high rank and consequent influence, which Dryden already held in the fashionable and literary circles of the time, must unquestionably be added.  Nor did he fail to avail himself of his access to the great, whose applause was often cheaply secured by a perusal of the piece, previous to its being presented to the public; and thus it afterwards came forth with all the support of a party eminent for rank and literature, already prepossessed in its favour.[5]

For all these reasons, the heroic drama appears to have gradually risen in reputation, from the return of Charles till about the year 1670-1, when Dryden’s “Conquest of Granada” was received with such enthusiastic applause.  The reputation of the poet himself kept pace with that of his favourite style of composition; and though posterity has judged more correctly, it may be questioned, whether “Tyrannic Love” and the “Conquest of Granada” did not place Dryden higher in public esteem, in 1670, than his “Virgil” and “Fables” in 1700.  He was, however, now to experience the inconveniencies of elevation, and to sustain an attack upon the style of writing which he had vindicated and practised, as well as to repel the efforts of rivals, who boasted of outstripping him in the very road to distinction, which he had himself pointed out.  The Duke of Buckingham attacked the system of rhyming plays from the foundation; Leigh [Transcriber’s note:  Print unclear], Clifford, and other scribblers, wrote criticisms [Transcriber’s note:  Print unclear] upon those of our author in particular; and Elkanah Settle was able to form a faction heretical enough to maintain, that he could write such compositions better than Dryden.

The witty farce of the “Rehearsal” is said to have been meditated by its authors (for it was the work of several hands) so early as a year or two after the Restoration, when Sir William Davenant’s operas and tragedies were the favourite exhibitions.  The ostensible author was the witty George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham whose dissipation was marked with shades of the darkest profligacy.  He lived an unprincipled statesman, a fickle projector, a wavering friend, a steady enemy; and died a bankrupt, an outcast, and a proverb.  The Duke was unequal to that masculine satire, which depends for edge and vigour upon the conception and expression of the author.[6] But he appears to have possessed considerable powers of discerning what was ludicrous, and enough of subordinate humour to achieve an imitation of colloquial peculiarities, or a parody upon remarkable passages of poetry,—­talents differing as widely from real wit as mimicry does from true comic action.  Besides, Buckingham, as a man of fashion and a courtier, was master of the persiflage, or jargon, of the day, so essentially useful as the medium of conveying light humour.  He early distinguished himself as an opponent of the rhyming plays.  Those of the Howards, of Davenant, and others, the first which appeared after the Reformation,