"This morning, as our eyes we upward cast, The desert regions of the air lay waste. But straight, as if it had some penance bore, A mourning garb of thick black clouds it wore. But on the sudden, Some aery demon changed its form, and now That which looked black above looked white below; The clouds dishevelled from their crusted locks, Something like gems coined out of crystal rocks. The ground was with this strange bright issue spread, As if heaven in affront to nature had Designed some new-found tillage of its own, And on the earth these unknown seeds had sown. Of these I reached a grain, which to my sense Appeared as cool as virgin-innocence; And like that too (which chiefly I admired), Its ravished whiteness with a touch expired. At the approach of heat, this candid rain Dissolved to its first element again.

Muly-H. Though showers of hail Morocco never see, Dull priest, what does all this portend to me?

Ham. It does portend—

Muly. What?

Ham. That the fates design—

Muly. To tire me with impertinence like thine."

Such were the strains once preferred to the magnificent verses of Dryden; whose very worst bombast is sublimity compared to them. To prove which, the reader need only peruse the Indian's account of the Spanish fleet in the "Indian Emperor," to which the above lines are a parallel; each being the description of an object familiar to the audience, but new to the describer. The poet felt the disgraceful preference more deeply than was altogether becoming; but he had levelled his powers, says Johnson, when he levelled his desires to those of Settle, and placed his happiness in the claps of multitudes. The moral may be carried yet further; for had not Dryden stooped to call to the aid of his poetry the auxiliaries of scenery, gilded truncheons, and verse of more noise than meaning, it is impossible his plays could have been drawn into comparison with those of Settle. But the meretricious ornaments which he himself had introduced were within the reach of the meanest capacity; and, having been among the first to debauch the taste of the public, it was retributive justice that he should experience their inconstancy. Indeed Dryden seems himself to admit, that the principal difference between his heroic plays and "The Empress of Morocco," was, that the former were good sense, that looked like nonsense, and the latter nonsense, which yet looked very like sense. A nice distinction, and which argued some regret at having opened the way to such a rival.

The feelings of contempt ought to have suppressed those of anger; but Dryden, who professedly lived to please his own age, had not temper to wait till time should do him justice. Angry he was; and unfortunately he determined to shew the world that he did well in being so. With this view, in conjunction with Shadwell and Crowne, two brother-dramatists, equally jealous of Settle's success, he composed a pamphlet, entitled "Remarks upon the Empress of Morocco." This piece is written in the same tone of boisterous and vulgar raillery with which Clifford and Leigh had assailed Dryden himself; and little resembles our poet's general style of controversy. He seems to have exchanged his satirical scourge for the clumsy flail of Shadwell, when he stooped to use such raillery as the following description of Settle: "In short, he is an animal of a most deplored understanding, without reading and conversation: his being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought, which he can never fashion either into wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough-hewn; his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and ill-sounding."

Settle, nothing dismayed with this vehement attack, manfully retorted the abuse which had been thrown upon him, and answered the insulting clamour of his three antagonists with clamorous insult.[10] It was obvious that the weaker poet must be the winner by this contest in abuse; and Dryden gained no more by his dispute with Settle, than a well-dressed man who should condescend to wrestle with a chimney-sweeper. The feud between them was carried no further, until, after the publication of "Absalom and Achitophel," party animosity added spurs to literary rivalry.

We must now return to Rochester, who, observing Settle's rise to his unmerited elevation in the public opinion, became as anxious to lower his presumption as he had formerly been to diminish the reputation of Dryden. With this view, that tyrannical person of honour availed himself of his credit to recommend Crowne to write the masque of "Calisto," which was acted by the lords and ladies of the court of Charles in 1675. Nothing could be more galling towards Dryden, a part of whose duty as poet-laureate was to compose the pieces designed for such occasions. Crowne, though he was a tolerable comic writer,[11] had no turn whatever for tragedy, or indeed for poetry of any kind. But the splendour of the scenery and dresses, the quality of the performers, selected from the first nobility, and the favour of the sovereign, gave "Calisto" a run of nearly thirty nights. Dryden, though mortified, tendered his services in the shape of an epilogue, to be spoken by Lady Henrietta Maria Wentworth.[12] But the influence of his enemy, Rochester, was still predominant, and the epilogue of the laureate was rejected.[13]

The author of "Calisto" also lost his credit with Rochester, so soon as he became generally popular; and shortly after the representation of that piece, its fickle patron seems to have recommended to the royal protection, a rival more formidable to Dryden than either Settle or "starch Johnny Crowne."[14] This was no other than Otway, whose "Don Carlos" appeared in 1676, and was hailed as one of the best heroic plays which had been written. The author avows in his preface the obligations he owed to Rochester, who had recommended him to the king and the duke, to whose favour he owed his good success, and on whose indulgence he reckoned as insuring that of his next attempt.[15] These effusions of gratitude did not, as Mr. Malone observes, withhold Rochester, shortly after, from lampooning Otway, with circumstances of gross insult, in the "Session of the Poets."[16] In the same preface, Otway, in very intelligible language, bade defiance to Dryden whom he charges with having spoken slightly of his play.[17] But although Dryden did not admire the general structure of Otway's poetry, he is said, even at this time, to have borne witness to his power of moving the passions; an acknowledgment which he long afterwards solemnly repeated. Thus Otway, like many others, mistook the character of a pretended friend, and did injustice to that of a liberal rival. Dryden and he indeed never appear to have been personal friends, even when they both wrote in the Tory interest. It was probably about this time that Otway challenged Settle, whose courage appears to have failed him upon the occasion.

Rochester was not content with exciting rivals against Dryden in the public opinion, but assailed him personally in an imitation of Horace, which he quaintly entitled, "An Allusion to the Tenth Satire." It came out anonymously about 1678, but the town was at no loss to guess that Rochester was the patron or author. Much of the satire was bestowed on Dryden, whom Rochester for the first time distinguishes by a ridiculous nickname, which was afterwards echoed by imitating dunces in all their lampoons. The lines are more cutting, because mingled with as much praise as the writer probably thought necessary to gain the credit of a candid critic.[18] Dryden, on his part, did not view with indifference these repeated direct and indirect attacks on his literary reputation by Rochester. In the preface to "All for Love," published in 1678, he gives a severe rebuke to those men of rank, who, having acquired the credit of wit, either by virtue of their quality, or by common fame, and finding themselves possessed of some smattering of Latin, become ambitious to distinguish themselves by their poetry from the herd of gentlemen. "And is not this," he exclaims, "a wretched affectation, not to be contented with what fortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, but they must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose their nakedness to public view? Not considering that they are not to expect the same approbation from sober men, which they have found from their flatterers after the third bottle. If a little glittering in discourse has passed them on us for witty men, where was the necessity of undeceiving the world? Would a man who has an ill title to an estate, but yet is in possession of it; would he bring it of his own accord to be tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talent, yet have the excuse, that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble out of mere wantonness, take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right, where he said, 'That no man is satisfied with his own condition.' A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented, because the poets will not admit them of their number. Thus the case is hard with writers: if they succeed not, they must starve; and if they do, some malicious satire is prepared to level them, for daring to please without their leave. But while they are so eager to destroy the fame of others, their ambition is manifest in their concernment; some poem of their own is to be produced, and the slaves are to be laid flat with their faces on the ground, that the monarch may appear in the greater majesty." This general censure of the persons of wit and honour about town, is fixed on Rochester in particular not only by the marked allusion in the last sentence, to the despotic tyranny which he claimed over the authors of his time, but also by a direct attack upon such imitators of Horace, who make doggrel of his Latin, misapply his censures, and often contradict their own. It is remarkable, however, that he ascribes this imitation rather to some zany of the great, than to one of their number; and seems to have thought Rochester rather the patron than the author.

At the expense of anticipating the order of events, and that we may bring Dryden's dispute with Rochester to a conclusion, we must recall to the reader's recollection our author's friendship with Mulgrave. This appears to have been so intimate, that, in 1675, that nobleman intrusted him with the task of revising his "Essay upon Satire:" a poem which contained dishonourable mention of many courtiers of the time, and was particularly severe on Sir Car Scrope and Rochester. The last of these is taxed with cowardice, and a thousand odious and mean vices; upbraided with the grossness and scurrility of his writings, and with the infamous profligacy of his life.[19] The versification of the poem is as flat and inharmonious, as the plan is careless and ill-arranged; and though the imputation was to cost Dryden dear, I cannot think that any part of the "Essay on Satire" received additions from his pen. Probably he might contribute a few hints for revision; but the author of "Absalom and Achitophel" could never completely disguise the powers which were shortly to produce that brilliant satire. Dryden's verses must have shone among Mulgrave's as gold beside copper. The whole Essay is a mere stagnant level, no one part of it so far rising above the rest as to bespeak the work of a superior hand. The thoughts, even when conceived with some spirit, are clumsily and unhappily brought out; a fault never to be traced in the beautiful language of Dryden, whose powers of expression were at least equal to his force of conception. Besides, as Mr. Malone has observed, he had now brought to the highest excellence his system of versification; and is it possible he could neglect it so far as to write the rugged lines in the note, where all manner of elliptical barbarisms are resorted to, for squeezing the words into a measure "lame and o'erburdened, and screaming its wretchedness"? The "Essay on Satire" was finally subjected by the noble author to the criticism of Pope, who, less scrupulous than Dryden, appears to have made large improvements; but after having undergone the revision of two of the first names in English poetry, it continues to be a very indifferent performance.

