Let not that hideous bulk of honour 'scape,
Nadab that sets the gazing crowds agape;
The old kirk-founder, whose hoarse croak could sing
The Saints, the Cause, no Bishop and no King.
By the triumphant Saul he was employed
A huge fang-tusk to gore poor David's side,
Like a proboscis in the tyrant's jaw
To rend and root through government and law.
Settle mentions Dryden in connection with Amiel, the Duke of Buckingham. It is pleasant to note that, like Pordage, he pays tribute, albeit a somewhat equivocal one, to Dryden's poetical genius:
But Amiel had, alas, the fate to hear
An angry poet play his chronicler;
A poet rais'd above oblivion's shade,
By his recorded verse immortal made.
No muse could more heroic deeds rehearse;
H' had with an equal, all-applauding verse
Great David's sceptre and Saul's javelin praised.
A pyramic to his saint Interest he rais'd.
The rest of the remarks about Dryden are not so edifying; they refer to that subject, so fruitful of raillery, the poet's marriage with Lady Howard, whom Settle, repeating scandal, describes as
Laura, in faithful constancy confined
To Ethiop's envoy and to all mankind.
The poem ends with a long list of eulogies addressed to the chiefs of the Country Party, dull as such eulogies always are and are always bound to be. For, while we listen to abuse and defamation of almost any kind with pleasure, we are apt to find the recital of a man's virtues extremely tedious; a fact well known to newspaper proprietors, for whom moral indignation—or mud slinging, for the terms are usually synonymous—is spiritual meat and drink, as well as material bread-and-butter.
The publication of Absalom Senior was the high-water mark of Settle's life. In 1673, at the age of twenty-five, he had all the appearances of a great man: he was the author of The Empress of Morocco. But he was very definitely one of those who have had greatness thrust upon them. The success of his fantastic tragedy, gravely judged by the most advanced undergraduate opinion of the day to be superior to anything Dryden had written, was wholly due to the prodigies of log-rolling performed by that shifty and malicious patron of the arts, Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Rochester, who had for a time bestowed his favours upon Dryden, suddenly threw him over and exalted Elkanah Settle in his place. He had The Empress of Morocco specially produced at Court before its appearance on the public stage, and himself contributed a Prologue. The "boom" was so well organised that the public for a time actually took Elkanah seriously. The Empress and her infamous gallant, Grimalhaz, stamped about the stage giving rhymed utterance to sentiments of an unheard of turpitude.
Grimalhaz: Have you considered, madam, what you've done?
Empress: Poisoned my husband, sir, and if you need
Examples to instruct you in the deed,
I'll make my actions plainer understood,
Copying his death on all the royal blood.
Loud and prolonged applause, bursting out again with redoubled fury when the Empress hisses into the ear of this new Macbeth:
and your next step t'a throne
Must be, dear sir, the murder of my son.