receipts of the office have been the jokes, good and bad, the sneers, the satire of contemporary wits,--such being the paper currency in which the turbulent subjects of the laurel crown think proper to pay homage to their sovereign. From the days of Will Davenant to these of ours, the custom has been faithfully observed. Davenant's earliest assailants were of his own political party, followers of the exiled Charles, the men whom Milton describes as "perditissimus ille peregrinantium aulieorum grex." These--among them a son of the memorable Donne, Sir John Denham, and Alan Broderick--united in a volume of mean motive and insignificant merit, entitled, "Verses written by Several of the Author's Friends, to be reprinted with the Second Edition of Gondibert." This was published in 1653. The effect of the onslaught has not been recorded. We know only that Davenant, surviving it, continued to prosper in his theatrical business, writing most of the pieces produced on his stage until the Restoration, when he drew forth from its hiding-place his wreath of laurel-evergreen, and resumed it with honor.
A fair retrospect of Davenant's career enables us to select without difficulty that one of his labors which is most deserving of applause. Not his "Gondibert," notwithstanding it abounds in fine passages,--notwithstanding Gay thought it worth continuation and completion, and added several cantos,--notwithstanding Lamb eulogized it with enthusiasm, Southey warmly praised, and Campbell and Hazlitt coolly commended it. Nor his comedies, which are deservedly forgotten; nor his improvements in the production of plays, serviceable as they were to the acting drama. But to his exertions Milton owed impunity from the vengeance otherwise destined for the apologist of regicide, and so owed the life and leisure requisite to the composition of "Paradise Lost." Davenant, grateful for the old kindness of the ex-secretary, used his influence successfully with Charles to let the offender escape.<a href="#1.18">[18]</a> This is certainly the greenest of Davenant's laurels. Without it, the world might not have heard one of the sublimest expressions of human genius.
Davenant died in 1668. The laurel was hung up unclaimed until 1670, when John Dryden received it, with patent dated back to the summer succeeding Davenant's death. Dryden assures us that it was Sir Thomas Clifford, whose name a year later lent the initial letter to the "Cabal," who presented him to the king, and procured his appointment.<a href="#1.19">[19]</a> Masques had now ceased to be the mode. What the dramatist could do to amuse the blasé court of Charles II. he was obliged to do within the limits of legitimate dramatic representation, due care being taken to follow French models, and substitute the idiom of Corneille and Molière for that of Shakspeare. Dryden, whose plays are now read only by the curious, was, in 1670, the greatest of living dramatists. He had expiated his Cromwellian backslidings by the "Astraea Redux," and the "Annus Mirabilis." He had risen to high favor with the king. His tragedies in rhyming couplets were all the vogue. Already his fellow-playwrights deemed their success as fearfully uncertain, unless they had secured, price three guineas, a prologue or epilogue from the Laureate. So fertile was his own invention, that he stood ready to furnish by contract five plays a year,--a challenge fortunately declined by the managers of the day. Thus, if the Laureate stipend were not punctually paid, as was often the case, seeing the necessitous state of the royal finances and the bevy of fair ladies, whose demands, extravagant as they were, took precedence of all others, his revenues were adequate to the maintenance of a family, the matron of which was a Howard, educated, as a daughter of nobility, to the enjoyment of every indulgence. These were the Laureate's brightest days. His popularity was at its height, a fact evinced
