That lofty hill, unreached by former time,—
'Tis just that I should to the bottom fall,
Learn to write well, or not to write at all.
A
FAMILIAR EPISTLE
TO
MR JULIAN,
SECRETARY OF THE MUSES.
The extremity of license in manners, necessarily leads to equal license in personal satire; and there never was an age in which both were carried to such excess as in that of Charles II. These personal and scandalous libels acquired the name of lampoons, from the established burden formerly sung to them:
Lampone, lampone, camerada lampone.
Dryden suffered under these violent and invisible assaults, as much as any one of his age; to which his own words, in several places of his writings, and also the existence of many of the pasquils themselves in the Luttrel Collection, bear ample witness. In many of his prologues and epilogues he alludes to this rage for personal satire, and to the employment which it found for the half and three quarter wits and courtiers of the time: