they must starve; and if they do, some malicious satire is prepared to
level them, for daring to please without their leave. But while they are
so eager to destroy the fame of others, their ambition is manifest in
their concernment; some poem of their own is to be produced, and the
slaves are to be laid flat with their faces on the ground, that the
monarch may appear in the greater majesty." This general censure of the
persons of wit and honour about town, is fixed on Rochester in
particular not only by the marked allusion in the last sentence, to the
despotic tyranny which he claimed over the authors of his time, but also
by a direct attack upon such imitators of Horace, who make doggrel of
his Latin, misapply his censures, and often contradict their own. It is
remarkable, however, that he ascribes this imitation rather to some zany
of the great, than to one of their number; and seems to have thought
Rochester rather the patron than the author.

At the expense of anticipating the order of events, and that we may
bring Dryden's dispute with Rochester to a conclusion, we must recall to
the reader's recollection our author's friendship with Mulgrave. This
appears to have been so intimate, that, in 1675, that nobleman intrusted
him with the task of revising his "Essay upon Satire:" a poem which
contained dishonourable mention of many courtiers of the time, and was
particularly severe on Sir Car Scrope and Rochester. The last of these
is taxed with cowardice, and a thousand odious and mean vices; upbraided
with the grossness and scurrility of his writings, and with the infamous
profligacy of his life.[19] The versification of the poem is as flat and
inharmonious, as the plan is careless and ill-arranged; and though the
imputation was to cost Dryden dear, I cannot think that any part of the
"Essay on Satire" received additions from his pen. Probably he might
contribute a few hints for revision; but the author of "Absalom and
Achitophel" could never completely disguise the powers which were
shortly to produce that brilliant satire. Dryden's verses must have
shone among Mulgrave's as gold beside copper. The whole Essay is a mere
stagnant level, no one part of it so far rising above the rest as to
bespeak the work of a superior hand. The thoughts, even when conceived
with some spirit, are clumsily and unhappily brought out; a fault never
to be traced in the beautiful language of Dryden, whose powers of
expression were at least