ich he still
possessed as a dramatist, was determined to be renowned as a satirist
and an amatory poet. In 1704, after twenty-seven years of silence, he
again appeared as an author. He put forth a large folio of miscellaneous
verses, which, we believe, has never been reprinted. Some of these
pieces had probably circulated through the town in manuscript. For,
before the volume appeared, the critics at the coffee-houses very
confidently predicted that it would be utterly worthless, and were in
consequence bitterly reviled by the poet in an ill-written, foolish, and
egotistical preface. The book amply vindicated the most unfavorable
prophecies that had been hazarded. The style and versification are
beneath criticism; the morals are those of Rochester. For Rochester,
indeed, there was some excuse. When his offences against decorum were
committed, he was a very young man, misled by a prevailing fashion.
Wycherley was sixty-four. He had long outlived the times when
libertinism was regarded as essential to the character of a wit and a
gentleman. Most of the rising poets, Addison, for example, John Philips,
and Rowe, were studious of decency. We can hardly conceive anything more
miserable than the figure which the ribald old man makes in the midst
of so many sober and well-conducted youths.

In the very year in which this bulky volume of obscene doggerel was
published, Wycherley formed an acquaintance of a very singular kind. A
little, pale, crooked, sickly, bright-eyed urchin, just turned of
sixteen, had written some copies of verses in which discerning judges
could detect the promise of future eminence. There was, indeed, as yet
nothing very striking or original in the conceptions of the young poet.
But he was already skilled in the art of metrical composition. His
diction and his music were not those of the great old masters; but that
which his ablest contemporaries were laboring to do he already did best.
His style was not richly poetical; but it was always neat, compact, and
pointed. His verse wanted variety of pause, of swell, and of cadence,
but never grated harshly on the ear, or disappointed it by a feeble
close. The youth was already free of the company of wits, and was
greatly elated at being introduced to the author of the Plain Dealer and
the Country Wife.

It is curious to trace the history of the intercourse which took place
between Wycherley and Pope, between the representative of the age that
was going out an