Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/171

Rh too well timed to be sincere. The poet was born into a parliamentarian family, and after the death of Cromwell praised his rule in a copy of Heroic Stanzas on the late Lord Protector. When the king was restored, the poet welcomed him by publishing Astraea Redux. The rule of Richard Cromwell had converted many backsliders, and Johnson’s verdict is perfectly just: ‘The reproach of inconstancy was, on this occasion, shared with such numbers that it produced neither hatred nor disgrace; if he changed, he changed with the nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his reputation raised him enemies.’ On the accession of King James, Dryden declared himself a convert to Roman Catholicism. This has excited graver question, because his position at Court and his emoluments as poet laureate seemed concerned in the change. Yet any one who reads the Religio Laici with care will find, in that apology of a Church of England man, some curious portents of the later event.

—so Dryden had written in 1682. Johnson’s discussion of the change is a model of judgement: ‘That conversion will always be suspected that apparently concurs with interest. He that never finds his error till it hinders his progress towards wealth or honour will not be thought to love Truth only for herself. Yet it may easily happen that information may come at a commodious time; and as truth and interest are not by any fatal necessity at variance, that one may by accident introduce the other. When opinions are struggling into popularity, the arguments by which they are opposed or defended become more known; and he that changes his profession would