genius at a time when it was as little appreciated, as was the grandeur of his character.

But now the slave, in the chariot of Dryden's triumph, was about to appear. First came, in 1671, the "Rehearsal," a play concocted among various wits of the time, including Sprat, Clifford, poor Butler, of "Hudibras," and chiefly the Duke of Buckingham. The object of this play was to turn rhymed heroic tragedy, and especially the great playwright of the day, under the name of Bayes, his person, manners, conversation, and habits, into unmitigated ridicule. The plan has often since been followed, with various success. Minor wits have delighted in clubbing their small but poisoned missiles, and in aiming flights of minnikin arrows at the Gullivers of their different periods. Thus Pope was assailed by the "Dunces," whom he afterwards preserved in amber-that terrible old lion, Bentley, by Boyle and his associates; and Wordsworth, by the critics or criticasters of his day. Dryden acted with greater prudence than any of those we have named, except indeed Bentley, who, being assailed upon points involving the integrity of his scholarship, and on which demonstrative contradiction was possible, felt himself compelled to leave his lair, and to rend his enemies in pieces. But Dryden-feeling on this occasion, at least, that a squib, however personal and severe, cannot harm any man worthy of the name; and that the very force of the laughter it produces, drives out the sting-determined to answer it by silence, and to bide his time. "Zimri," in Absalom and Achitophel, shows how deep had been his secret oath of vengeance, and how carefully the sweltered "venom" had been kept, in which at last he baptizes Buckingham, and embalms him at the same time for the wonder and contempt of posterity Here is the danger of the smaller wits in a controversy of this kind. Their squibs excite a sensation at the moment, and sometimes annoy the assaulted giant much, and his friends and publishers more; but he continues to live and grow, while their spiteful effusions perish; or worse, are preserved to the everlasting shame of their authors, on the lowest shelf of the records of their enemy's fame.

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Two years after, occurred the famous controversy between Dryden and Settle. Poor Elkanah Settle seemed raised up like another Mordecai to poison the peace and disturb the false self-satisfaction of Dryden,-raised up, rather— shall we say ?-to wean the poet from a sphere where his true place and power were not, and to prepare him for other stages, where he was yet destined far more powerfully to play his part. At all events, this should have been his inference from the success of Settle. It should have taught him that a scene where a pitiful poetaster, backed by mob-favour and the word of a Rochester, could eclipse his glory, was no scene for him; and he ought instantly, with proud humility, to have left the theatre for ever. Instead of this, he fell into a violent passion with one who, like himself, had levelled his desires to the "claps of multitudes," and had ravished the larger share of the coveted prize! And so there commenced a long and ludicrous controversy-dishonourable to Settle much; to Rochester and Dryden more-between a mere insolent twaddler and a man of real and transcendent genius. The particulars of the struggle are too humiliating and contemptible to deserve a minute record. Suffice it, that Dryden, assisted by his future foe, Shadwell, wrote a scurrilous attack on Settle, and his successful play, "The Empress of Morocco;" to which Settle, nothing daunted, replied in terms of equal coarseness, and that Rochester, the patron of Settle, became mixed up in the fray, till, having been severely handled by Dryden in his "Essay on Satire,❞—a production generally, and we think justly, attributed to Mulgrave and Dryden in conjunction,— he took a mean and characteristic revenge. He hired bravoes, who, waiting for Dryden as he was returning, on the 18th December 1679, from Will's coffee-house to his own house in Gerard Street, rushed out and severely beat and wounded him. That Dryden was the author of the lines on Rochester has been doubted, although we think they very much resemble a rough and hurried sketch from his pen; that Rochester deserved the truculent treatment he received in them, this anecdote sufficiently proves. It was partly, indeed, the manner of the age. Had this nobleman existed now,

and been pilloried by a true and powerful pen, he would, in addition to his own anonymous assaults, have stirred up a posse of his creatures to assist him in seeking, by falsehoods, hypercriticisms, and abuse, to diminish the influence and take away the good name of his opponent. The Satanic spirit is always the same-its weapons and instruments are continually changing.

Soon after this, Dryden translated the Epistles of Ovid, thus breathing himself for the far greater efforts which were before him. His mind seems, for a season, to have balanced between various poetic plans. On the one hand, the finger of his good genius showed him the fair heights of epic song, waiting to be crowned by the coming of a new Virgil; on the other side, the fierce fires of his passions pointed him downwards to his many rivals and foes-the Cliffords, Leighs, Ravenscrofts, Rochesters, and Settles-who seemed lying as a mark for his satiric vengeance. He meditated, we know, an epic on Arthur, the hero of the Round Table, and had, besides, many arrears of wrath lying past for discharge; but circumstances arose which turned his thoughts away, for a season, in a different direction from either Arthur or his personal foes.

