tremendous.  Nevertheless the indictment against Shaftesbury for high treason was ignored by the Grand Jury at the Old Bailey, and in honour of the event a medal was struck, which gave a title to D.’s next stroke.  His Medal was issued in 1682.  The success of these wonderful poems raised a storm round D. Replies were forthcoming in Elkanah Settle’s Absalom and Achitophel Transposed, and Pordage’s Azaria and Hushai.  These compositions, especially Pordage’s, were comparatively moderate.  Far otherwise was Shadwell’s Medal of John Bayes, one of the most brutal and indecent pieces in the language.  D.’s revenge—­and an ample one—­was the publication of MacFlecknoe, a satire in which all his opponents, but especially Shadwell, were held up to the loathing and ridicule of succeeding ages, and others had conferred, upon them an immortality which, however unenviable, no efforts of their own could have secured for them.  Its immediate effect was to crush and silence all his assailants.  The following year, 1683, saw the publication of Religio Laici (the religion of a layman).  In 1686 D. joined the Church of Rome, for which he has by some been blamed for time-serving of the basest kind.  On the other hand his consistency and conscientiousness have by others been as strongly maintained.  The change, which was announced by the publication, in 1687 of The Hind and the Panther, a Defence of the Roman Church, at all events did not bring with it any worldly advantages.  It was parodied by C. Montague and Prior in the Town and Country Mouse.  At the Revolution D. was deprived of all his pensions and appointments, including the Laureateship, in which he was succeeded by his old enemy Shadwell.  His latter years were passed in comparative poverty, although the Earl of Dorset and other old friends contributed by their liberality to lighten his cares.  In these circumstances he turned again to the drama, which, however, was no longer what it had been as a source of income.  To this period belong Don Sebastian, and his last play, Love Triumphant.  A new mine, however, was beginning to be opened up in the demand for translations which had arisen.  This gave D. a new opportunity, and he produced, in addition to translations from Juvenal and Perseus, his famous “Virgil” (1697).  About the same time appeared The Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, and Alexander’s Feast, and in 1700, the year of his death, the Fables, largely adaptations from Chaucer and Boccaccio.  In his own line, that of argument, satire, and declamation, D. is without a rival in our literature:  he had little creative imagination and no pathos.  His dramas, which in bulk are the greatest part of his work, add almost nothing to his fame; in them he was meeting a public demand, not following the native bent of his genius.  In his satires, and in such poems as Alexander’s Feast, he rises to the highest point of his powers in a verse swift and heart-stirring.  In prose his style is clear, strong, and nervous.  He seems to have been almost insensible to the beauty of Nature.