which, even when flowing from conscious merit, is not easily tolerated by contemporaries; and perhaps his situation as poet-laureate, a post which has been always considered as a fair butt for the shafts of ridicule,—­induced Buckingham to resume the plan of his satire, and to place Dryden in the situation designed originally for Davenant or Howard.  That the public might be at no loss to assign the character of Bayes to the laureate, his peculiarities of language were strictly copied.  Lacy the actor was instructed by Buckingham himself how to mimic his voice and manner; and, in performing the part, he wore a dress exactly resembling Dryden’s usual habit.  With these ill-natured precautions, the “Rehearsal” was, in 1671, brought forward for the first time by the King’s Company.  As, besides the reputation of Dryden, that of many inferior poets, but greater men, was assailed by the Duke’s satire, it would appear that the play met a stormy reception on the first night of representation The friends of the Earl of Orrery, of Sir Robert Howard and his brothers, and other men of rank, who had produced heroic plays, were loud and furious in their opposition.  But, as usually happens, the party who laughed, got the advantage over that which was angry, and finally drew the audience to their side.  When once received, the success of the “Rehearsal” was unbounded.  The very popularity of the plays ridiculed aided the effect of the satire, since everybody had in their recollection the originals of the passages parodied.  Besides the attraction of personal severity upon living and distinguished literary characters, and the broad humour of the burlesque, the part of Bayes had a claim to superior praise, as drawn with admirable attention to the foibles of the poetic tribe.  His greedy appetite for applause; his testy repulse of censure or criticism; his inordinate and overwhelming vanity, not unmixed with a vein of flattery to those who he hopes will gratify him by returning it in kind; finally, that extreme, anxious, and fidgeting attention to the minute parts of what even in whole is scarce worthy of any,—­are, I fear, but too appropriate qualities of the “genus vatum”

Almost all Dryden’s plays, including those on which he set the highest value, and which he had produced, with confidence, as models of their kind, were parodied in the “Rehearsal."[9] He alone contributed more to the farce than all the other poets together.  His favourite style of comic dialogue, which he had declared to consist rather in a quick sharpness of dialogue than in delineations of humour,[10] is paraphrased in the scene between Tom Thimble and Prince Prettyman; the lyrics of his astral spirits are cruelly burlesqued in the song of the two lawful Kings of Brentford, as they descend to repossess their throne; above all, Almanzor, his favourite hero, is parodied in the magnanimous Drawcansir; and, to conclude, the whole scope of heroic plays, with their combats, feasts, processions, sudden