The political aspects of the times were now portentous in the extreme. Charles II. had, partly by crime, partly by carelessness, and partly by ill-fortune, become a most unpopular monarch, and the more so, because the nation had no hope even from his death, since it was sure to hand them over to the tender mercies of his brother, who had all his faults, and some, in addition, of his own, without any of his merits. There was but one hope, and that turned out a mere aurora borealis, connected with the Duke of Monmouth, who, through his extraction by a bend sinister from Charles, as well as through his popular manners, Protestant principles, and gracious exterior, had become such a favourite with the people, that strong efforts were made to exclude the Duke of York, and to exalt him to the succession. These, however, were unsuccessful; and Shaftesbury, their leading spirit, was accused of treason, and confined to the Tower. It was

at this crisis, when the nobility of the land were divided, when its clergy were divided, when its literary men were divided,— not in a silent feud, but in a raging rupture, that Dryden, partly at the instigation of the Court, partly from his own impulse, lifted up his powerful pen,-the sceptre of the press, --and, with wonderful facility and felicity, wrote, and on the 17th November 1681, published, the satire of "Absalom and Achitophel." Its poetical merits-the choice of the names and period, although this is borrowed from a previous writer— the appearance of the poem at the most critical hour of the crisis-and, above all, the portraitures of character, so easy and so graphic, so free and so fearless, distinguished equally by their animus and their animation, and with dashes of generous painting relieving and diversifying the general caricature of the style, rendered it instantly and irresistibly popular. It excited one universal cry-from its friends, of admiration, and from its enemies, of rage. Imitations and replies multiplied around it, and sounded like assenting or like angry echoes. It did not, indeed, move the grand jury to condemn Shaftesbury; but when, on his acquittal, a medal was struck by his friends, bearing on one side the head and name of Shaftesbury, and on the other, the sun obscured by a cloud rising over the Tower and City of London, Dryden's aid was again solicited by the Court and the King in person, to make this the subject of a second satire; and, with great rapidity, he produced "The Medal-a Satire against Sedition," which, completing and colouring the photograph of Shaftesbury, formed the real Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel." What bore that name came a year afterwards, when the times were changed, was written partly by a feebler hand-Nahum Tate; and flew at inferior game-Dryden's own personal rivals and detractors.

The principal of these was Shadwell, who had been an early friend of Dryden's, and who certainly possessed a great deal of wit and talent, if he did not attain to the measure of poetic genius. His principal power lay in low comedy-his chief fault lay in his systematic and avowed imitation of the rough and drunken manners of Ben Jonson. In the eye of Dryden

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-whose own habits were convivial, although not to the same extent the real faults of his opponent were his popularity as a comic writer, and his politics. Shadwell was a zealous Protestant, and the bitterest of the many who replied to the "Medal." For this he became the hero of "MacFlecknoe" -a masterly satire, holding him up to infamy and contemptbesides sitting afterwards for the portrait of Og, in the second part of "Absalom and Achitophel." Shadwell had, by and by, his revenge, by obtaining the laureateship, after the Revolution, in room of Dryden, and no doubt used the opportunity of drowning the memory of defeat in the butt of generous canary which had now for ever passed the door of his formidable rival.

Dryden's circumstances, at this time, were considerably straitened. His pension as laureate was not regularly paid; the profits from the theatre had somewhat fallen off. He tried in various ways, by prefacing a translation of " Plutarch's Lives," by publishing a miscellany of versions from Greek and Latin authors, and by writing prologues to plays and prefaces to books, to supply his exhausted exchequer. His goodhumoured but heartless monarch set him on another task, for which he was never paid, writing a translation of Maimbourg's "History of the League," the object of which was to damage Shaftesbury and his party, by branding them as enemies to monarchy. In 1682 he wrote his "Religio Laici."

Not long after, in February 1684, Charles II. became, for the first time in his life, serious, as he felt death-the proverbial terror of kings-rapidly rushing upon him. He tried to hide the great and terrible fact from his eyes under the shield of a wafer. He died suddenly-a member of the "holy Roman Catholic Church,”—and much regretted by all his mistresses; and apparently by Dryden, who had been preparing the opera of " Albion and Albanius," to commemorate the king's triumph over the Whigs, when this event turned his harp into mourning, and his organ into the voice of them that weep. He set himself to write a poem which should at once express regret for the set, and homage to the rising, sun. This was his "Threnodia Augustalis," a very unequal poem, but full of