The common beadle of this wilful age,
Has with impartial hand whipp'd sovereign sin,
In me it is but manners to begin."
It sounds drolly, in our day, to hear Dryden called "the reformer of the court and stage," especially recollecting the attack upon him made just afterwards by Jeremy Collier. Then, what are we to say to the subsequent lines, attributed to Prior, which advert to the cudgelling Dryden received in Rose Street for his attack upon Rochester. Prior calls his own production A Satire on the Modern Translators, where he thus speaks of Dryden under his name of Bayes:—
"But what excuse, what preface can atone
For crimes which guilty Bayes has singly done—
Bayes, whose Rose Alley ambuscade enjoin'd
To be to vices, which he practised, kind?"
All the contemporary evidence, with which I am acquainted, tends to establish that Lord Mulgrave, instead of being the author of a satire which Dryden improved and polished, had nothing in the world to do with it. Is there any evidence, not contemporary, which shows the contrary? Surely this, and the two other matters to which I have above adverted, are interesting literary Queries.
Now to a subject that I care less about, and upon which I am entitled, from his published works, to appeal to your correspondent, Mr. S. W. Singer. It is a mere trifle, but upon a curious point—the history of playing cards, which may, however, attract more attention than topics that relate only to such insignificant men as Thomas Gray and John Dryden.