of Ferguson, the inflammatory sermons of Hickeringill, the political disquisitions of Hunt, and the party plays and libellous poems of Settle and Shadwell.  An host of rhymers, inferior even to those last named, attacked the king, the Duke of York, and the ministry, in songs and libels, which, however paltry, were read, sung, rehearsed, and applauded.  It was time that some champion should appear in behalf of the crown, before the public should have been irrecoverably alienated by the incessant and slanderous clamour of its opponents.  Dryden’s place, talents, and mode of thinking, qualified him for this task.  He was the poet-laureate and household servant of the king thus tumultuously assailed.  His vein of satire was keen, terse, and powerful, beyond any that has since been displayed.  From the time of the Restoration, he had been a favourer of monarchy, perhaps more so, because the opinion divided him from his own family.  If he had been for a time neglected, the smiles of a sovereign soon make his coldness forgotten; and if his narrow fortune was not increased, or even rendered stable, he had promises of provision, which inclined him to look to the future with hope, and endure the present with patience.  If he had shared in the discontent which for a time severed Mulgrave from the royal party, that cause ceased to operate when his patron was reconciled to the court, and received a share of the spoils of the disgraced Monmouth.[1] If there wanted further impulse to induce Dryden, conscious of his strength, to mingle in an affray where it might be displayed to advantage, he had the stimulus of personal attachment and personal enmity, to sharpen his political animosity.  Ormond, Halifax, and Hyde, Earl of Rochester, among the nobles, were his patrons; Lee and Southerne, among the poets, were his friends.  These were partisans of royalty.  The Duke of York, whom the “Spanish Friar” probably had offended, was conciliated by a prologue on his visiting the theatre at his return from Scotland,[2] and it is said, by the omission of certain peculiarly offensive passages, so soon as the play was reprinted.[3] The opposite ranks contained Buckingham, author of the “Rehearsal;” Shadwell, with whom our poet now urged open war; and Settle, the insolence of whose rivalry was neither forgotten nor duly avenged.  The respect due to Monmouth was probably the only consideration to be overcome:  but his character was to be handled with peculiar lenity; and his duchess, who, rather than himself, had patronised Dryden, was so dissatisfied with the politics, as well as the other irregularities, of her husband, that there was no danger of her taking a gentle correction of his ambition as any affront to herself.  Thus stimulated by every motive, and withheld by none, Dryden composed, and on the 17th November 1681 published, the satire of “Absalom and Achitophel.”