Omitting, for the present, Dryden’s intermediate employments, I hasten to close his dramatic career, by mentioning, that “Love Triumphant,” his last play, was acted in 1692 with very bad success.  Those who look over this piece, which is in truth one of the worst our author ever wrote, can be at no loss to discover sufficient reason for its condemnation.  The comic part approaches to farce, and the tragic unites the wild and unnatural changes and counter-changes of the Spanish tragedy, with the involutions of unnatural and incestuous passion, which the British audience has been always averse to admit as a legitimate subject of dramatic pity or terror.  But it cannot be supposed that Dryden received the failure with anything like an admission of its justice.  He was a veteran foiled in the last of his theatrical trials of skill, and retreated forever from the stage, with expressions which transferred the blame from himself to his judges; for, in the dedication to James, the fourth Earl of Salisbury, a relation of Lady Elizabeth, and connected with the poet by a similarity of religious and political opinions, he declares, that the characters of the persons in the drama are truly drawn, the fable not injudiciously contrived, the changes of fortune not unartfully managed, and the catastrophe happily introduced:  thus leaving, were the author’s opinion to be admitted as decisive, no grounds upon which the critics could ground their opposition.  The enemies of Dryden, as usual, triumphed greatly in the fall of this piece;[42] and thus the dramatic career of Dryden began and closed with bad success.

This Section cannot be more properly concluded than with the list[43] which Mr. Malone has drawn out of Dryden’s plays, with the respective dates of their being acted and published; which is a correction and enlargement of that subjoined by the author himself to the opera of “Prince Arthur.”  Henceforward we are to consider Dryden as unconnected with the stage.

PLAYS.  Acted by Entered at Published
                                             Stationers’ in
                                             Hall.

1.  THE WILD GALLANT.  C. The King’s Aug. 7, 1667. 1669. 
Servants

2.  THE RIVAL LADIES.  T.C.  K.S.  June 27, 1661. 1664.

3.  THE INDIAN EMPEROR.  T. K.S.  May 26, 1665. 1667.

4.  SECRET LOVE, OR K.S.  Aug. 7, 1667. 1668. 
THE MAIDEN QUEEN.  C.

5.  SIR MARTIN MAR-ALL.  C. The Duke June 24, 1668. 1668.
of York’s
Servants

6.  THE TEMPEST. C. D.S.  Jan. 8, 1669-70. 1670.
1671.

7.   AN EVENING’S LOVE, OR        K.S.          Nov. 20, 1668.     Q also
THE MOCK ASTROLOGER.  C.                                     1668.

8.  TYRANNIC LOVE, OR K.S.  July 14, 1669 1670. 
THE ROYAL MARTYR, T.