The friends and admirers of Dryden did not see with indifference these attacks upon his reputation for he congratulates[23] himself upon having found defenders even among strangers alluding probably to a tract by Mr. Charles Blount, entitled, “Mr. Dryden Vindicated, in answer to the Friendly Vindication of Mr. Dryden, with reflections on the Rota.”  This piece is written with all the honest enthusiasm of youth in defence of that genius, which has excited its admiration.  In his address to Sedley, Dryden notices these attacks upon him with a supreme degree of contempt[24].  In other respects, the dedication is drawn with the easy indifference of one accustomed to the best society, towards the authority of those who presumed to judge of modern manners, without having access to see those of the higher circles.  The picture which it draws of the elegance of the convivial parties of the wits in that gay time has been quoted a few pages higher.

I know not if it be here worth while to mention a pretty warfare between Dryden and Edward Ravenscroft,[25] an unworthy scribbler, who wrote plays, or rather altered those of Shakespeare, and imitated those of Moliere.  This person, whether from a feud which naturally subsisted between the two rival theatres, or from envy and dislike to Dryden personally, chose, in the Prologue to the “Citizen turned Gentleman,” acted at the Duke’s House in 1672, to level some sneers at the heroic drama, which affected particularly the “Conquest of Granada,” then acting with great applause.  Ravenscroft’s play, which is a bald translation from the “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” of Moliere, was successful, chiefly owing to the burlesque procession of Turks employed to dub the Citizen a Mamamouchi, or Paladin.  Dryden, with more indignation than the occasion warranted, retorted, in the Prologue to the “Assignation,” by the following attack on Ravenscroft’s jargon and buffoonery: 

  “You must have Mamamouchi, such a fop
  As would appear a monster in a shop;
  He’ll fill your pit and boxes to the brim,
  Where, ramm’d in crowds, you see yourselves in him. 
  Sure there’s some spell our poet never knew,
  In Hullibabilah de, and Chu, chu, chu;
  But Marababah sahem most did touch you;
  That is, Oh how we love the Mamamouchi! 
  Grimace and habit sent you pleased away;
  You damned the poet, and cried up the play.”

About this time, too, the actresses in the King’s theatre, to vary the amusements of the house, represented “Marriage a la Mode” in men’s dresses.  The Prologue and Epilogue were furnished by Dryden; and in the latter, mentioning the projected union of the theatres,—­

  “all the women most devoutly swear,
  Each would be rather a poor actress here,
  Than to be made a Mamamouchi there.”

Ravenscroft, thus satirised, did not fail to exult in the bad success of the “Assignation,” and celebrated his triumph in some lines of a Prologue to the “Careless Lovers,” which was acted in the vacation succeeding the ill fate of Dryden’s play.  They are thrown into the note, that the reader may judge how very unworthy this scribbler was of the slightest notice from the pen of Dryden.[26]