was large and luxuriant. His very repentance has more relish of sin, than regret; though, indeed, he was too honest a man to have reason to regret anything very strongly; for his faults were those of temperament and an easy disposition. Even his enmities, powerfully as he could word them, were but those of the poet and partizan, not of the human being. They required a public cause or repeated private offence to provoke them. He had all the goodnature and placability of a child of nature. Agreeably to this character of his genius, Dryden's wit is less airy than masculine; less quick to move than eloquent when roused; less productive of pleasure and love than admiration and a sense of his mastery. His satire, if not so learned and universal as Butler's, is aimed more at the individual and his public standing, and therefore comes more home to us. The titled wits of the day, who affected alternately to patronize and to correct him, he generally submitted to with his natural modesty, and with the policy of a poor man; but when the humour or party necessity came upon him, he seized the unlucky individual, as Gulliver might have done a lord of Lilliput; and gripping him, and holding him up by the ribs, exposed his pretensions, limb by limb, to the spectator. Still it was rather in vindication of a power derided, or of a sense of justice provoked, than from an ungenerous desire to give pain. He could bestow commendation on the offender; and was always ready to break off into some enthusiastic strain of verse or reflection. The famous satire on Shadwell entitled Mac Flecnoe (that is to say, Flecnoe's son) is, for the most part, so coarse, that I can only quote a few lines from it, which I have accordingly put in this place. But they are the best. They are comprised in the exordium. Flecnoe, the bad poet indicated by Marvel, (see p. 238), is supposed to abdicate the throne of Dulness in favour of its heir-apparent Shadwell. Shadwell had repeatedly intimated his own superiority compared with Dryden, as a writer of plays; and he was newly appointed laureate to King William, who had ousted James the Second and his greater laureate; so that Dryden had every provocation against him, political and poetical. All human things are subject to decay, And when fate summons, monarchs must obey; Shadwell alone my perfect image bears; Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity. The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, Heywood and Shirley were dramatic writers of the past age, both superior to what Dryden here intimates of them; but he saw their tediousness and commonplace, and did not feel their sentiment. Shadwell was a great fat debauchee, who mistook will for genius; and because he enjoyed the humour of Ben Jonson, and was not indeed altogether destitute of humour himself, poured forth a profusion of shallow dialogue, which was the very dotage of pertness. 66 to his poetry," the reader may see a specimen of it in "Imagination and Fancy," p. 44. As It is a curious oversight of Dryden's in this satire, that he should put the best wit of it into the mouth of Flecnoe himself. CHARACTER OF LORD SHAFTESBURY,' From the poem of "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL."* This plot which fail'd for want of common sense,† For as when raging fevers boil the blood, Some by their friends, more by themselves, thought wise, Some had in courts been great, and, thrown from thence, Some, by their monarch's fatal mercy, grown, From pardon'd rebels, kinsmen to the throne, Were rais'd in power, and public office high; And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay. * "Absalom and Achitophel" is a satire, under Jewish names, upon the intrigues of Lord Shaftesbury and the Duke of Monmouth against the Catholic and Court interest. The Popish Plot, real or pretended, which was sworn to by the infamous Titus Oates. A daring pilot in extremity, Pleas'd with the danger when the waves went high, And thin partitions do their bounds divide;2 And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke; Then, seiz'd with fear, yet still affecting fame, So easy still it proves, in factious times, How safe is treason, and how sacred ill, Where none can sin against the people's will! Since in another's guilt they see their own. Yet fame deserv'd no enemy can grudge; The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge. In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abethdin* With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean; Unbrib'd, unsought, the wretched to redress; Swift of despatch, and easy of access. * A Jewish word for judge. Shaftesbury had been Lord Chan cellor. N |