followed rapidly. Rochester,
disposed to singularity of opinion, set up Elkanah Settle, a young
author of some talent, as a rival to the Laureate. Anonymous bardings
lampooned him. _Mr. Bayes_ was a broad target for every shaft, so
that the complaint so feelingly uttered in his latter days, that "no
man living had ever been so severely libelled" as he, had a wide
foundation of fact. Sometimes, it must be owned, the thrusts were the
natural result of controversies into which the Laureate indiscreetly
precipitated himself; sometimes they came of generous partisanship in
behalf of friends, such friends, for example, as Sir Robert Howard,
his brother-in-law, an interminable spinner of intolerable verse, who
afflicted the world in his day with plays worse than plagues, and
poems as worthless as his plays. It was to a quarrel for and a quarrel
against this gentleman that 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-i