The Works of John Dryden, Now First Collected in Eighteen Volumes. Volume 16

This volume gathers Dryden's luminous biography of St. Francis Xavier, the 16th-century Jesuit missionary who carried Christianity from the universities of Europe to the courts of Japan and the shores of India. Dryden, the era's poet laureate and master of heroic prose, transforms Xavier's extraordinary life into something between devotional text and epic narrative. We follow the young nobleman from his privileged education at the University of Paris, where he encounters Ignatius Loyola and undergoes his transformative awakening, through his initial trials and temptations, to his decision to dedicate his life to evangelism in distant lands. The text pulses with the spiritual urgency of the Counter-Reformation: Xavier battling demons in the wilderness, preaching to kings, performing what the faithful called miracles, and dying alone on a Chinese shore. Dryden writes with the confident rhythms of a man who believed great lives made great literature. For scholars of 17th-century English prose, students of Jesuit history, or anyone drawn to the intersection of faith and literature, this volume preserves a distinctive achievement: a hagiography that never loses its literary尊严.