In another point of view, it seems inconsistent with Dryden's situation to suppose he had any active share in the "Essay on Satire." The character of Charles is treated with great severity, as well as those of the Duchesses of Portsmouth and Cleveland, the royal mistresses. This was quite consistent with Mulgrave's disposition, who was at this time discontented with the ministry; but certainly would not have beseemed Dryden, who held an office at court. Sedley also, with whom Dryden always seems to have lived on friendly terms, is harshly treated in the "Essay on Satire." It may be owned, however, that these reasons were not held powerful at the time, since they must, in that case, have saved Dryden from the inconvenient suspicion which, we will presently see, attached to him. The public were accustomed to see the friendship of wits end in mutual satire; and the good-natured Charles was so generally the subject of the ridicule which he loved, that no one seems to have thought there was improbability in a libel being composed on him by his own laureate.

The "Essay on Satire," though written, as appears from the title-page of the last edition, in 1675, was not made public until 1679, when several copies were handed about in manuscript. Rochester sends one of these to his friend Henry Saville, on the 21st of November 1679, with this observation:—"I have sent you herewith a libel, in which my own share is not the least. The king, having perused it, is no way dissatisfied with his. The author is apparently Mr. Dr[yden], his patron, Lord M[ulgrave,] having a panegyric in the midst." From hence it is evident, that Dryden obtained the reputation of being the author; in consequence of which, Rochester meditated the base and cowardly revenge which he afterwards executed; and he thus coolly expressed his intention in another of his letters:—"You write me word, that I'm out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes. He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please; and leave the repartee to black Will with a cudgel."

In pursuance of this infamous resolution, Dryden, upon the night of the 18th December 1679, was waylaid by hired ruffians, and severely beaten, as he passed through Rose-street, Covent-garden returning from Will's Coffee-house to his own house in Gerrard-street. A reward of L50 was in vain offered, in the London Gazette and other newspapers, for the discovery of the perpetrators of this outrage.[20] The town was, however, at no loss to pitch upon Rochester as the employer of the bravoes, with whom the public suspicion joined the Duchess of Portsmouth, equally concerned in the supposed affront thus avenged. In our time, were a nobleman to have recourse to hired bravoes to avenge his personal quarrel against any one, more especially a person holding the rank of a gentleman, he might lay his account with being hunted out of society. But in the age of Charles, the ancient high and chivalrous sense of honour was esteemed Quixotic, and the civil war had left traces of ferocity in the manners and sentiments of the people. Rencounters, where the assailants took all advantages of number and weapons, were as frequent, and held as honourable, as regular duels. Some of these approached closely to assassination; as in the famous case of Sir John Coventry, who was waylaid, and had his nose slit by some young men of high rank, for a reflection upon the king's theatrical amours. This occasioned the famous statute against maiming and wounding, called the Coventry Act; an Act highly necessary, since so far did our ancestors' ideas of manly forbearance differ from ours, that Killigrew introduces the hero of one of his comedies, a cavalier, and the fine gentleman of the piece, lying in wait for, and slashing the face of a poor courtezan, who had cheated him.[21] It will certainly be admitted, that a man, surprised in the dark and beaten by ruffians, loses no honour by such a misfortune. But, if Dryden had received the same discipline from Rochester's own hand without resenting it, his drubbing could not have been more frequently made a matter of reproach to him;—a sign surely of the penury of subjects for satire in his life and character, since an accident, which might have happened to the greatest hero who ever lived, was resorted to as an imputation on his honour. The Rose-alley ambuscade became almost proverbial;[22] and even Mulgrave, the real author of the satire, and upon whose shoulders the blows ought in justice to have descended, mentions the circumstance in his "Art of Poetry;" with a cold and self-sufficient complacent sneer:

"Though praised and punished for another's rhymes, His own deserve as great applause sometimes."

To which is added in a note, "A libel for which he was both applauded and wounded, though entirely ignorant of the whole matter." This flat and conceited couplet, and note, the noble author judged it proper to omit in the corrected edition of his poem. Otway alone, no longer the friend of Rochester, and perhaps no longer the enemy of Dryden, has spoken of the author of this dastardly outrage with the contempt his cowardly malice deserved:

"Poets in honour of the truth should write, With the same spirit brave men for it fight; And though against him causeless hatreds rise, And daily where he goes, of late, he spies The scowls of sullen and revengeful eyes; 'Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear, And serves a cause too good to let him fear: He fears no poison from incensed drab, No ruffian's five-foot sword, nor rascal's stab; Nor any other snares of mischief laid, Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade; From any private cause where malice reigns, Or general pique all blockheads have to brains."

It does not appear that Dryden ever thought it worth his while to take revenge on Rochester; and the only allusion to him in his writings may be found in the Essay prefixed to the translation of Juvenal, where he is mentioned as a man of quality, whose ashes our author was unwilling to disturb, and who had paid Dorset, to whom that piece is inscribed, the highest compliment which his self-sufficiency could afford to any one. Perhaps Dryden remembered Rochester among others, when, in the same piece, he takes credit for resisting opportunities and temptation to take revenge, even upon those by whom he had been notoriously and wantonly provoked.[23]

The detail of these quarrels has interrupted our account of Dryden's writings, which we are now to resume.

"Aureng-Zebe" was his first performance after the failure of the "Assignation." It was acted in 1675 with general applause. "Aureng-Zebe" is a heroic, or rhyming play, but not cast in a mould quite so romantic as the "Conquest of Granada." There is a grave and moral turn in many of the speeches, which brings it nearer the style of a French tragedy. It is true, the character of Moral borders upon extravagance; but a certain licence has been always given to theatrical tyrants, and we excuse bombast in him more readily than in Almanzor. There is perhaps some reason for this indulgence. The possession of unlimited power, vested in active and mercurial characters, naturally drives them to an extravagant indulgence of passion, bordering upon insanity; and it follows, that their language must outstrip the modesty of nature. Propriety of diction in the drama is relative, and to be referred more to individual character than to general rules: to make a tyrant sober-minded is to make a madman rational. But this discretion must be used with great caution by the writer, lest he should confound the terrible with the burlesque. Two great actors, Kynaston and Booth, differed in their style of playing Morat.

The former, who was the original performer, and doubtless had his instructions from the author, gave full force to the sentiments of avowed and barbarous vainglory, which mark the character. When he is determined to spare Aureng-Zebe, and Nourmahal pleads,

"Twill not be safe to let him live an hour,"

Kynaston gave all the stern and haughty insolence of despotism to his answer,

"I'll do't to show my arbitrary power."[24]

But Booth, with modest caution, avoided marking and pressing upon the audience a sentiment hovering between the comic and terrible, however consonant to the character by whom it was delivered. The principal incident in "Aureng-Zebe" was suggested by King Charles himself. The tragedy is dedicated to Mulgrave, whose patronage had been so effectual, as to introduce Dryden and his poetical schemes to the peculiar notice of the king and duke. The dedication and the prologue of this piece throw considerable light upon these plans, as well as upon the revolution which had gradually taken place in Dryden's dramatic taste.

During the space which occurred between writing the "Conquest of Granada" and "Aureng-Zebe", our author's researches into the nature and causes of harmony of versification been unremitted, and he had probably already collected the materials of his intended English Prosodia. Besides this labour, he had been engaged in a closer and more critical examination of the ancient English poets, than he had before bestowed upon them. These studies seem to have led Dryden to two conclusions: first, that the drama ought to be emancipated from the fetters of rhyme; and secondly, that he ought to employ the system of versification, which he had now perfected, to the more legitimate purpose of epic poetry. Each of these opinions merits consideration.

However hardily Dryden stood forward in defence of the heroic plays, he confessed, even in the heat of argument, that Rhyme, though he was brave and generous, and his dominion pleasing, had still somewhat of the usurper in him. A more minute inquiry seems to have still further demonstrated the weakness of this usurped dominion; and our author's good taste and practice speedily pointed out deficiencies and difficulties, which Sir Robert Howard, against whom he defended the use of rhyme, could not show, because he never aimed at the excellencies which they impeded. The perusal of Shakespeare, on whom Dryden had now turned his attention, led him to feel, that something further might be attained in tragedy than the expression of exaggerated sentiment in smooth verse, and that the scene ought to represent not a fanciful set of agents exerting their superhuman faculties in a fairy-land of the poet's own creation, but human characters, acting from the direct and energetic influence of human passions, with whose emotions the audience might sympathise, because akin to the feelings of their own hearts. When Dryden had once discovered, that fear and pity were more likely to be excited by other causes than the logic of metaphysical love, or the dictates of fantastic honour, he must have found, that rhyme sounded as unnatural in the dialogue of characters drawn upon the usual scale of humanity, as the plate and mail of chivalry would have appeared on the persons of the actors. The following lines of the Prologue to "Aureng-Zebe," although prefixed to a rhyming play, the last which he ever wrote, express Dryden's change of sentiment on these points:

"Our author, by experience, finds it true, 'Tis much more hard to please himself than you: And, out of no feigned modesty, this day Damns his laborious trifle of a play: Not that it's worse than what before he writ, But he has now another taste of wit; And, to confess a truth, though out of time, Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme. Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound, And Nature flies him like enchanted ground: What verse can do, he has performed in this, Which he presumes the most correct of his; But spite of all his pride, a secret shame Invades his breast at Shakespeare's sacred name: Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage, He, in a just despair, would quit the stage; And to an age less polished, more unskilled, Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield."

