tic 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 era of
Irish degradation. Of the immediate effect of this scarification upon
Shadwell we have no information; how it ultimately affected his
fortunes we shall see presently.

During the closing years of Charles, and through the reign of James,
Dryden added to the duties of Court Poet those of political
pamphleteer and theological controversialist. The strength of his
attachment to the office, his sense of the honor it conferred, and his
appreciation of the salary we may infer from the potent influence such
considerations exercised upon his conversion to Romanism. In the
admirable portrait, too, by Lely, he chose to be represented with the
laurel in his hand. After his dethronement, he sought every occasion
to deplore the loss of the bays, and of the stipend, which in the
increasing infirmity and poverty of his latter days had become
important. The fall of James necessarily involved the fall of his
Laureate and Historiographer. Lord Dorset, the generous but sadly
undiscriminating patron of letters, having become Lord Chamberlain, it
was his duty to remove the reluctant Dryden from the two places,--a
duty not to be postponed, and scarcely to be mitigated, so violent was
the public outcry against the renegade bard. The entire Protestant
feeling of the nation, then at white heat, was especially ardent
against the author of the "Hind and Panther," who, it was said, had
treated the Church of England as the persecutors had treated the
primitive martyr, dressed her in the skin of a wild beast, and exposed
her to the torments of her adversaries. It was not enough to eject him
from offi