th striking character: the play, accordingly, proved unsuccessful in
the representation. Yet although, upon reading the "Assignation," we
cannot greatly wonder at this failure, still, considering the plays
which succeeded about the same time, we may be disposed to admit that
the weight of a party was thrown into the scale against its reception.
Buckingham, who shortly afterwards published a revised edition of the
"Rehearsal," failed not to ridicule the absurd and coarse trick, by
which the enamoured prince prevents his father from discovering the
domino of his mistress, which had been left in his apartment.[18] And
Dryden's rivals and enemies, now a numerous body, hailed with malicious
glee an event which seemed to foretell the decay of his popularity.

The "Assignation" was published in 1673, and inscribed, by Dryden, to
his much honoured friend Sir Charles Sedley. There are some acrimonious
passages in this dedication, referring to the controversies in which the
author had been engaged; and, obscure as these have become, it is the
biographer's duty to detail and illustrate them.

It cannot be supposed that the authors of the time saw with indifference
Dryden's rapid success, and the measures which he had taken, by his
critical essays, to guide the public attention and to fix it upon
himself and the heroic plays, in which he felt his full superiority. But
no writer of the time could hope to be listened to by the public, if he
entered a claim of personal competition against a poet so celebrated.
The defence of the ancient poets afforded a less presumptuous and more
favourable pretext for taking the field, and for assailing Dryden's
writings, and avenging the slight notice he had afforded to his
contemporaries, under the colour of defending the ancients against his
criticism. The "Essay of Dramatic Poesy" afforded a pretence for
commencing this sort of warfare. In that piece, Dryden had pointed out
the faults of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Fletcher, with less ceremony than
the height of their established reputation appeared to demand from a
young author. But the precedence which he undauntedly claimed for the
heroic drama, and, more generally, the superiority of the plays of
Dryden's own age, whether tragic or comic, over those of the earlier
part of the seventeenth century, was asserted, not only distinctly, but
irreverently, in the Epilogue to the "Conquest of Granada:"

"They who have best succeeded on the stage,
H