It is remarkable, as a trait of character, that, though our author admitted his change of opinion on this long disputed point, he would not consent that it should be imputed to any arguments which his opponents had the wit to bring against him. On this subject he enters a protest in the Preface to his revised edition of the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy" in 1684:—"I confess, I find many things in this discourse which I do not now approve; my judgment being not a little altered since the writing of it; but whether for the better or the worse, I know not: neither indeed is it much material, in an essay, where all I have said is problematical. For the way of writing plays in verse, which I have seemed to favour, I have, since that time, laid the practice of it aside, till I have more leisure, because I find it troublesome and slow: but I am no way altered from my opinion of it, at least with any reasons which have opposed it; for your lordship may easily observe, that none are very violent against it, but those who either have not attempted it, or who have succeeded ill in their attempt."[25] Thus cautious was Dryden in not admitting a victory, even in a cause which, he had surrendered.

But although the poet had admitted, that, with powers of versification superior to those possessed by any earlier English author, and a taste corrected by the laborious study both of the language and those who had used it, he found rhyme unfit for the use of the drama, he at the same time discovered a province where it might be employed in all its splendour. We have the mortification to learn, from the Dedication of "Aureng-Zebe," that Dryden only wanted encouragement to enter upon the composition of an epic poem, and to abandon the thriftless task of writing for the promiscuous audience of the theatre,—a task which, rivalled as he had lately been by Crowne and Settle, he most justly compares to the labour of Sisyphus. His plot, he elsewhere explains, was to be founded either upon the story of Arthur, or of Edward the Black Prince; and he mentions it to Mulgrave in the following remarkable passage, which argues great dissatisfaction with dramatic labour, arising perhaps from a combined feeling of the bad taste of rhyming plays, the degrading dispute with Settle, and the failure of the "Assignation," his last theatrical attempt:—"If I must be condemned to rhyme, I should find some ease in my change of punishment. I desire to be no longer the Sisyphus of the stage; to roll up a stone with endless labour, which, to follow the proverb, gathers no moss; and which is perpetually falling down again. I never thought myself very fit for an employment, where many of my predecessors have excelled me in all kinds; and some of my contemporaries, even in my own partial judgment, have outdone me in comedy. Some little hopes I have yet remaining (and those too, considering my abilities, may be vain), that I may make the world some part of amends for my ill plays, by an heroic poem. Your lordship has been long acquainted with my design; the subject of which you know is great, the story English, and neither too far distant from the present age, nor too near approaching it. Such it is in my opinion, that I could not have wished a nobler occasion to do honour by it to my king, my country, and my friends; most of our ancient nobility being concerned in the action. And your lordship has one particular reason to promote this undertaking because you were the first who gave me the opportunity of discoursing it to his majesty, and his royal highness; they were then pleased both to commend the design, and to encourage it by their commands; but the unsettledness of my condition has hitherto put a stop to my thoughts concerning it. As I am no successor to Homer in his wit, so neither do I desire to be in his poverty. I can make no rhapsodies, nor go a begging at the Grecian doors, while I sing the praises of their ancestors. The times of Virgil please me better, because he had an Augustus for his patron; and, to draw the allegory nearer you, I am sure I shall not want a Maecenas with him. It is for your lordship to stir up that remembrance in his majesty, which his many avocations of business have caused him, I fear, to lay aside; and, as himself and his royal brother are the heroes of the poem, to represent to them the images of their warlike predecessors; as Achilles is said to be roused to glory with the sight of the combat before the ships. For my own part, I am satisfied to have offered the design; and it may be to the advantage of my reputation to have it refused me."[26]

Dr. Johnson and Mr. Malone remark, that Dryden observes a mystery concerning the subject of his intended epic, to prevent the risk of being anticipated, as he finally was by Sir Richard Blackmore on the topic of Arthur. This, as well as other passages in Dryden's life, allows us the pleasing indulgence of praising the decency of our own time. Were an author of distinguished merit to announce his having made choice of a subject for a large poem, the writer would have more than common confidence who should venture to forestall his labours. But, in the seventeenth century, such an intimation would, it seems, have been an instant signal for the herd of scribblers to souse upon it, like the harpies on the feast of the Trojans, and leave its mangled relics too polluted for the use of genius:—

"Turba sonans praedam pedibus circumvolat uncis; Polluit ore dopes.

Semesam praedam et vestigia foeda relinquunt."

"Aureng-Zebe" was followed, in 1678, by "All for Love," the only play Dryden ever wrote for himself; the rest, he says, were given to the people. The habitual study of Shakespeare, which seems lately to have occasioned, at least greatly aided, the revolution in his taste, induced him, among a crowd of emulous shooters, to try his strength in this bow of Ulysses. I have, in some preliminary remarks to the play, endeavoured to point out the difference between the manner of these great artists in treating the misfortunes of Antony and Cleopatra.[27] If these are just, we must allow Dryden the praise of greater regularity of plot, and a happier combination of scene; but in sketching the character of Antony, he loses the majestic and heroic tone which Shakespeare has assigned him. There is too much of the love-lorn knight-errant, and too little of the Roman warrior, in Dryden's hero. The love of Antony, however overpowering and destructive in its effects, ought not to have resembled the love of a sighing swain of Arcadia. This error in the original conception of the character must doubtless be ascribed to Dryden's habit of romantic composition. Montezuma and Almanzor were, like the prophet's image, formed of a mixture of iron and clay; of stern and rigid demeanour to all the universe, but unbounded devotion to the ladies of their affections. In Antony, the first class of attributes are discarded: he has none of that tumid and outrageous dignity which characterised the heroes of the rhyming plays, and in its stead is gifted with even more than an usual share of devoted attachment to his mistress.[28] In the preface, Dryden piques himself upon venturing to introduce the quarrelling scene between Octavia and Cleopatra, which a French writer would have rejected, as contrary to the decorum of the theatre. But our author's idea of female character was at all times low; and the coarse, indecent violence, which he has thrown into the expressions of a queen and a Roman matron, is misplaced and disgusting, and contradicts the general and well-founded observation on the address and self-command with which even women of ordinary dispositions can veil mutual dislike and hatred, and the extreme keenness with which they can arm their satire, while preserving all the external forms of civil demeanour. But Dryden more than redeemed this error in the scene between Antony and Ventidius, which he himself preferred to any that he ever wrote, and perhaps with justice, if we except that between Dorax and Sebastian: both are avowedly written in imitation of the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius. "All for Love" was received by the public with universal applause. Its success, with that of "Aureng-Zebe," gave fresh lustre to the author's reputation, which had been somewhat tarnished by the failure of the "Assignation," and the rise of so many rival dramatists. We learn from the Players' petition to the Lord Chamberlain, that "All for Love" was of service to the author's fortune as well as to his fame, as he was permitted the benefit of a third night, in addition to his profits as a sharer with the company.[29] The play was dedicated to the Earl of Danby, then a minister in high power, but who, in the course of a few months, was disgraced and imprisoned at the suit of the Commons. As Danby was a great advocate for prerogative, Dryden fails not to approach him with an encomium on monarchical government, as regulated and circumscribed by law. In reprobating the schemes of those innovators, who, surfeiting on happiness, endeavoured to persuade their fellow-subjects to risk a change, he has a pointed allusion to the Earl of Shaftesbury, who, having left the royal councils in disgrace, was now at the head of the popular faction.

In 1678 Dryden's next play, a comedy, entitled "Limberham," was acted at Dorset-garden theatre, but was endured for three nights only. It was designed, the author informs us, as a satire on "the crying sin of keeping;" and the crime for which it suffered was, that "it expressed too much of the vice which it decried." Grossly indelicate as this play still is, it would seem, from the Dedication to Lord Vaughan, that much which offended on the stage was altered, or omitted, in the press;[30] yet more than enough remains to justify the sentence pronounced against it by the public. Mr. Malone seems to suppose Shaftesbury's party had some share in its fate, supposing that the character of Limberham had reference to their leader. Yet surely, although Shaftesbury was ridiculous for aiming at gallantry, from which his age and personal infirmity should have deterred him, Dryden would never have drawn the witty, artful politician, as a silly, henpecked cully. Besides, Dryden was about this time supposed even himself to have some leaning to the popular cause; a supposition irreconcilable with his caricaturing the foibles of Shaftesbury.

The tragedy of "Oedipus" was written by Dryden in conjunction with Lee; the entire first and third acts were the work of our author, who also arranged the general plan, and corrected the whole piece. Having offered some observations[31] elsewhere upon this play, and the mode in which its celebrated theme has been treated by the dramatists of different nations, I need not here resume the subject. The time of the first representation is fixed to the beginning of the playing season, in winter 1678-9, although it was not printed until 1679.[32] Both "Limberham" and "Oedipus" were acted at the Duke's theatre; so that it would seem that our author was relieved from his contract with the King's house, probably because the shares were so much diminished in value, that his appointment was now no adequate compensation for his labour. The managers of the King's company complained to the Lord Chamberlain, and endeavoured, as we have seen, by pleading upon the contract, to assert their right to the play of "Oedipus."[33] But their claim to reclaim the poet and the play appears to have been set aside, and Dryden continued to give his performances to the Duke's theatre until the union of the two companies.

Dryden was now to do a new homage to Shakespeare, by refitting for the stage the play of "Troilus and Cressida," which the author left in a state of strange imperfection, resembling more a chronicle, or legend, than a dramatic piece. Yet it may be disputed whether Dryden has greatly improved it even in the particulars which he censures in his original. His plot, though more artificial, is at the same time more trite than that of Shakespeare. The device by which Troilus is led to doubt the constancy of Cressida is much less natural than that she should have been actually inconstant; her vindication by suicide is a clumsy, as well as a hackneyed expedient; and there is too much drum and trumpet in the grand finale, where "Troilus and Diomede fight, and both parties engage at the same time. The Trojans make the Greeks retire, and Troilus makes Diomede give ground, and hurts him. Trumpets sound. Achilles enters with his Myrmidons, on the backs of the Trojans, who fight in a ring, encompassed round. Troilus, singling Diomede, gets him down, and kills him; and Achilles kills Troilus upon him. All the Trojans die upon the place, Troilus last." Such a bellum internecinum can never be waged to advantage upon the stage. One extravagant passage in this play serves strongly to evince Dryden's rooted dislike to the clergy. Troilus exclaims,—

"That I should trust the daughter of a priest! Priesthood, that makes a merchandise of heaven! Priesthood, that sells even to their prayers and blessings, And forces us to pay for our own cozenage!

