Atlantic Monthly | Page 9

we are indebted for the most trenchant satire in the language. Sir Robert had fallen out with Dryden about rhyming tragedies, of which he disapproved; and while it lasted, the contest was waged with prodigious acrimony. Among the partisans of the former was Richard Flecknoe, a Triton among the smaller scribbling fry. Flecknoe--blunderingly classed among the Laureates by the compiler of "Cibber's Lives of the Poets"--was an Irish priest, who had cast his cassock, or, as he euphuistically expressed it, "laid aside the mechanic part of priesthood," in order to fulfil the loftier mission of literary garreteer in London. He had written poems and plays without number; of the latter, but one, entitled "Love's Dominion," had been brought upon the stage, and was summarily hissed off. Jealousy of Dryden's splendid success brought him to the side of Dryden's opponent, and a pamphlet, printed in 1668, attacked the future Laureate so bitterly, and at points so susceptible, as to make a more than ordinary draft upon the poet's patience, and to leave venom that rankled fourteen years without finding vent.[21] About the same time, Thomas Shadwell, who is represented in the satire as likewise an Irishman, brought Sir Robert on the stage in his "Sullen Lovers," in the character of _Sir Positive At-all_, a caricature replete with absurd self-conceit and impudent dogmatism. Shadwell was of "Norfolcian" family, well-born, well-educated, and fitted for the bar, but drawn away from serious pursuits by the prevalent rage for the drama. The offence of laughing at the poet's brother-in-law Shadwell had aggravated by accepting the capricious patronage of Lord Rochester, by subsequently siding with the Whigs, and by aiding the ambitious designs of Shaftesbury in play and pamphlet,--labors the value of which is not to be measured by the contemptuous estimate of the satirist. The first outburst of the retributive storm fell upon the head of Shadwell. The second part of "Absalom and Achitophel," which appeared in the autumn of 1682, contains the portrait of Og, cut in outlines so sharp as to remind us of an unrounded alto-rilievo:--
Now stop your noses, readers, all and some, For here's a tun of midnight work to come, Og, from a treason-tavern rolling home; Round as a globe, and liquored every chink, Goodly and great he sails behind his link. With all his bulk, there's nothing lost in Og, For every inch that is not fool is rogue ....
The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull With this prophetic blessing, Be thou dull! Drink, swear, and roar, forbear no lewd delight Fit for thy bulk; do anything but write. Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink, Still thou mayst live, avoiding pen and ink. I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain; For treason botched in rhyme will be thy bane ....
A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull, For writing treason, and for writing dull...
I will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes, For who would read thy life who reads thy rhymes? But of King David's foes be this the doom, May all be like the young man Absalom! And for my foes, may this their blessing be, To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee!
Of the multitudinous rejoinders and counterblasts provoked by this thunder, Dryden, it is supposed, ascribed the authorship of one of the keenest to Shadwell. We are to conceive some new and immediate provocation as added to the old grudge, to call for a second attack so soon; for it was only a month later that the "MacFlecknoe" appeared; not in 1689, as Dr. Johnson states, who, mistaking the date, also errs in assuming the cause of Dryden's wrath to have been the transfer of the laurel from his own to the brows of Shadwell. "MacFlecknoe" is by common consent the most perfect and perfectly acrid satire in English literature. The topics selected, the foibles attacked, the ingenious and remorseless ridicule with which they are overwhelmed, the comprehensive vindictiveness which converted every personal characteristic into an instrument for the more refined torment of the unhappy victim, conjoin to constitute a masterpiece of this lower form of poetical composition;--poetry it is not. While Flecknoe's pretensions as a dramatist were fairly a subject of derision, Shadwell was eminently popular. He was a pretender to learning, and, entertaining with Dryden strong convictions of the reality of a literary metempsychosis, believed himself the heir of Jonson's genius and erudition. The title of the satire was, therefore, of itself a biting sarcasm. His claims to sonship were transferred from Jonson, then held the first of dramatic writers, to Flecknoe, the last and meanest; and to aggravate the insult, the "Mac" was inserted as an irritating allusion to the alleged Irish origin of both,--an allusion, however harmless and senseless now, vastly significant at that