, to caution posterity against the like errors."

The play was afterwards acted in 1682.

The first drama of Dryden's which was exhibited on the stage, was "The Wild Gallant," a comedy. It fully merits the depreciatory criticism of Pepys, who tells us that it was ill acted, and "so poor a thing as I never saw in my life, and so little answering the name that I could not, nor can tell at this time which was the Wild Gallant." It was patronised by Lady Castlemaine, to whom Dryden in consequence wrote some grateful verses, for which he has been ridiculed. It has the faults visible in many first attempts at humorous dramatic writing; and it has faults peculiar to the particular circumstances under which it was produced. Dryden had but little dramatic power, an assertion which can be proved by instances from almost