Thersites. Nay, cheats heaven too with entrails and with offals; Gives it the garbage of a sacrifice, And keeps the best for private luxury.

Troilus_. Thou hast deserved thy life for cursing priests. Let me embrace thee; thou art beautiful: That back, that nose, those eyes are beautiful: Live; thou art honest, for thou hat'st a priest."

Dryden prefixed to "Troilus and Cressida" his excellent remarks on the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, giving up, with dignified indifference the faults even of his own pieces, when they contradict the rules his later judgment had adopted. How much his taste had altered since his "Essay of Dramatic Poesy," or at least since his "Remarks on Heroic Plays," will appear from the following abridgment of his new maxims. The plot, according to these remarks, ought to be simply and naturally detailed from its commencement to its conclusion,—a rule which excluded the crowded incidents of the Spanish drama; and the personages ought to be dignified and virtuous, that their misfortunes might at once excite pity and terror. The plots of Shakespeare and Fletcher are meted by this rule, and pronounced inferior in mechanic regularity to those of Ben Jonson. The character of the agents, or persons, are next to be considered; and it is required that their manner shall be at once marked, dramatic, consistent, and natural. And here the supereminent power of Shakespeare, in displaying the manners, bent, and inclination of his characters, is pointed out to the reader's admiration. The copiousness of his invention, and his judgment in sustaining the ideas which he started, are illustrated by referring to Caliban, a creature of the fancy, begot by an incubus upon a witch, and furnished with a person, language, and character befitting his pedigree on both sides. The passions are then considered as included in the manners; and Dryden, at once and peremptorily, condemns both the extravagance of language, which substitutes noise for feeling, and those points and turns of wit, which misbecome one actuated by real and deep emotion. He candidly gives an example of the last error from his own Montezuma who, pursued by his enemies, and excluded from the fort, describes his situation in a long simile, taken besides from the sea, which he had only heard of for the first time in the first act. As a description of natural passion, the famous procession of King Richard in the train of the fortunate usurper is quoted, in justice to the divine author. From these just and liberal rules of criticism, it is easy to discover that Dryden had already adopted a better taste, and was disgusted with comedies, where the entertainment arose from bustling incident, and tragedies, where sounding verse was substituted for the delineation of manners and expression of feeling. These opinions he pointedly expresses in the Prologue to "Troilus and Cressida," which was spoken by Betterton, representing the ghost of Shakespeare:

"See, my loved Britons, see your Shakespeare rise, An awful ghost confessed to human eyes! Unnamed, methinks, distinguished I had been, From other shades, by this eternal green, About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive, And, with a touch, their withered bays revive. Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age, I found not, but created first the stage. And if I drained no Greek or Latin store, 'Twas that my own abundance gave me more. On foreign trade I needed not rely, Like fruitful Britain, rich without supply. In this, my rough-drawn play, you shall behold Some master-strokes, so manly and so bold, That he who meant to alter, found 'em such; He shook, and thought it sacrilege to touch. Now, where are the successors to my name? What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christened on the stage! For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense, That tolls the knell for their departed sense."

It is impossible to read these lines, remembering Dryden's earlier opinions, without acknowledging the truth of the ancient proverb, Magna est veritas, et praevalebit.

The "Spanish Friar," our author's most successful comedy, succeeded "Troilus and Cressida." Without repeating the remarks which are prefixed to the play in the present edition,[34] we may briefly notice, that in the tragic scenes our author has attained that better strain of dramatic poetry which he afterwards evinced in "Sebastian." In the comic part, the well-known character of Father Dominic, though the conception only embodies the abstract idea which the ignorant and prejudiced fanatics of the day formed to themselves of a Romish priest, is brought out and illustrated with peculiar spirit. The gluttony, avarice, debauchery, and meanness of Dominic are qualified with the talent and wit necessary to save him from being utterly detestable; and, from the beginning to the end of the piece, these qualities are so happily tinged with insolence hypocrisy, and irritability, that they cannot be mistaken for the avarice, debauchery, gluttony, and meanness of any other profession than that of a bad churchman. In the tragic plot, we principally admire the general management of the opening, and chiefly censure the cold-blooded barbarity and perfidy of the young queen, in instigating the murder of the deposed sovereign, and then attempting to turn the guilt on her accomplice. I fear Dryden here forgot his own general rule, that the tragic hero and heroine should have so much virtue as to entitle their distress to the tribute of compassion. Altogether, however, the "Spanish Friar," in both its parts, is an interesting, and almost a fascinating play; although the tendency, even of the tragic scenes, is not laudable, and the comedy, though more decent in language, is not less immoral in tendency than was usual in that loose age.

Dryden attached considerable importance to the art with which the comic and tragic scenes of the "Spanish Friar" are combined; and in doing so he has received the sanction of Dr. Johnson. Indeed, as the ardour of his mind ever led him to prize that task most highly, on which he had most lately employed his energy, he has affirmed, in the dedication to the "Spanish Friar," that there was an absolute necessity for combining two actions in tragedy, for the sake of variety. "The truth is," he adds, "the audience are grown weary of continued melancholy scenes; and I dare venture to prophesy, that few tragedies, except those in verse, shall succeed in this age, if they are not lightened with a course of mirth; for the feast is too dull and solemn without the fiddles." The necessity of the relief alluded to may be admitted, without allowing that we must substitute either the misplaced charms of versification, or a secondary comic plot, to relieve the solemn weight and monotony of tragedy. It is no doubt true, that a highly-buskined tragedy, in which all the personages maintain the funereal pomp usually required from the victims of Melpomene, is apt to be intolerably tiresome, after all the pains which a skilful and elegant poet can bestow upon finishing it. But it is chiefly tiresome, because it is unnatural; and, in respect of propriety, ought no more to be relieved by the introduction of a set of comic scenes, independent of those of a mournful complexion, than the sombre air of a funeral should be enlivened by a concert of fiddles. There appear to be two legitimate modes of interweaving tragedy with something like comedy. The first and most easy, which has often been resorted to, is to make the lower or less marked characters of the drama, like the porter in "Macbeth," or the fool in "King Lear," speak the language appropriated to their station, even in the midst of the distresses of the piece; nay, they may be permitted to have some slight under-intrigue of their own. This, however, requires the exertion of much taste and discrimination; for if we are once seriously and deeply interested in the distress of the play, the intervention of anything like buffoonery may unloosen the hold which the author has gained on the feelings of the audience. If such subordinate comic characters are of a rank to intermix in the tragic dialogue, their mirth ought to be chastened, till their language bears a relation to that of the higher persons. For example, nothing can be more absurd than in "Don Sebastian," and some of Southerne's tragedies, to hear the comic character answer in prose, and with a would-be witticism, to the solemn, unrelaxed blank verse of his tragic companion.[35] Mercutio is, I think, one of the best instances of such a comic person as may be reasonably and with propriety admitted into tragedy: from which, however, I do not exclude those lower characters, whose conversation appears absurd if much elevated above their rank. There is, however, another mode, yet more difficult to be used with address, but much more fortunate in effect when it has been successfully employed. This is, when the principal personages themselves do not always remain in the buckram of tragedy, but reserve, as in common life, lofty expressions for great occasions, and at other times evince themselves capable of feeling the lighter, as well as the more violent or more deep, affections of the mind. The shades of comic humour in Hamlet, in Hotspur, and in Falconbridge, are so far from injuring, that they greatly aid the effect of the tragic scenes, in which these same persons take a deep and tragical share. We grieve with them, when grieved, still more because we have rejoiced with them when they rejoiced; and, on the whole, we acknowledge a deeper frater feeling, as Burns has termed it, in men who are actuated by the usual changes of human temperament, than in those who, contrary to the nature of humanity, are eternally actuated by an unvaried strain of tragic feeling. But whether the poet diversifies his melancholy scenes by the passing gaiety of subordinate characters; or whether he qualifies the tragic state of his heroes by occasionally assigning lighter tasks to them; or whether he chooses to employ both modes of relieving the weight of misery through live long acts; it is obviously unnecessary that he should distract the attention of his audience, and destroy the regularity of his play, by introducing a comic plot with personages and interest altogether distinct, and intrigue but slightly connected with that of the tragedy. Dryden himself afterwards acknowledged that though he was fond of the "Spanish Friar," he could not defend it from the imputation of Gothic and unnatural irregularity; "for mirth and gravity destroy each other, and are no more to be allowed for decent, than a gay widow laughing in a mourning habit."[36]

The "Spanish Friar" was brought out in 1681-2, when the nation was in a ferment against the Catholics on account of the supposed plot. It is dedicated to John, Lord Haughton, as protestant play inscribed to a protestant patron. It was also the last dramatic work, excepting the political play of the "Duke of Guise," and the masque of "Albion and Albanius," brought out by our author before the Revolution. And in political tendency, the "Spanish Friar" has so different colouring from these last pieces, that it is worth while to pause to examine the private relations of the author when he composed it.

