[11] His comedy of “Sir Courtly Nice” exhibits marks of comic power. [The condemnation of his other work is a little too sweeping.—­ED.]

[12] See vol. x.

[13] [As is the case with many other circumstances of the life of Dryden, this business of Calisto has been much exaggerated.  The amount of positive evidence of Rochester’s interference is exceedingly small, and of his ill offices in regard to the epilogue there is no proof whatever.—­ED.]

[14] So called, according to the communicative old correspondent of the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1745, from the unalterable stiffness of his long cravat.

[15] “I am well satisfied I had the greatest party of men of wit and sense on my side:  amongst which I can never enough acknowledge the unspeakable obligations I received from the Earl of R., who, far above what I am ever able to deserve from him, seemed almost to make it his business to establish it in the good opinion of the king and his royal highness; from both of which I have since received confirmations of their good-liking of it, and encouragement to proceed.  And it is to him, I must, in all gratitude, confess, I owe the greatest part of my good success in this and on whose indulgency I extremely build my hopes of a next.”  Accordingly, next year, Otway’s play of “Titus and Berenice” is inscribed to Rochester, “his good and generous patron.”

[16]
  “Tom Otway came next, Tom Shailwell’s dear zany,
  And swears for heroics he writes best of any;
  ‘Don Carlos’ his pockets so amply had filled,
  That his mange was quite cured, and his lice were all killed. 
  But Apollo had seen his face on the stage,
  And prudently did not think fit to engage
  The scum of a playhouse for the prop of an age.”

[17] “Though a certain writer, that shall be nameless (but you may guess at him by what follows), being ask’d his opinion of this play, very gravely cock’t, and cry’d, I’gad he knew not a line in it he would be authour of.  But he is a fine facetious witty person, as my friend Sir Formal has it; and to be even with him, I know a comedy of his, that has not so much as a quibble in it which I would be authour of.  And so, reader, I bid him and thee farewell.”  The use of Dryden’s interjection, well known through Bayes’s employing it, ascertains him to be the poet meant.

[18]
  “Well, sir, ’tis granted; I said Dryden’s rhymes
  Were stolen, unequal, nay dull many times;
  What foolish patron is there found of his,
  So blindly partial to deny me this? 
  But that his plays, embroidered up and down
  With learning, justly pleased the town,
  In the same paper I as freely own. 
  Yet, having this allowed, the heavy mass,
  That stuffs up his loose volumes, must not pass;
  For by that rule I might as well admit
  Crowne’s tedious scenes for poetry and wit. 
  ’Tis therefore not enough when your