Note 34 — EPISTLE THE NINTH.
Reading edition
"They tell me my old acquaintance, Mr Dryden, has left off the theatre, and wholly applies himself to the study of the controversies between the two churches. Pray heaven, this strange alteration in him portends nothing disastrous to the state; but I have all along observed, that poets do religion as little service by drawing their pens for it, as the divines do poetry, by pretending to versification." This letter is dated 21st October, 1689.