must have been greatly aggravated by the selection of his despised opponent Shadwell as his successor; a scribbler whom, in “Mac-Flecknoe,” he had himself placed pre-eminent in the regions of dulness, being now, so far as royal mandate can arrange such precedence, raised in his stead as chief among English poets.  This very remarkable coincidence has led several of Dryden’s biographers, and Dr. Johnson among others, to suppose, that the satire was actually written to ridicule Shadwell’s elevation to the honours of the laurel; though nothing is more certain than that it was published while Dryden was himself laureate, and could be hardly supposed to anticipate the object of his satire becoming his successor.  Shadwell, however, possessed merits with King William, which were probably deemed by that prince of more importance than all the genius of Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden if it could have been combined in one individual.  He was a staunch Whig, and had suffered under the former government, being “silenced as a non-conforming poet;” the doors of the theatre closed against his plays; and, if he may himself be believed, even his life endangered, not only by the slow process of starving, but some more active proceeding of his powerful enemies.[30] Shadwell, moreover, had not failed to hail the dawn of the Revolution by a congratulatory poem to the Prince of Orange, and to gratulate its completion by another inscribed to Queen Mary on her arrival.  In every point of view, his principles, fidelity, and alacrity, claimed William’s countenance; he was presented to him by Dorset, not as the best poet, but as the most honest man, politically speaking, among the competitors;[31] and accordingly succeeded to Dryden’s situation as poet-laureate and royal historiographer, with the appointment of L300 a year.  Shadwell, as might have been expected, triumphed in his success over his great antagonist; but his triumph was expressed in strains which showed he was totally unworthy of it.[32]

Dryden, deprived by the Revolution of present possession and future hope, was now reduced to the same, or a worse situation, than he had occupied in the year of the Restoration, his income resting almost entirely upon his literary exertions, his expenses increased by the necessity of providing and educating his family, and the advantage of his high reputation perhaps more than counterbalanced by the popular prejudice against his religion and party.  So situated, he patiently and prudently bent to the storm which he could not resist; and though he might privately circulate a few light pieces in favour of the exiled family, as the “Lady’s Song,"[33] and the translation of Pitcairn’s beautiful Epitaph[34] on the Viscount of Dundee, it seems certain that he made no formal attack on the government either in verse or prose.  Those who imputed to him the satires on the Revolution, called “Suum Cuique,” and “Tarquin and Tullia,” did injustice both to his prudence and his poetry.  The last, and probably both satires, were written by Mainwaring, who lived to be sorry for what he had done.