Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he Heywood and Shirley were dramatic writers of the past age, both superior to what Dryden here intimates of them; but he saw their tediousness and commonplace, and did not feel their sentiment. Shadwell was a great fat debauchee, who mistook will for genius; and because he enjoyed the humor of Ben Jonson, and was not indeed altogether destitute of humor himself, poured forth a profusion of shallow dialogue, which was the very dotage of pertness. As to his "poetry," the reader may see a specimen of it in "Imagination and Fancy," p. 31. It is a curious oversight of Dryden's in this satire, that he should put the best wit of it into the mouth of Flecnoe himself. CHARACTER OF LORD SHAFTESBURY.1 From the poem of "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL." This plot which fail'd for want of common sense,t For as when raging fevers boil the blood, The standing lake soon floats into a flood, * "Absalom and Achitophel" is a satire, under Jewish names, upon the intrigues of Lord Shaftesbury and the Duke of Monmouth against the Catholic and Court interest. †The Popish Plot, real or pretended, which was sworn to by the infamous Titus Oates. And every hostile humor, which before Some by their friends, more by themselves, thought wise, Some had in courts been great, and, thrown from thence, And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay. Pleas'd with the danger when the waves went high, He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to show his wit. Great wits to madness surely are allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide ;a Else, why should he, with wealth and honor blest, In friendship false, implacable in hate, Then, seiz'd with fear, yet still affecting fame, So easy still it proves, in factious times, Where none can sin against the people's will! Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known, Yet fame deserv'd no enemy can grudge; With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean; Oh! had he been content to serve the crown Or had the rankness of the soil been freed 1 "Character of Lord Shaftesbury."-Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, a mercurial and ambitious man, not very well principled where power was to be obtained, but not indisposed to be just and patriotic when possessed of it. Even the famous reply which he is said to have made to a banter of Charles the Second, contained a sort of impudent aspiration, which must have at once disconcerted and delighted the merry monarch; for it implied that his majesty and he stood in a very remarkable state of relationship. The King. Shaftesbury, I believe thou art the wickedest dog in my dominions. Shaftesbury (with a bow). May it please your majesty, of a subject, I believe I am." 2 "Great wits to madness surely are allied, The truth of this striking couplet may seem to be exemplified in the history of Swift and others; but it is not the greatness of the wit that is allied to the madness; it is the weakness or violence of the will. Rabelais was no madman, Molière was none, Sterne was none, Butler none, Horace, Aristophanes, Ariosto, Berni, Voltaire, Shakspeare, Cervantes. The greater the wit, for the most part, the healthier the understanding, because it is thoroughly wisest and well-balanced. Some physical irregularity * A Jewish word for judge. Shaftesbury had been Lord Chancellor. or accident is generally at the bottom of the madness of men of genius. Lee was a drinker, and used to lie at night in the streets. Swift had a diseased blood. Poor Collins probably got the seeds of his malady in the gay life he once led "about town," a very unfit one for his sensitive and sequestered turn of mind. Cowper was driven mad through an excessive delicacy of organization frightened by Methodism; instead of being soothed, as it ought to have been, by the liberal opinions natural to his heart and good sense. 3" To that unfeather'd two-legg'd thing, a son.”—Father of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, the philosopher; who with all his philosophy never forgave Dryden this attack on the parental insignificance. CHARACTER OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. From the same poem. A numerous host of dreaming saints succeed, Of the true old enthusiastic breed: 'Gainst form and order they their power employ, A man so various, that he seem'd to be Not one, Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, son of the favorite of James and Charles the First. But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; That every man with him was God or Devil. He laugh'd himself from court; then sought relief 1" Character of the Duke of Buckingham."-The duke intrigued against a giddy and unprincipled court out of pure similarity of disposition. Dryden's attack on him was partly in payment for offence received in the critical comedy of The Rehearsal. His Grace was very angry, and replied in a wretched pamphlet, which is forgotten.-See the interesting notes on Walter Scott's edition of Dryden, vol. ix., p. 272. 2" He left not faction, but of that was left."-See, in the present volume, the rival portrait of Buckingham from the hand of Pope. FOPPERIES OF THE TIME. (Being the Epilogue to Etherege's "MAN OF MODE, or SIR FOPLING FLUTTER." Most modern wits such monstrous fools have shown, Those nauseous harlequins in farce may pass, But there goes more to a substantial ass: |