Previous to 1678, Lord Mulgrave, our author's constant and probably effectual patron, had given him an opportunity of discoursing over his plan of an epic poem to the king and Duke of York; and in the preface to "Aureng-Zebe" in that year, the poet intimates an indirect complaint that the royal brothers had neglected his plan.[37] About two years afterwards, Mulgrave seems himself to have fallen into disgrace, and was considered as in opposition to the court.[38] Dryden was deprived of his intercession, and seems in some degree to have shared his disgrace. The "Essay on Satire" became public in November 1679, and being generally imputed to Dryden, it is said distinctly by one libeller, that his pension was for a time interrupted.[39] This does not seem likely; it is more probable, that Dryden shared the general fate of the household of Charles II., whose appointments were but irregularly paid; but perhaps his supposed delinquency made it more difficult for him than others to obtain redress. At this period broke out the pretended discovery of the Popish Plot, in which Dryden, even in "Absalom and Achitophel," evinces a partial belief.[40] Not encouraged, if not actually discountenanced, at court; sharing in some degree the discontent of his patron Mulgrave; above all, obliged by his situation to please the age in which he lived, Dryden did not probably hold the reverence of the Duke of York so sacred, as to prevent his making the ridicule of the Catholic religion the means of recommending his play to the passions of the audience. Neither was his situation at court in any danger from his closing on this occasion with the popular tide. Charles, during the heat of the Popish plot, was so far from being in a situation to incur odium by dismissing a laureate for having written a Protestant play, that he was obliged for a time to throw the reins of government into the hands of those very persons to whom the Papists were most obnoxious. The inference drawn from Dryden's performance was that he had deserted the court; and the Duke of York was so much displeased with the tenor of the play, that it was the only one of which, on acceding to the crown, he prohibited the representation. The "Spanish Friar" was often objected to the author by his opponents, after he had embraced the religion there satirised. Nor was the idea of his apostasy from the court an invention of his enemies after his conversion, for it prevailed at the commencement of the party-disputes; and the name of Dryden is, by a partisan of royalty, ranked with that of his bitter foe Shadwell, as followers of Shaftesbury in 1680.[41] But whatever cause of coolness or disgust our author had received from Charles or his brother, was removed, as usual, so soon as his services became necessary; and thus the supposed author of a libel on the king became the ablest defender of the cause of monarchy, and the author of the "Spanish Friar" the advocate and convert of the Catholic religion.

In his private circumstances Dryden must have been even worse situated than at the close of the last Section. His contract with the King's Company was now ended, and long before seems to have produced him little profit. If Southerne's biographer can be trusted, Dryden never made by a single play more than one hundred pounds; so that, with all his fertility, he could not, at his utmost exertion, make more than two hundred a year by his theatrical labours.[42] At the same time, they so totally engrossed his leisure, that he produced no other work of consequence after the "Annus Mirabilis."[43] If, therefore, the payment of his pension was withheld, whether from the resentment of the court, or the poverty of the exchequer, he might well complain of the "unsettled state" which doomed him to continue these irksome and ill-paid labours.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Malone, vol. i. p. 124.

[2] Dennis's account of these feuds, though not strictly accurate is lively, and too curious to be suppressed. "Nothing," says Dennis, "is more certain, than that Mr. Settle, who is now (1717) the city poet, was formerly a poet of the court. And at what time was he so? Why, in the reign of King Charles the Second, when that court was more gallant and more polite than ever the English court perhaps had been before; when there was at court the present and the late Duke of Buckingham, the late Earl of Dorset, Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, famous for his wit and poetry, Sir Charles Sedley, Mr. Saville, Mr. Buckley, and several others.

"Mr. Settle's first tragedy, 'Cambyses, King of Persia,' was acted for three weeks together. The second, which was 'The Empress of Morocco,' was acted for a month together; and was in such high esteem both with the court and town that it was acted at Whitehall before the king by the gentlemen and ladies of the court; and the prologue, which was spoken by the Lady Betty Howard, was writ by the famous Lord Rochester. The bookseller who printed it, depending upon the prepossession of the town, ventured to distinguish it from all the plays that had been ever published before; for it was the first play that ever was sold in England for two shillings, and the first that ever was printed with cuts. The booksellers at that time of day had not discovered so much of the weakness of their gentle readers as they have done since, nor so plainly discovered that fools, like children, are to be drawn in by gewgaws.—Well; but what was the event of this great success? Mr. Settle began to grow insolent, as any one may see, who reads the epistle dedicatory to 'The Empress of Morocco.' Mr. Dryden, Mr. Shadwell, and Mr. Crowne, began to grow jealous; and they three in confederacy wrote 'Remarks on the Empress of Morocco.' Mr. Settle answered them; and, according to the opinion which the town then had of the matter (for I have utterly forgot the controversy), had by much the better of them all. In short, Mr. Settle was then a formidable rival to Mr. Dryden; and I remember very well, that not only the town, but the university of Cambridge, was very much divided in their opinions about the preference that ought to be given to them; and in both places the younger fry inclined to Elkanah."

[3] Lord Mulgrave wrote the prologue when Settle's play was first acted at court; Lord Rochester's was written for the second occasion; both were spoken by the beautiful Lady Elizabeth Howard.

[4] See this offensive dedication in the account of Settle's controversy with Dryden.

[5] A copy of this rare edition (the gift of my learned friend, the Rev. Henry White of Lichfield) is now before me. The engravings are sufficiently paltry; and had the play been published even in the present day, it would have been accounted dear at two shillings. The name of the publisher is William Cademan, the date 1673. [See H. Morley, "English Plays," pp. 351, 352.—ED.]

[6] This title is omitted in subsequent editions.

[7] Of whom it was said, that he spoke "to the tune of a good speech."

[8] As, for example, this stage-direction: "Here a company of villains in ambush from behind the scenes discharge their guns at Muly-Hamet; at which Muly-Hamet starting and turning, Hametalhaz from under his priest's habit draws a sword and passes at Muly-H., which pass is intercepted by Abdeleader. They engage in a very fierce fight with the villains, who also draw and assist Hametalhaz, and go off several ways fighting; after the discharge of other guns heard from within, and the clashing of swords, enter again Muly-Hamet, driving in some of the former villains, which he kills."

[9] In the fifth act the scene draws and discovers Crimalhaz cast down on the guanches, i.e. hung on a wall set with spikes, scythe-blades, and hooks of iron; which scene (to judge from the engraving) exhibited the mangled limbs and wasted bones of former sufferers, suspended in agreeable confusion. With this pleasing display the piece concluded.

[10] Settle's pamphlet was contumaciously entitled, "Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco revised, with some few erratas; to be printed instead of the Postscript with the next Edition of the Conquest of Granada, 1674." See some quotations from this piece, vol. xv.

[11] His comedy of "Sir Courtly Nice" exhibits marks of comic power. [The condemnation of his other work is a little too sweeping.—ED.]

[12] See vol. x.

[13] [As is the case with many other circumstances of the life of Dryden, this business of Calisto has been much exaggerated. The amount of positive evidence of Rochester's interference is exceedingly small, and of his ill offices in regard to the epilogue there is no proof whatever.—ED.]

[14] So called, according to the communicative old correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine in 1745, from the unalterable stiffness of his long cravat.

[15] "I am well satisfied I had the greatest party of men of wit and sense on my side: amongst which I can never enough acknowledge the unspeakable obligations I received from the Earl of R., who, far above what I am ever able to deserve from him, seemed almost to make it his business to establish it in the good opinion of the king and his royal highness; from both of which I have since received confirmations of their good-liking of it, and encouragement to proceed. And it is to him, I must, in all gratitude, confess, I owe the greatest part of my good success in this and on whose indulgency I extremely build my hopes of a next." Accordingly, next year, Otway's play of "Titus and Berenice" is inscribed to Rochester, "his good and generous patron."

[16] "Tom Otway came next, Tom Shailwell's dear zany, And swears for heroics he writes best of any; 'Don Carlos' his pockets so amply had filled, That his mange was quite cured, and his lice were all killed. But Apollo had seen his face on the stage, And prudently did not think fit to engage The scum of a playhouse for the prop of an age."

[17] "Though a certain writer, that shall be nameless (but you may guess at him by what follows), being ask'd his opinion of this play, very gravely cock't, and cry'd, I'gad he knew not a line in it he would be authour of. But he is a fine facetious witty person, as my friend Sir Formal has it; and to be even with him, I know a comedy of his, that has not so much as a quibble in it which I would be authour of. And so, reader, I bid him and thee farewell." The use of Dryden's interjection, well known through Bayes's employing it, ascertains him to be the poet meant.

[18] "Well, sir, 'tis granted; I said Dryden's rhymes Were stolen, unequal, nay dull many times; What foolish patron is there found of his, So blindly partial to deny me this? But that his plays, embroidered up and down With learning, justly pleased the town, In the same paper I as freely own. Yet, having this allowed, the heavy mass, That stuffs up his loose volumes, must not pass; For by that rule I might as well admit Crowne's tedious scenes for poetry and wit. 'Tis therefore not enough when your false sense Hits the false judgment of an audience Of clapping fools assembling, a vast crowd, Till the thronged playhouse cracked with the dull load; Though even that talent merits, in some sort, That can divert the rabble and the court; Which blundering Settle never could obtain, And puzzling Otway labours at in vain."

He afterwards mentions Etherege's seductive poetry, and adds:

"Dryden in vain tried this nice way of wit; For he, to be a tearing blade, thought fit To give the ladies a dry bawdy bob; And thus he got the name of Poet Squab. But to be just, 'twill to his praise be found, His excellencies more than faults abound; Nor dare I from his sacred temples tear The laurel, which he best deserves to wear. But does not Dryden find even Jonson dull? Beaumont and Fletcher uncorrect, and full Of lewd lines, as he calls them? Shakespeare's style Stiff and affected? To his own the while Allowing all the justice that his pride So arrogantly had to these denied? And may not I have leave impartially To search and censure Dryden's works, and try If those gross faults his choice pen doth commit, Proceed from want of judgment, or of wit? Or if his lumpish fancy does refuse Spirit and grace, to his loose slattern muse? Five hundred verses every morning writ, Prove him no more a poet than a wit."

