Among the pieces fathered upon Dryden, without satisfactory reason, this contains as little internal evidence as any of having received even the touches of that great master. Yet, as is mentioned in the Life of our poet, the suspicion of being the author subjected him to the cowardly revenge of Rochester, who hired bravoes to beat Dryden, in return for the severity with which he is here treated. The versification is so harsh, and the satire so coarse and clumsy, that I can hardly consent to think that Dryden did more than revise and correct it. If he added a few lines here and there, he had so industriously levelled them with the rest of the performance, that they cannot be distinguished from it. The real author was Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.
Like other lampoons of the time, the "Essay on Satire" was handed about in manuscript copies, about November 1679. It is inserted in the quarto edition of Sheffield Duke of Buckingham's Works, with many alterations and improvements by Pope, to whose correction it had been subjected by the noble poet. It is obvious, and has been well argued by Mr Malone, that if Dryden had taken any considerable pains with the original copy, Pope would have had but little to do.
Sheffield, in his "Essay on Poetry," pays our author a very supercilious and aristocratic compliment on this, his own poem, having been attributed to him, and the castigation which ensued:
Though praised and punished for another's rhimes,
His own deserve as much applause sometimes.
It is thus that noble authors distribute their praise, like their bounty, duly seasoned with humbling admonition. In the copy of the Essay, revised by Pope, this impertinent couplet is omitted.
AN
ESSAY UPON SATIRE.
How dull, and how insensible a beast