A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay....
Great wits are sure to madness close allied;...
Oh! had he been content to serve the Crown
With virtues only proper to the gown,’ etc. etc.
There spoke the Laureate, and woe indeed to the man who had such a poet as Dryden for his censor! Yet for all this abuse, which he had written to order, Dryden could not help bearing testimony as follows:—
‘Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge,
The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge;
In Israel’s courts ne’er sate an Abbethdin
With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,