[19] "Rochester I despise for's mere want of wit, Though thought to have a tail and cloven feet; For while he mischief means to all mankind, Himself alone the ill effects does find; And so, like witches, justly suffers shame, Whose harmless malice is so much the same. False are his words, affected is his wit, So often does he aim, so seldom hit. To every face he cringes while he speaks, But when the back is turned, the head he breaks. Mean in each action, lewd in every limb, Manners themselves are mischievous in him; A proof that chance alone makes every creature,— A very Killigrew, without good-nature. For what a [Transcriber's note: "Bessus?" Print unclear] has he always lived, And his own kickings notably contrived; For (there's the folly that's still mixed with fear) Cowards more blows than any hero bear. Of fighting sparks Fame may her pleasure say, But 'tis a bolder thing to run away. The world may well forgive him all his ill, For every fault does prove his penance still. Falsely he lulls into some dangerous noose, And then as meanly labours to get loose. A life so infamous is better quitting; Spent in base injury and low submitting.— I'd like to have left out his poetry, Forgot by all almost as well as me. Sometimes he has some humour, never wit, And if it rarely, very rarely hit, 'Tis under such a nasty rubbish laid, To find it out's the cinder-woman's trade; Who for the wretched remnants of a fire, Must toil all day in ashes and in mire. So lewdly dull his idle works appear, The wretched text deserves no comments here; Where one poor thought sometime's left all alone, For a whole page of dulness to atone: 'Mongst forty bad, one tolerable line, Without expression, fancy, or design."

[20] "Whereas John Dryden, Esq., was on Monday the 18th instant, at night, barbarously assaulted, and wounded in Rose-street, in Covent-garden, by divers men unknown; if any person shall make discovery of the said offenders to the said Mr. Dryden, or to any justice of the peace, he shall not only receive fifty pounds, which is deposited in the hands of Mr. Blanchard, goldsmith, next door to Temple-bar, for the said purpose; but if he be a principal, or an accessory, in the said fact, his Majesty is graciously pleased to promise him his pardon for the same."—London Gazette, from December 18th to December 22d, 1679. Mr. Malone mentions the same advertisement in a newspaper, entitled, "Domestic Intelligence or News from City and Country."

[21] I might also mention the sentiment of Count Conigsmarck, who allowed, that the barbarous assassination of Mr. Thynne by his bravoes was a slain on his blood, but such a one as a good action in the wars, or a lodging on a counterscarp, would easily wash out. See his Trial, "State Trials," vol. iv. But Conigsmarck was a foreigner.

[22] For example, a rare broadside in ridicule of Benjamin Harris the Whig publisher, entitled, "The Saint turned Courtezan, or a new Plot discovered by a precious Zealot of an Assault and Battery designed upon the Body of a sanctified Sister,

"Who, in her husband's absence, with a brother Did often use to comfort one another, Till wide-mouthed Crop, who is an old Italian, Took his mare nappy, and surprised her stallion, Who, steal of entertainment from his mistress, Did meet a cudgelling not matched in histories."

"Who's there?" quoth watchful Argus. "Tis I, in longing passion, Give me a kiss." Quoth Ben, "Take this, A Dryden salutation."

"Help Care, Vile, Smith, and Curtes, Each zealous covenanter! What wonder the atheist L'Estrange should turn papist, When a zealot turns a ranter."

[23] Vol. xiii.

[24] Cibber's Apology, 4to, p. 74.

[25] Vol. xv.

[26] Vol. v.

[27] Vol. v.

[28] This distinction our author himself points out in the Prologue. The poet there says,

"His hero, whom you wits his bully call, Bates of his mettle, and scarce rants at all; He's somewhat lewd, but a well-meaning mind, Weeps much, fights little, but is wondrous kind."—Vol. v.

[29] See Footnote 26, Section II, this volume.

[30] Mr. Malone has seen a MS. copy of "Limberham" in its original state, found by Bolingbroke in the sweepings of Pope's study. It contained several exceptionable passages, afterwards erased or altered.

[31] Vol. vi.

[32] By allusion to the act for burying in woollen.

[33] [Transcriber's note: "See their Petition, page 88" in original. This is to be found in Footnote 26, Section II.]

[34] Vol. vi.

[35] This is ridiculed in "Chrononhotonthologos."

[36] Parallel of Poetry and Painting, vol. xvii.

[37] [Transcriber's note: "See page 181" in original. This approximates to paragraphs preceding reference [26] in text, Section IV.]

[38] He is said to have cast the eyes of ambitious affection on the Lady Anne (afterwards queen), daughter of the Duke of York; at which presumption Charles was so much offended, that when Mulgrave went to relieve Tangier in 1680, he is said to have been appointed to a leaky and frail vessel, in hopes that he might perish; an injury which he resented so highly, as not to permit the king's health to be drunk at his table till the voyage was over. On his return from Tangier he was refused the regiment of the Earl of Plymouth; and, considering his services as neglected, for a time joined those who were discontented with the government. He was probably reclaimed by receiving the government of Hull and lieutenancy of Yorkshire. See vol. ix.

[39] In a poem called "The Laureat," the satirist is so ill informed, as still to make Dryden the author of the "Essay on Satire." Surely it is unlikely to suppose, that he should have submitted to the loss of a pension, which he so much needed, rather than justify himself, where justification was so easy. Yet his resentment is said to have been

"For Pension lost, and justly, without doubt: When servants snarl we ought to kick them out. * * * * * That lost, the visor changed, you turn about, And straight a true-blue Protestant crept out. The Friar now was wrote; and some will say, They smell a malcontent through all the play."

See the whole passage, vol. vi.

[40] See, for this point also, the volume last quoted.

[41] In "A Modest Vindication of Antony, Earl of Shaftesbury, in a Letter to a Friend concerning his having been elected King of Poland," Dryden is named poet-laureate to the supposed king-elect, and Shadwell his deputy. See vol. ix.

[42] "Dryden being very desirous of knowing how much Southerne had made by the profits of one of his plays, the other, conscious of the little success Dryden had met with in theatrical compositions, declined the question, and answered, he was really ashamed to acquaint him. Dryden continuing to be solicitous to be informed, Southerne owned he had cleared by his last play L700; which appeared astonishing to Dryden, who was perhaps ashamed to confess, that he had never been able to acquire, by any of his most successful pieces, more than L100."—Life of Southerne prefixed to his Plays.

[43] There was published, 1679, a translation of Appian, printed for John Amery at the Peacock, against St. Dunstan's Church, Fleet-street. It is inscribed by the translator, J.D., to the Earl of Ossory; and seems to have been undertaken by his command. This work is usually termed in catalogues, Dryden's Appian. I presume it may be the work of that Jonathan Dryden who is mentioned in p 26.



SECTION V.

Dryden engages in Politics—Absalom and Achitophel, Part First—The Medal—MacFlecknoe—Absalom and Achitophel, Part Second—The Duke of Guise.

The controversies, in which Dryden had hitherto been engaged, were of a private complexion, arising out of literary disputes and rivalry. But the country was now deeply agitated by political faction; and so powerful an auxiliary was not permitted by his party to remain in a state of inactivity. The religion of the Duke of York rendered him obnoxious to a large proportion of the people, still agitated by the terrors of the Popish Plot. The Duke of Monmouth, handsome, young, brave, and courteous, had all the external requisites for a popular idol; and what he wanted in mental qualities was amply supplied by the Machiavel subtlety of Shaftesbury. The life of Charles was the only isthmus between these contending tides, "which, mounting, viewed each other from afar, and strove in vain to meet." It was already obvious, that the king's death was to be the signal of civil war. His situation was doubly embarrassing, because, in all probability, Monmouth, whose claims were both unjust in themselves and highly derogatory to the authority of the crown, was personally amiable, and more beloved by Charles than was his inflexible and bigoted brother. But to consent to the bill for excluding the lawful heir from the crown, would have been at the same time putting himself in a state of pupillage for the rest of his reign, and evincing to his subjects, that they had nothing to expect from attachment to his person, or defence of his interest. This was a sacrifice not to be thought of so long as the dreadful recollection of the wars in the preceding reign determined a large party to support the monarch, while he continued willing to accept of their assistance. Charles accordingly adopted a determined course; and, to the rage rather than confusion of his partisans, Monmouth was banished to Holland, from whence he boldly returned without the king's licence, and openly assumed the character of the leader of a party. Estranged from court, he made various progresses through the country, and employed every art which the genius of Shaftesbury could suggest, to stimulate the courage, and to increase the number, of his partisans. The press, that awful power, so often and so rashly misused, was not left idle. Numbers of the booksellers were distinguished as Protestant or fanatical publishers; and their shops teemed with the furious declamations of Ferguson, the inflammatory sermons of Hickeringill, the political disquisitions of Hunt, and the party plays and libellous poems of Settle and Shadwell. An host of rhymers, inferior even to those last named, attacked the king, the Duke of York, and the ministry, in songs and libels, which, however paltry, were read, sung, rehearsed, and applauded. It was time that some champion should appear in behalf of the crown, before the public should have been irrecoverably alienated by the incessant and slanderous clamour of its opponents. Dryden's place, talents, and mode of thinking, qualified him for this task. He was the poet-laureate and household servant of the king thus tumultuously assailed. His vein of satire was keen, terse, and powerful, beyond any that has since been displayed. From the time of the Restoration, he had been a favourer of monarchy, perhaps more so, because the opinion divided him from his own family. If he had been for a time neglected, the smiles of a sovereign soon make his coldness forgotten; and if his narrow fortune was not increased, or even rendered stable, he had promises of provision, which inclined him to look to the future with hope, and endure the present with patience. If he had shared in the discontent which for a time severed Mulgrave from the royal party, that cause ceased to operate when his patron was reconciled to the court, and received a share of the spoils of the disgraced Monmouth.[1] If there wanted further impulse to induce Dryden, conscious of his strength, to mingle in an affray where it might be displayed to advantage, he had the stimulus of personal attachment and personal enmity, to sharpen his political animosity. Ormond, Halifax, and Hyde, Earl of Rochester, among the nobles, were his patrons; Lee and Southerne, among the poets, were his friends. These were partisans of royalty. The Duke of York, whom the "Spanish Friar" probably had offended, was conciliated by a prologue on his visiting the theatre at his return from Scotland,[2] and it is said, by the omission of certain peculiarly offensive passages, so soon as the play was reprinted.[3] The opposite ranks contained Buckingham, author of the "Rehearsal;" Shadwell, with whom our poet now urged open war; and Settle, the insolence of whose rivalry was neither forgotten nor duly avenged. The respect due to Monmouth was probably the only consideration to be overcome: but his character was to be handled with peculiar lenity; and his duchess, who, rather than himself, had patronised Dryden, was so dissatisfied with the politics, as well as the other irregularities, of her husband, that there was no danger of her taking a gentle correction of his ambition as any affront to herself. Thus stimulated by every motive, and withheld by none, Dryden composed, and on the 17th November 1681 published, the satire of "Absalom and Achitophel."

