a lover, and impudent, ill-bred tomrig for a mistress, and these are the fine people of the play; and there is that latitude in this, that almost anything is proper for them to say; but their chief subject is bawdy, and profaneness, which they call brisk writing, when the most dissolute of men, that relish those things well enough in private, are choked at ’em in publick:  and, methinks, if there were nothing but the ill manners of it, it should make poets avoid that indecent way of writing.”—­Preface to the Sullen Lovers.

Lest this provocation should be insufficient, the Prologue of the same piece has a fling at heroic plays.  The poet says he has

  “No kind romantic lover in his play
  To sigh and whine out passion, such as may
  Charm waiting-women with heroic chime,
  And still resolve to live and die in rhyme;
  Such as your ears with love and honour feast,
  And play at crambo for three hours at least,
  That fight and wooe in verse in the same breath,
  And make similitude and love in death.”

Whatever symptoms of reconciliation afterwards took place between the poets, I greatly doubt if this first offence was ever cordially forgiven.

[18] Vol. vii.

[19] See these offensive passages, vol. x.

[20] Vol. x.

[21]
  “The laurel makes a wit, a brave, the sword;
  And all are wise men at the Council board: 
  Settle’s a coward, ’cause fool Otway fought him,
  And Mulgrave is a wit, because I taught him.”
The Tory Poets, 4to, 1682.

[22] Jonson is described as wearing a loose coachman’s coat, frequenting the Mermaid tavern, where he drunk seas of Canary, then reeling home to bed, and, after a profuse perspiration, arising to his dramatic studies.  Shadwell appears, from the slight traits which remain concerning him, to have followed, as closely as possible, the same course of pleasure and of study.  He was brutal in his conversation, and much addicted to the use of opium, to which indeed he is said finally to have fallen a victim.

[23] [I have inserted the word “first” because Scott’s language is ambiguous.  In the list of the bookseller’s collection in 3 vols. 4to, advertised in Amphitryon (1690), “Mac-Flecknoe” and the Cromwell poem do not appear.  The later plays, however, soon gave material for another volume, and in this 4-vol. edition, advertised in Love Triumphant, 1694, both poems figure.—­ED.]

[24] Vol. x.

[25] See some specimens of these poems, vol. ix.

[26] Vol. vi.; vol. x

[27] In a satire against Settle, dated April 1682, entitled, “A Character of the True-blue Protestant Poet,” the author exclaims, “One would believe it almost incredible, that any out of Bedlam should think it possible, a yesterday’s fool, an errant knave, a despicable coward, and a prophane atheist, should be to-day by the same persons, a Cowley, a man of honour, an hero, and a zealous upholder of the Protestant cause and interest.”