scarcely applicable
to the grant of a pension.[22]

Dismissed from office and restored to labors more congenial than the
dull polemics which had recently engaged his mind, Dryden found
himself obliged to work vigorously or starve. He fell into the hands
of the booksellers. The poems, it deserves remark, upon which his fame
with posterity must finally rest, were all produced within the period
bounded by his deposition and his death. The translations from
Juvenal, the versions of Persius and of Virgil, the Fables, and the
"Ode upon St. Cecilia's Day," were the works of this period. He lived
to see his office filled successively by a rival he despised and a
friend who had deserted him, and in its apparently hopeless
degradation perhaps found consolation for its loss.

Thomas Shadwell was the Poet-Laureate after Dryden, assuming the
wreath in 1689. We have referred to his origin; Langbaine gives 1642
as the date of his birth; so that he must have set up as author early
in life, and departed from life shortly past middle-age. Derrick
assures us that he was lusty, ungainly, and coarse in person,--a
description answering to the full-length of _Og_. The commentators
upon "MacFlecknoe" have not made due use of one of Shadwell's habits,
in illustration of the reason why a wreath of poppies was selected for
the crown of its hero. The dramatist, Warburton informs us, was
addicted to the use of opium, and, in fact, died of an overdose of
that drug. Hence

"His temples, last, with poppies were o'er-spread,
That nodding seemed to consecrate his head."

A couplet which Pope echoes in the "Dunciad":--

"Shadwell nods, the poppy on his brows."

A similar allusion may be found in the character of _Og_:--

"Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink," etc.

That the Laureate was heavy-gaited in composition, taking five years
to finish one comedy,--that he was, on the other hand, too swift,
trusting Nature rather than elaborate Art,--that he was dull and
unimaginative,--that he was keen and remarkably sharp-witted,--that he
affected a profundity of learning of which he gave no evidences,--that
his plays were only less numerous than Dryden's, are other particulars
we gather from conflicting witnesses of the period. Certainly, no one
of the Laureates, Cibber excepted, was so mercilessly lampooned. What
Cibber suffered from the "Dunciad" Shadwell suffered from
"MacFlecknoe." Incited by Dryden's example, the poets show