false sense
  Hits the false judgment of an audience
  Of clapping fools assembling, a vast crowd,
  Till the thronged playhouse cracked with the dull load;
  Though even that talent merits, in some sort,
  That can divert the rabble and the court;
  Which blundering Settle never could obtain,
  And puzzling Otway labours at in vain.”

He afterwards mentions Etherege’s seductive poetry, and adds: 

  “Dryden in vain tried this nice way of wit;
  For he, to be a tearing blade, thought fit
  To give the ladies a dry bawdy bob;
  And thus he got the name of Poet Squab. 
  But to be just, ’twill to his praise be found,
  His excellencies more than faults abound;
  Nor dare I from his sacred temples tear
  The laurel, which he best deserves to wear. 
  But does not Dryden find even Jonson dull? 
  Beaumont and Fletcher uncorrect, and full
  Of lewd lines, as he calls them?  Shakespeare’s style
  Stiff and affected?  To his own the while
  Allowing all the justice that his pride
  So arrogantly had to these denied? 
  And may not I have leave impartially
  To search and censure Dryden’s works, and try
  If those gross faults his choice pen doth commit,
  Proceed from want of judgment, or of wit? 
  Or if his lumpish fancy does refuse
  Spirit and grace, to his loose slattern muse? 
  Five hundred verses every morning writ,
  Prove him no more a poet than a wit.”

[19]
  “Rochester I despise for’s mere want of wit,
  Though thought to have a tail and cloven feet;
  For while he mischief means to all mankind,
  Himself alone the ill effects does find;
  And so, like witches, justly suffers shame,
  Whose harmless malice is so much the same. 
  False are his words, affected is his wit,
  So often does he aim, so seldom hit. 
  To every face he cringes while he speaks,
  But when the back is turned, the head he breaks. 
  Mean in each action, lewd in every limb,
  Manners themselves are mischievous in him;
  A proof that chance alone makes every creature,—­
  A very Killigrew, without good-nature. 
  For what a [Transcriber’s note:  “Bessus?” Print unclear] has he always
  lived,
  And his own kickings notably contrived;
  For (there’s the folly that’s still mixed with fear)
  Cowards more blows than any hero bear. 
  Of fighting sparks Fame may her pleasure say,
  But ’tis a bolder thing to run away. 
  The world may well forgive him all his ill,
  For every fault does prove his penance still. 
  Falsely he lulls into some dangerous noose,
  And then as meanly labours to get loose. 
  A life so infamous is better quitting;
  Spent in base injury and low submitting.—­
  I’d like to have left out his poetry,
  Forgot by all almost as well as me. 
  Sometimes he has some humour, never wit,