I owe my copy of this curious monument of belated spite to the kindness of Mr. Austin Dobson.—­ED.]

[21] “Amongst several other late exercises of the Athenian virtuosi in the Coffee-academy, instituted by Apollo for the advancement of Gazette Philosophy, Mercury’s, Diurnalli, etc., this day was wholly taken up in the examination of the ‘Conquest of Granada.’  A gentleman on the reading of the First Part, and there in the description of the bull-baiting, said, that Almanzor’s playing at the bull was according to the standard of the Greek heroes, who, as Mr. Dryden had learnedly observed (Essay of Dramatic Poesy), were great beef-eaters.  And why might not Almanzor as well as Ajax, or Don Quixote, worry mutton, or take a bull by the throat, since the author had elsewhere explained himself, by telling us the heroes were more noble beasts of prey, in his Epistle to his ‘Conquest of Granada,’ distinguishing them into wild and tame; and in his play we have Almanzor shaking his chains, and frighting his keeper, broke loose, and tearing those that would reclaim his rage.  To this he added, that his bulls excelled other heroes, as far as his own heroes surpassed his gods; that the champion bull was divested of flesh and blood, and made immortal by the poet, and bellowed after death; that the fantastic bull seemed fiercer than the true, and the dead bellowings in verse were louder than the living; concluding with a wish, that Mr. Dryden had the good luck to have varied that old verse quoted in his dramatic essay: 

  ’Atque Ursum, el Pugiles media inter carmina poscunt
  Tauros, et Pugiles pruna inter carmina posco;’

and prefixed it to the front of his play, instead of

  ’Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo,
  Majus ojius moveo.’”

—­Censure of the Rota, p. 1.

[22] “But however, if he were taken for no good comic poet, or satirist, he had found a way of much easier licence (though more remarkable in the sense of some), which was, not only to libel men’s persons, but to represent them on the stage too.  That to this purpose he made his observations of men, their words, and actions, with so little disguise, that many beheld themselves acted for their half-crown; yet, after all, was unwilling to believe, that this was not both good comedy, and no less good manners.”—­Friendly Vindication of Mr. Dryden, p. 8.

[23] Dedication to the “Assignation.”

[24] Dryden either confines himself to two pamphlets, or, more probably, speaks of the three as written by only two authors.  Leigh is, I presume, the contemptible pedant, and the Sir Fastidious Brisk of Oxford.  The Cambridge author, who imitated his style, is the Fungoso of the Dedication:—­“As for the errors they pretend to find in me, I could easily show them that the greatest part of them are beauties; and for the rest, I could recriminate upon the best poets of our nation, if I could resolve to