{ Yet still by you memoirs are so designed,
{ Your medal does oblige, in which we find
{ The outward graces of so firm a mind;
Though, in this gift, best Protestants allow
They're tempted even to superstition too,
As hard 'tis such a patriot to admire,
And not than common man to grant him higher.
[480] One writer was so much incensed at this challenge, as to plead it for the apology of having degraded himself by a controversy with Dryden. "I have more honourable employ, than, like a schoolboy, to cap verses, or to blemish my larger name with that of Bayes or Laureat. Only, it moved my indignation, as well as scorn, when I read his challenge to the Whigs, p. 6. of his Epistle, and the bravado extorted from me this nimble check, but just rebuke, for such arrogance, opiniatry, and petulancy, to abate, if possible, his pride, and the contempt he seems to have of the Whigs, whom the hackney laureat does so magisterially despise at such a rate, that the Tory courtiers (poor hearts, they know no better) hug and admire the imbost rhodomontade."—Mushroom, p. 18. How far the author's talents were equal to the purpose of chastizing Dryden, and raising the renown of Whig poetry, may be seen by some curious specimens in Note XII. on the following poem.
[481] As I have not as yet been able to meet with the "Whip and Key," I subjoin the account which Mr Malone has given of it: "A Whip for the Fool's Back, who styles honourable marriage a cursed confinement, in his profane poem of Absalom and Achitophel;" and this was followed, on the 18th of January, by "A Key (with the Whip) to open the mystery and iniquity of the poem called Absalom and Achitophel, shewing its scurrilous reflections on both king and kingdom." In the latter piece, which was written by the same hand as the former, the author's principal object is to show, that Dryden's Jewish names were not well chosen. As probably very few of my readers have ever seen this poem, I will add a short extract:
"How well this Hebrew name with sense doth sound,