Of his first play, _The Duke of Guise_, which was unsuccessful, he tells us: "I undertook this as the fairest way which the Act of Indemnity had left us, as setting forth the rise of the great rebellion, and of exposing the villanies of it upon the stage, to precaution posterity against the like errors;"-- a rebellion the master-spirit of which he had eulogized upon his bier! His second play, _The Wild Gallant_, may be judged by the fact that it won for him the favor of Charles II.

and of his mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland.

Pepys saw it "well acted;" but says, "It hath little good in it." It is not our purpose to give a list of Dryden's plays; besides their occasional lewdness, they are very far inferior to his poems, and are now rarely read except by the historical student.

They paid him in ready money, and he cannot ask payment from posterity in fame.
On the 13th of January, 1667-8, (we are told by Pepys,) the ladies and the Duke of Monmouth acted _The Indian Emperour_ at court.
The same chronicler says: _The Maiden Queene_ was "mightily commended for the regularity of it, and the strain and wit;" but of the _Ladys a la Mode_ he says it was "so mean a thing" that, when it was announced for the next night, the pit "fell a laughing, because the house was not a quarter full." But Dryden, as a playwright, does not enjoy the infamous honor of a high rank among his fellow-dramatists.

The proper representations of the drama in that age were, in Comedy, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar; and, in Tragedy, Otway, Rowe, and Lee.
WYCHERLEY .-- Of the comedists of this period, where all were evil, William Wycherley was the worst.