With the abdication of James II, Dryden ceased to be
Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal, and was
doomed to a long struggle with poverty. Lines which he
had written in The Hind and the Panther took on a fuller
meaning --

Now for my converts,. . .
Judge not by hear-say, but observe at least,
If since their change, their loaves have been increast.

He had good patrons who had encouraged him in better
days and now helped him generously, notably the Earl
of Dorset (the Eugenius of the Essay Of Dramatick
Poesie), but he had to make his livelihood as best he could.
He returned to the drama and wrote five plays, with
varying success. But as a member of a penalized body,
for he never faltered in his new faith, he ceased to find his
themes in what was happening around him. He found
them rather in his reading. The great occupation of these
years was translation.

The best picture that we have of him then is given by
himself at the conclusion of his translation of Virgil--

What Virgil, wrote in the vigour of his Age, in Plenty and at
Ease, I have undertaken to Translate in my Declining Years:
strugling with Wants, oppress'd with Sickness, curb'd in my
Genius, lyable to be misconstrued in all I write; and my Judges,
if they are not very equitable, already prejudic'd against me,
by the Lying Character which has been given them of my
Morals. Yet steady to my Principles, and not dispirited with

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