The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I | Page 6

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 multiplies 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