The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I | Page 5

intimacy with many of the nobility, and many of the eminent men of letters. The public would have at that time bid high for his very snuff-papers, and were thankful for whatever garbage he chose to throw at them from the stage. How different his position from that of the great blind old man, at this time residing in Bunhill-fields in obscurity and sorrow, and preparing to put off his tabernacle, and take his flight to the Heavens of God! The one heard every night the "claps of multitudes,"--the other the whispers of angels, saying to his soul, "Sister-spirit, come away." The one was revelling in reputation,--the other was listening to the far-off echoes of a coming fame as wide as the world, and as permanent as the existence of man. To do Dryden justice, he admired Milton; and although he did, and that, too, immediately after Milton departed, venture to travestie the "Paradise Lost" into a rhymed play, as dull as it is disgusting; and although he knew that Milton had called him, somewhat harshly, a "good rhymer, but no poet," yet he praised his 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.
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,