The plan of the satire was not new to the public. A Catholic poet had, in 1679, paraphrased the scriptural story of Naboth's vine-yard and applied it to the condemnation of Lord Stafford, on account of the Popish Plot.[4] This poem is written in the style of a scriptural allusion; the names and situations of personages in the holy text being applied to those contemporaries, to whom the author assigned a place in his piece. Neither was the obvious application of the story of Absalom and Achitophel to the persons of Monmouth and Shaftesbury first made by our poet. A prose paraphrase, published in 1080, had already been composed upon this allusion.[5] But the vigour of the satire, the happy adaptation, not only of the incidents, but of the very names to the individuals characterised, gave Dryden's poem the full effect of novelty. It appeared a very short time after Shaftesbury had been committed to the Tower, and only a few days before the grand jury were to take under consideration the bill preferred against him for high treason. Its sale was rapid beyond example; and even those who were most severely characterised, were compelled to acknowledge the beauty, if not the justice, of the satire. The character of Monmouth, an easy and gentle temper, inflamed beyond its usual pitch by ambition, and seduced by the arts of a wily and interested associate, is touched with exquisite delicacy. The poet is as careful of the offending Absalom's fame, as the father in Scripture of the life of his rebel son. The fairer side of his character is industriously presented, and a veil drawn over all that was worthy of blame. But Shaftesbury pays the lenity with which Monmouth is dismissed. The traits of praise, and the tribute paid to that statesman's talents, are so qualified and artfully blended with censure, that they seem to render his faults even more conspicuous, and more hateful. In this skilful mixture of applause and blame lies the nicest art of satire. There must be an appearance of candour on the part of the poet, and just so much merit allowed, even to the object of his censure, as to make his picture natural. It is a child alone who fears the aggravated terrors of a Saracen's head; the painter, who would move the awe of an enlightened spectator, must delineate his tyrant with human features. It seems likely, that Dryden considered the portrait of Shaftesbury, in the first edition of "Absalom and Achitophel," as somewhat deficient in this respect; at least the second edition contains twelve additional lines, the principal tendency of which is to praise the ability and integrity with which Shaftesbury had discharged the office of lord high chancellor. It has been reported, that this mitigation was intended to repay a singular exertion of generosity on Shaftesbury's part, who, while smarting under the lash of Dryden's satire, and in the short interval between the first and second edition of the poem, had the liberality to procure admission for the poet's son upon the foundation of the Charterhouse, of which he was then governor. But Mr. Malone has fully confuted this tale, and shown, from the records of the seminary, that Dryden's son Erasmus was admitted upon the recommendation of the king himself.[6] The insertion, therefore, of the lines in commemoration of Shaftesbury's judicial character, was a voluntary effusion on the part of Dryden, and a tribute which he seems to have judged it proper to pay to the merit even of an enemy. Others of the party of Monmouth, or rather of the opposition party (for it consisted, as is commonly the case, of a variety of factions, agreeing in the single principle of opposition to the government), were stigmatised with severity, only inferior to that applied to Achitophel. Among these we distinguish the famous Duke of Buckingham, with whom, under the character of Zimri, our author balanced accounts for his share in the "Rehearsal;" Bethel, the Whig sheriff, whose scandalous avarice was only equalled by his factious turbulence; and Titus Oates, the pretended discoverer of the Popish Plot. The account of the Tory chiefs, who retained, in the language of the poem, their friendship for David at the expense of the popular hatred, included, of course, most of Dryden's personal protectors. The aged Duke of Ormond is panegyrised with a beautiful apostrophe to the memory of his son, the gallant Earl of Ossory. The Bishops of London and Rochester; Mulgrave our author's constant patron, now reconciled with Charles and his government; the plausible and trimming Halifax; and Hyde, Earl of Rochester, second son to the great Clarendon, appear in this list. The poet having thus arrayed and mustered the forces on each side, some account of the combat is naturally expected; and Johnson complains, that, after all the interest excited, the story is but lamely winded up by a speech from the throne, which produces the instantaneous and even marvellous effect, of reconciling all parties, and subduing the whole phalanx of opposition. Even thus, says the critic, the walls, towers, and battlements of an enchanted castle disappear, when the destined knight winds his horn before it. Spence records in his Anecdotes, that Charles himself imposed on Dryden the task of paraphrasing the speech to his Oxford parliament, at least the most striking passages, as a conclusion to his poem of "Absalom and Achitophel."

But let us consider whether the nature of the poem admitted of a different management in the close. Incident was not to be attempted; for the poet had described living characters and existing factions, the issue of whose contention was yet in the womb of fate, and could not safely be anticipated in the satire. Besides, the dissolution of the Oxford parliament with that memorable speech, was a remarkable era in the contention of the factions, after which the Whigs gradually declined, both in spirit, in power, and in popularity. Their boldest leaders were for a time appalled;[7] and when they resumed their measures, they gradually approached rather revolution than reform, and thus alienated the more temperate of their own party, till at length their schemes terminated in the Rye-house Conspiracy. The speech having such an effect, was therefore not improperly adopted as a termination to the poem of "Absalom and Achitophel."

The success of this wonderful satire was so great, that the court had again recourse to the assistance of its author. Shaftesbury was now liberated from the Tower; for the grand jury, partly influenced by deficiency of proof, and partly by the principles of the Whig party, out of which the sheriffs had carefully selected them, refused to find the bill of high treason against him. This was a subject of unbounded triumph to his adherents, who celebrated his acquittal by the most public marks of rejoicing. Amongst others, a medal was struck, bearing the head and name of Shaftesbury, and on the reverse, a sun, obscured with a cloud, rising over the Tower and city of London, with the date of the refusal of the bill (24th November 1681), and the motto LAETAMUR. These medals, which his partisans wore ostentatiously at their bosoms, excited the general indignation of the Tories; and the king himself is said to have suggested it as a theme for the satirical muse of Dryden, and to have rewarded his performance with an hundred broad pieces. To a poet of less fertility, the royal command, to write again upon a character which, in a former satire, he had drawn with so much precision and felicity, might have been as embarrassing at least as honourable. But Dryden was inexhaustible; and easily discovered, that, though he had given the outline of Shaftesbury in "Absalom and Achitophel," the finished colouring might merit another canvas. About the sixteenth of March 1681, he published, anonymously "The Medal, a Satire against Sedition," with the apt motto,

"Per Graium populos, mediaeque per Elidis urbem Ibat ovans; Divumque sibi poscebat honores."

In this satire, Shaftesbury's history; his frequent political apostasies; his licentious course of life, so contrary to the stern rigour of the fanatics, with whom he had associated; his arts in instigating the fury of the anti-monarchists; in fine, all the political and moral bearings of his character sounded and exposed to contempt and reprobation, the beauty of the poetry adding grace to the severity of the satire. What impression these vigorous and well-aimed darts made upon Shaftesbury, who was so capable of estimating their sharpness and force, we have no means to ascertain; but long afterwards, his grandson, the author of the "Characteristics," speaks of Dryden and his works with a bitter affectation of contempt, offensive to every reader of judgment, and obviously formed on prejudice against the man, rather than dislike to the poetry.[8] It is said, that he felt more resentment on account of the character of imbecility adjudged to his father in "Absalom and Achitophel," than for all the pungent satire, there and in the "Medal," bestowed upon his grandfather; an additional proof, how much more easy it is to bear those reflections which render ourselves or our friends hateful, than those by which they are only made ridiculous and contemptible. The Whig poets, for many assumed that title, did not behold these attacks upon their leader and party with patience or forbearance; but they rushed to the combat with more zeal, or rather fury, than talent or policy. Their efforts are numbered and described elsewhere;[9] so that we need here only slightly notice those which Dryden thought worthy of his own animadversion. Most of them adopted the clumsy and obvious expedient of writing their answers in the style of the successful satire which had provoked them. Thus, in reply to "Absalom and Achitophel," Pordage and Settle imitated the plan of bestowing scriptural names on their poem and characters the former entitling his piece "Azaria and Hushai," the latter, "Absalom Senior, or Absalom and Achitophel transposed." But these attempts to hurl back the satire at him by whom it was first launched, succeeded but indifferently, and might have convinced the authors that the charm of "Absalom and Achitophel" lay not in the plan, but in the power of execution. It was easy to give Jewish titles to their heroes, but the difficulty lay in drawing their characters with the force and precision of their prototype. Buckingham himself was rash enough to engage in this conflict; but, whether his anger blunted his wit, or that his share in the "Rehearsal" was less even than what is generally supposed, he loses, by his "Reflections on Absalom and Achitophel," the credit we are disposed to allow him for talent on the score of that lively piece.[10] A nonconformist clergyman published two pieces, which I have never seen, one entitled, "A Whip for the Fool's Back, who styles honourable Marriage a cursed confinement, in his profane Poem of Absalom and Achitophel;" the other, "A Key, with the Whip, to open the Mystery and Iniquity of the Poem called Absalom and Achitophel." Little was to be hoped or feared from poems bearing such absurd titles: I throw, however, into the note, the specimen which Mr. Malone has given of their contents.[11] The reverend gentleman having announced, that Achitophel, in Hebrew, means "the brother of a fool," Dryden retorted, with infinite coolness, that in that case the author of the discovery might pass with his readers for next akin, and that it was probably the relation which made the kindness.

