Dryden followed up the attack upon Shaftesbury with a poem entitled 'The Medal.' This satire, which appeared in March 1682, was called forth by the action of the partisans of the Whig leader in having a medal struck commemorating his release from the Tower, after the grand jury had thrown out the charge of treason which had been brought against him. Both of these pieces were followed by a host of replies. Some of them did not refrain from personal attack, which indeed had a certain justification in the poet's own violence of denunciation. The most abusive of these was a poem by Thomas Shadwell, entitled 'The Medal of John Bayes.' Such persons as fancy Dryden's subsequent punishment of that dramatist unwarranted in its severity should in justice read this ferociously scurrilous diatribe, in which every charge against the poet that malice or envy had concocted and rumor had set afloat, was here industriously raked together; and to the muck-heap thus collected, the intimacy of previous acquaintance was doubtless enabled to contribute its due quota of malignant assertion and more malignant insinuation. Shadwell was soon supplied, however, with ample reason to regret his action. Dryden's first and best known rejoinder is 'MacFlecknoe, or a Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet T. S.' This production has always had the reputation in literature of being the severest personal satire in the language; but it requires now for its appreciation an intimate acquaintance with Shadwell's plays, which very few possess. It is further disfigured in places by a coarseness from which, indeed, none of the poet's writings were certain to be free. Its general spirit can be indicated by a brief extract from its opening paragraph. Flecknoe, it is to be said, was a feeble poet who had died a few years before. He is here represented as having long reigned over the kingdom of dullness, but knowing that his end was close at hand, determines to settle the succession to the State. Accordingly he fixes upon his son Shadwell as the one best fitted to take his place in ruling over the realm of nonsense, and in continuing the war with wit and sense. The announcement of his intention he begins in the following words:—
"—Tis resolved, for Nature pleads that he
Should only rule who most resembles me.
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dullness from his tender years;
Shadwell alone of all my sons is he
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretense,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense."
Far more bitter, however, was the renewed attack which a month later Dryden inserted in the two hundred lines he contributed to the continuation of 'Absalom and Achitophel' that was written by Nahum Tate. In this second part, which came out in November 1682, he devoted himself in particular to two of his opponents, Settle and Shadwell, under the names respectively of Doeg and Og—"two fools," he says, in his energetic way,—
"That crutch their feeble sense on verse;
Who by my Muse to all succeeding times
Shall live in spite of their own doggerel rhymes."
Of Settle, whose poetry was possessed of much smoothness but little sense, he spoke in a tone of contemptuous good-nature, though the object of the attack must certainly have deemed the tender mercies of Dryden to be cruel. It was in this way he was described, to quote a few lines:—
"Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire,
For still there goes some thinking to ill-nature.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Let him be gallows-free by my consent,
And nothing suffer, since he nothing meant;
Hanging supposes human soul and reason,—
This animal's below committing treason:
Shall he be hanged who never could rebel?
That's a preferment for Achitophel.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Let him rail on; let his invective Muse
Have four-and-twenty letters to abuse,
Which if he jumbles to one line of sense,
Indict him of a capital offense."
But it was not till he came to the portraiture of Shadwell that he gave full vent to the ferocity of his satire. He taunted him with the unwieldiness of his bulk, the grossness of his habits, with his want of wealth, and finally closed up with some lines into which he concentrated all the venom of his previous attacks:—
"But though Heaven made him poor, with reverence speaking,
He never was a poet of God's making
The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
With this prophetic blessing—Be thou dull;
Drink, swear, and roar, forbear no lewd delight
Fit for thy bulk; do anything but write.
Thou art of lasting make, like thoughtless men;
A strong nativity—but for the pen;
Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink,
Still thou mayest live, avoiding pen and ink.
I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain,
For treason, botched in rhyme, will be thy bane;
Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck;
'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck.