gned over the kingdom of dullness, but
knowing that his end was close at hand, determines to settle the
succession to the State. Accordingly he fixes upon his son Shadwell as
the one best fitted to take his place in ruling over the realm of
nonsense, and in continuing the war with wit and sense. The
announcement of his intention he begins in the following words:--

"--Tis resolved, for Nature pleads that he
Should only rule who most resembles me.
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dullness from his tender years;
Shadwell alone of all my sons is he
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretense,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense."

Far more bitter, however, was the renewed attack which a month later
Dryden inserted in the two hundred lines he contributed to the
continuation of 'Absalom and Achitophel' that was written by Nahum
Tate. In this second part, which came out in November 1682, he devoted
himself in particular to two of his opponents, Settle and Shadwell,
under the names respectively of Doeg and Og--"two fools," he says, in
his energetic way,--

"That crutch their feeble sense on verse;
Who by my Muse to all succeeding times
Shall live in spite of their own doggerel rhymes."

Of Settle, whose poetry was possessed of much smoothness but little
sense, he spoke in a tone of contemptuous good-nature, though the
object of the attack must certainly have deemed the tender mercies of
Dryden to be cruel. It was in this way he was described, to quote a
few lines:--

"Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire,
For still there goes some thinking to ill-nature.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Let him be gallows-free by my consent,
And nothing suffer, since he nothing meant;
Hanging supposes human soul and reason,--
This animal's below committing treason:
Shall he be hanged who never could rebel?
That's a preferment for Achitophel.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Let him rail on; let his invective Muse
Have four-and-twenty letters to abuse,
Which if he jumbles to one line of sense,
Indict him of a capital offense."

But it was not till he came to the portraiture of Shadwell that he
gave full vent to the ferocity of his satire. He taunted him with the
unwieldiness of his bulk, the grossness of his habits, with his want
of wealth, and finally closed up with some li