"The Medal" was answered by the same authors who replied to "Absalom and Achitophel," as if the Whigs had taken in sober earnest the advice which Dryden bestowed on them in the preface to that satire. And moreover (as he there expressly recommends) they railed at him abundantly, without a glimmering of wit to enliven their scurrility. Hickeringill, a crazy fanatic, began the attack with a sort of mad poem, called "The Mushroom." It was written and sent to press the very day on which "The Medal" appeared; a circumstance on which the author valued himself so highly, as to ascribe it to divine inspiration.[12] With more labour, and equal issue, Samuel Pordage, a minor poet of the day, produced "The Medal Reversed;" for which, and his former aggression, Dryden brands him, in a single line of the Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel," as

"Lame Mephibosheth, the wizard's[13] son."

There also appeared "The Loyal Medal Vindicated," and a piece entitled "Dryden's Satire to his Muse," imputed to Lord Somers, but which, in conversation with Pope, he positively disavowed. All these, and many other pieces, the fruits of incensed and almost frantic party fury, are marked by the most coarse and virulent abuse. The events in our author's life were few, and his morals, generally speaking, irreproachable; so that the topics for the malevolence of his antagonists were both scanty and strained. But they ceased not, with the true pertinacity of angry dulness, to repeat, in prose and verse, in couplet, ballad, and madrigal, the same unvaried accusations, amounting in substance to the following: That Dryden had been bred a puritan and republican; that he had written an elegy on Cromwell (which one wily adversary actually reprinted); that he had been in poverty at the Restoration; that Lady Elizabeth Dryden's character was tarnished by the circumstances attending their nuptials; that Dryden had written the "Essay on Satire," in which the king was libelled; that he had been beaten by three men in Rose-alley; finally, that he was a Tory, and a tool of arbitrary power. This cuckoo song, garnished with the burden of Bayes and Poet Squab,[14] was rung in the ear of the public again and again, and with an obstinacy which may convince us how little there was to be said, when that little was so often repeated. Feeble as these attacks were, their number, like that of the gnats described by Spenser,[15] seems to have irritated Dryden to exert the power of his satire, and, like the blast of the northern wind, to sweep away at once these clamorous and busy, though ineffectual assailants. Two, in particular, claimed distinction from the nameless crowd; Settle, Dryden's ancient foe, and Shadwell, who had been originally a dubious friend.

Of Dryden's controversy with Settle we have already spoken fully; but we may here add, that, in addition to former offences of a public and private nature, Elkanah, in the Prologue to the "Emperor of Morocco," acted in March 1681-2, had treated Dryden with great irreverence.[16] Shadwell had been for some time in good habits with Dryden; yet an early difference of taste and practice in comedy, not only existed between them, but was the subject of reciprocal debate, and something approaching to rivalry.

Dryden, as we have seen, had avowed his preference of lively dialogue in comedy to delineation of character, or, in other words, of wit and repartee to what was then called humour. On this subject Shadwell early differed from the laureate. Conscious of considerable powers in observing nature, while he was deficient in that liveliness of fancy which is necessary to produce vivacity of dialogue, Shadwell affected, or perhaps entertained, a profound veneration for the memory of Ben Jonson, and proposed him as his model in the representation of such characters as were to be marked by humour, or an affectation of singularity of manners, speech, and behaviour. Dryden, on the other hand, was no great admirer either of Jonson's plays in general, or of the low and coarse characters of vice and folly, in describing which lay his chief excellency; and this opinion he had publicly intimated in the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy." In the preface to the very first of Shadwell's plays, printed in 1668, he takes occasion bitterly, and with a direct application to Dryden, to assail the grounds of this criticism and the comedies of the author who had made it.[17] If this petulance produced any animosity, it was not lasting; for in the course of their controversy, Dryden appeals to Shadwell, whether he had not rather countenanced than impeded his first rise in public favour; and, in 1674, they made common cause with Crowne to write those Remarks, which were to demolish Settle's "Empress of Morocco." Even in 1670, while Shadwell expresses the same dissent from Dryden's opinion concerning the merit of Jonson's comedy, it is in very respectful terms, and with great deference to his respected and admired friend, of whom, though he will not say his is the best way of writing, he maintains his manner of writing it is most excellent[18]. But the irreconcilable difference in their taste soon after broke out in less seemly terms; for Shadwell permitted himself to use some very irreverent expressions towards Dryden's play of "Aureng-Zebe," in the Prologue and Epilogue to his comedy of the "Virtuoso;" and in the Preface to the same piece he plainly intimated, that he wanted nothing but a pension to enable him to write as well as the poet-laureate.[19] This attack was the more intolerable, as Dryden, in the Preface to that very play of "Aureng-Zebe," probably meant to include Shadwell among those contemporaries who, even in his own judgment excelled him in comedy. In 1678 Dryden accommodated with a prologue Shadwell's play of the "True Widow;" but to write these occasional pieces was part of his profession, and the circumstance does not prove that the breach between these rivals for public applause was ever thoroughly healed; on the contrary, it seems likely, that, in the case of Shadwell, as in that of Settle, political hatred only gangrened a wound inflicted by literary rivalry. After their quarrel became desperate, Dryden resumed his prologue, and adapted it to a play by Afra Behn, called the "Widow Ranter, or Bacon in Virginia."[20] Whatever was the progress of the dispute, it is certain that Shadwell, as zealously attached to the Whig faction as Dryden to the Tories, buckled on his armour among their other poetasters to encounter the champion of royalty. His answer to "The Medal" is entitled "The Medal of John Bayes:" it appeared in autumn 1681, and is distinguished by scurrility, even among the scurrilous lampoons of Settle, Care, and Pordage. Those, he coolly says, who know Dryden, know there is not an untrue word spoke of him in the poem; although he is there charged with the most gross and infamous crimes. Shadwell also seems to have had a share in a lampoon, entitled "The Tory Poets," in which both Dryden and Otway were grossly reviled.[21] On both occasions, his satire was as clumsy as his overgrown person, and as brutally coarse as his conversation: for Shadwell resembled Ben Jonson in his vulgar and intemperate pleasures, as well as in his style of comedy and corpulence of body.[22] Dryden seems to have thought, that such reiterated attacks, from a contemporary of some eminence, whom he had once called friend, merited a more severe castigation than could be administered in a general satire. He therefore composed "Mac-Flecknoe, or a Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S., by the Author of Absalom and Achitophel," which was published 4th October 1682. Richard Flecknoe, from whom the piece takes its title, was so distinguished as a wretched poet, that his name had become almost proverbial. Shadwell is represented as the adopted son of this venerable monarch, who so long

"In prose and verse was owned without dispute, Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute."

The solemn inauguration of Shadwell as his successor in this drowsy kingdom, forms the plan of the poem; being the same which Pope afterwards adopted on a broader canvas for his "Dunciad." The vices and follies of Shadwell are not concealed, while the awkwardness of his pretensions to poetical fame are held up to the keenest ridicule. In an evil hour, leaving the composition of low comedy, in which he held an honourable station, he adventured upon the composition of operas and pastorals. On these the satirist falls without mercy; and ridicules, at the same time, his pretensions to copy Ben Jonson:

"Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame, By arrogating Jonson's hostile name; Let father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise, And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise. Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no part: What share have we in nature or in art? Where did his wit on learning fix a brand, And rail at arts he did not understand? Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein, Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain?"

This unmerciful satire was sold off in a very short time; and it seems uncertain whether it was again published until 1084, when it appeared with the author's name in Tonson's first Miscellany. It would seem that Dryden did not at first avow it, though, as the title-page assigned it to the author of "Absalom and Achitophel," we cannot believe Shadwell's assertion, that he had denied it with oaths and imprecations. Dryden, however, omits this satire in the [first [23]] printed list of his plays and poems, along with the Eulogy on Cromwell. But he was so far from disowning it, that, in his "Essay on Satire," he quotes "Mac-Flecknoe" as an instance given by himself of the Varronian satire. Poor Shadwell was extremely disturbed by this attack upon him; the more so, as he seems hardly to have understood its tendency. He seriously complains, that he is represented by Dryden as an Irishman, "when he knows that I never saw Ireland till I was three-and-twenty years old, and was there but for four months." He had understood Dryden's parable literally; so true it is, that a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.