Dryden, John

a celebrated English poet, "glorious John," born in North amp tons hire, of a good family of Puritan principles; educated at Westminster School and Cambridge; his first poetic production of any merit was a set of "heroic stanzas" on the death of Cromwell; at the Restoration he changed sides and wrote a poem which he called "Astræa Redux" in praise of the event, which was ere long followed by his "Annus Mirabilis," in commemoration of the year 1666, which revealed at once the poet and the royalist, and gained him the appointment of poet-laureate, prior to which and afterwards he produced a succe ion of plays for the stage, which won him great popularity, after which he turned his mind to political affairs and a umed the role of political satirist by production of his "Absalom and Achitophel," intended to expose the schemes of Shaftesbury, represented as Achitophel and Mon mouth as Absalom, to oust the Duke of York from the succe ion to the throne; on the acce ion of James II. he became a Roman Catholic, and wrote "The Hind and the Panther," characterised by Stop ford Brooke as "a model of melodious reasoning in behalf of the milk-white hind of the Church of Rome," and really the most powerful thing of the kind in the language; at the Revolution he was deprived of his posts, but it was after that event he executed his translation of Virgil, and produced his celebrated odes and "Fables" (1631-1700).