to effect a breach between our author and many of those with whom he was now intimately connected; indeed, he was already entangled in the quarrels of the great, and sustained a severe personal outrage, in consequence of a quarrel with which he had little individual concern.

SECTION IV.

Dryden's Controversy with Settle-with Rochester—He is assaulted in Rose-Street-Aureng-Zebe-Dryden meditates an Epic Poem-All for Love-Limberham-OEdipus-Troilus and Cressida-The Spanish Friar-Dryden supposed to be in opposition to the Court.

<< THE State of Innocence » was published in 1674, and « Aureng - Zebe," Dryden's next tragedy, appeared in 1675. In the interval, he informs us, his ardour for rhyming plays had considerably abated. The course of study which he imposed on himself, doubtless, led him to this conclusion. But it is also possible, that he found the peculiar facilities of that drama had excited the emulation of very inferior poets, who, by dint of show, rant, and clamorous hexameters, were likely to divide with him the public favour. Before proceeding, therefore, to state the gradual alteration in Dryden's own taste, we must perform the task of detailing the literary quarrels in which he was at this period engaged. The chief of his rivals was Elkanah Settle, a person after

wards utterly contemptible; but who, first by the strength of a party at court, and afterwards by a faction in the state, was, for a time, buoyed up in opposition to Dryden. It is impossible to detail the progress of the contest for public favour between these two illmatched rivals, without noticing at the same time Dryden's quarrel with Rochester, who appears to have played off Settle in opposition to him, as absolutely, and nearly as successfully, as Settle ever played off the literal puppets, for which, in the ebb of his fortune, he wrote dramas.

In the year 1673, Dryden and Rochester were on such friendly terms, that our poet inscribed to his lordship his favourite play of « Marriage à la mode;» not without acknowledgment of the deepest gratitude for favours done to his fortune and reputation. The dedication, we have seen, was so favourably accepted by Rochester, that the reception called forth a second tribute of thanks from the poet to the patron. But at this point, the interchange of kindness and of civility received a sudden and irrecoverable check. This was partly owing to Rochester's fickle and jealous temper, which induced him alternately to raise and depress the men of parts whom he loved to patronize; so that no one should ever become independent of his favour, or so rooted in the public opinion, as to be beyond the reach of

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his satire; but it may also in part be attributed to Dryden's attachment to Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, then Rochester's rival in wit and court favour, and from whom he had sustained a deadly affront, on an occasion which, as the remote cause of a curious incident in Dryden's life, I have elsewhere detailed in the words of Sheffield himself. Rochester, who was branded as a coward in consequence of this transaction, must be reasonably supposed to entertain a sincere hatred against Mulgrave, with whom he had once lived on such friendly terms, as to inscribe to him an Epistle on their mutual poems. But, as his nerves had proved unequal to a personal conflict with his brother peer, his malice prompted the discharge of his spleen upon those men of literature whom his antagonist cherished and patronized. Among these Dryden held a distinguished situation; for, about 1675 he was, as we shall presently see, sufficiently in Sheffield's confidence to correct and revise that nobleman's poetry; and in 1676 dedicated to him the tragedy of Aureng-Zebe,» as one who enjoyed not only his favour, but his love and conversation. Thus Dryden was obnoxious to Rochester, both as holding a station among the authors of the period, grievous to the vanity of one, who

aimed, by a levelling and dividing system, to be the tyrant, or at least the dictator, of wit; and also as the friend, and even the confidant, of Mulgrave, by whom the witty profligate had been baffled and humiliated. Dryden was therefore to be lowered in the public opinion; and for this purpose Rochester made use of Elkanah Settle, whom, though he gratified his malice by placing him in opposition to Dryden, he must, in his heart, have thoroughly despised.'

'Dennis's account of these feuds, though not strictly accurate, is lively, and too curious to be suppressed. "Nothing," says Dennis, « is more certain, than that Mr Settle, who is now (1717) the city poet, was formerly a poet of the court. And at what time was he so? Why, in the reign of King Charles the Second, when that court was more gallant and more polite than ever the English court perhaps had been before; when there was at court the present and the late Duke of Buckingham, the late Earl of Dorset, Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, famous for his wit and poetry, Sir Charles Sedley, Mr Saville, Mr Buckley, and several others.

« Mr Settle's first tragedy, 'Cambyses, King of Persia,' was acted for three weeks together. The second, which was 'The Empress of Morocco,' was acted for a month together; and was in such high esteem both with the court and town, that it was acted at Whitehall before the king by the gentlemen and ladies of the court; and the prologue, which was spoken by the Lady Betty Howard, was writ by the famous Lord Rochester. The bookseller who printed it, depending upon the prepossession of the town, ventured to distinguish it from all the plays that had been ever published before; for it was the first play that ever