A few lines will exhibit at once the false statements and the absolute want of a spark of sorrow--dead, inanimate words, words, words! Thus long my grief has kept me drunk: Sure there 's a lethargy in mighty woe; Tears stand congealed, and cannot flow.
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Tears for a stroke foreseen, afford relief; But unprovided for a sudden blow, Like Niobe, we marble grow, And petrify with grief! DRYDEN'S CONVERSION .-- The Duke of York succeeded as James II.: he was an open and bigoted Roman Catholic, who at once blazoned forth the death-bed conversion of his brother; and who from the first only limited his hopes to the complete restoration of the realm to popery.

Dryden's course was at once taken; but his instinct was at fault, as but three short years were to show.

He gave in his adhesion to the new king's creed; he who had been Puritan with the commonwealth, and churchman with the Restoration, became Roman Catholic with the accession of a popish king.

He had written the _Religio Laici_ to defend the tenets of the Church of England against the attacks of papists and dissenters; and he now, to leave the world in no doubt as to his reasons and his honesty, published a poem entitled the _Hind and Panther_, which might in his earlier phraseology have been justly styled "The Christian experience of pious John Dryden." It seems a shameless act, but it is one exponent of the loyalty of that day.

There are some critics who believe him to have been sincere, and who insist that such a man "is not to be sullied by suspicion that rests on what after all might prove a fortuitous coincidence." But such frequent changes with the government--with a reward for each change--tax too far even that charity which "thinketh no evil." Dryden's pen was eagerly welcomed by the Roman Catholics.