Selfrespect and a fine sense of the becoming were not to be expected from one who had led a life of mendicancy and adulation.

Finding that, if he continued to call himself a Protestant, his services would be overlooked, he declared himself a Papist.

The King's parsimony instantly relaxed.

Dryden was gratified with a pension of a hundred pounds a year, and was employed to defend his new religion both in prose and verse.
Two eminent men, Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott, have done their best to persuade themselves and others that this memorable conversion was sincere.

It was natural that they should be desirous to remove a disgraceful stain from the memory of one whose genius they justly admired, and with whose political feelings they strongly sympathized; but the impartial historian must with regret pronounce a very different judgment.