The applause died away and with it the cat-calls of Settle's three envious rivals, Dryden, Crowne, and Shadwell. Then came Absalom Senior, and for its author the deserved laureateship of Whiggery. But a year later things took an awkward turn for the Country Party; Settle recanted and wrote a history of the Popish Plot, in which he gave Oates his full due as a scoundrel. When James II. came to the throne he wrote a fawning Coronation Ode in the hope of placating one whom he had himself so short a time before called "inexorable as the grave." He even went so far as to publish a panegyric of Judge Jefferies. Inch by inch he was sinking deeper into the slough of Grub Street. With the Revolution he gave up politics (they seemed altogether too unsafe) and applied for the post of City Laureate. Lord Mayor's Shows were now immortalised to the extent of "living in Settle's numbers one day more." Grown old and very miserable, he was reduced to writing puppet plays, better works of art—who knows?—than the proud Empress of his youth; and we find him at last "hissing in his own dragon" at Bartholomew Fair. He was seventy-six when he died in 1724, having survived long enough to be the target of Pope's barbed malice.
Absalom Senior closes the first act of the drama. The second opens with Dryden's Medal. This personal attack on Shaftesbury roused more fury among the Whigs than even Absalom and Achitophel. In a single day Edmund Hickeringill wrote and sent to press a long retort called The Mushroom. "... And if any man think or say that it is a wonder if this book and verses were composed and writ in one day, and sent to the press, since it would employ the pen of a ready writer to copy this book in a day—it may be so. But it is a truth, as certain as the sun in the firmament, and which, if need be, the bookseller, printer, and other worthy citizens that are privy to it can avouch for an infallible truth—Deo soli gloria—when a divine hand assists, one of despicable, dull and inconsiderate parts may do wonders, which God usually performs by most weak and unlikely instruments." Hickeringill is a charming character; but he hardly comes within the scope of our article. He is not so much a man of letters as a mental case.
Pordage once again stepped forward and dealt a perfectly ineffective blow. He was followed by a new and more truculent champion, Shadwell. Shadwell laid about him with a will. Of Dryden's poetical powers he says condescendingly: "He has an easiness in rhyme and a knack of versifying and can make a slight thing seem pretty and clinquant." On the other hand, he is wholly lacking in originality, and even in his satires has done nothing but "turn the Observator into rhyme." When he is not writing in rhyme, "in which he has a kind of excellence," he is completely insipid. He has no sense of comedy.
Thou never mak'st, but art a standing Jest.
So much for Dryden's literary reputation; now for his character. At this point Shadwell throws the moral indignation about so freely that we are forced to hold our noses and to avert our eyes.
Left scathless by the clumsy grossness of Shadwell's attack, Dryden retorted murderously with MacFlecknoe.
But enough of Shadwell. He has his meed of fame and recognition. His body lies in Westminster Abbey and his plays have been resurrected in the "Mermaid" Edition. Who was Flecknoe? What manner of man was that grandiose figure who
In Prose and Verse was own'd without dispute
Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute?
There must be many who, like myself, have cherished a sneaking hope that this is an ungenerous judgment, that Flecknoe is not so bad after all. Might one not even discover him, edit him, unearth buried beauties? Alas, one has but to read a few of his many works to realise that Dryden was only speaking the modest truth!
We catch our first glimpse of him at some date about the year 1645, when Andrew Marvell, on his travels in Rome, climbed up three pair of stairs and