The moral rebound, too, was tremendous; the debaucheries of the cavaliers of Charles I.were as nothing in comparison with the lewdness and filth of the court of Charles II.

To say that he brought in French fashions and customs, is to do injustice to the French: there never was a viler court in Europe than his own.

It is but in accordance with our historical theory that the literature should partake of and represent the new condition of things; and the most remarkable illustrations of this are to be found in the works of Dryden.
It may indeed with truth be said that we have now reached the most absolute of the literary types of English history.

There was no great event, political or social, which is not mirrored in his poems; no sentiment or caprice of the age which does not there find expression; no kingly whim which he did not prostitute his great powers to gratify; no change of creed, political or religious, of which he was not the recorder--few indeed, where royal favor was concerned, to which he was not the convert.

To review the life of Dryden himself, is therefore to enter into the chronicle and philosophy of the times in which he lived.