of scenery, gilded truncheons, and verse of more noise than meaning, it is impossible his plays could have been drawn into comparison with those of Settle.  But the meretricious ornaments which he himself had introduced were within the reach of the meanest capacity; and, having been among the first to debauch the taste of the public, it was retributive justice that he should experience their inconstancy.  Indeed Dryden seems himself to admit, that the principal difference between his heroic plays and “The Empress of Morocco,” was, that the former were good sense, that looked like nonsense, and the latter nonsense, which yet looked very like sense.  A nice distinction, and which argued some regret at having opened the way to such a rival.

The feelings of contempt ought to have suppressed those of anger; but Dryden, who professedly lived to please his own age, had not temper to wait till time should do him justice.  Angry he was; and unfortunately he determined to shew the world that he did well in being so.  With this view, in conjunction with Shadwell and Crowne, two brother-dramatists, equally jealous of Settle’s success, he composed a pamphlet, entitled “Remarks upon the Empress of Morocco.”  This piece is written in the same tone of boisterous and vulgar raillery with which Clifford and Leigh had assailed Dryden himself; and little resembles our poet’s general style of controversy.  He seems to have exchanged his satirical scourge for the clumsy flail of Shadwell, when he stooped to use such raillery as the following description of Settle:  “In short, he is an animal of a most deplored understanding, without reading and conversation:  his being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought, which he can never fashion either into wit or English.  His style is boisterous and rough-hewn; his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and ill-sounding.”

Settle, nothing dismayed with this vehement attack, manfully retorted the abuse which had been thrown upon him, and answered the insulting clamour of his three antagonists with clamorous insult.[10] It was obvious that the weaker poet must be the winner by this contest in abuse; and Dryden gained no more by his dispute with Settle, than a well-dressed man who should condescend to wrestle with a chimney-sweeper.  The feud between them was carried no further, until, after the publication of “Absalom and Achitophel,” party animosity added spurs to literary rivalry.

We must now return to Rochester, who, observing Settle’s rise to his unmerited elevation in the public opinion, became as anxious to lower his presumption as he had formerly been to diminish the reputation of Dryden.  With this view, that tyrannical person of honour availed himself of his credit to recommend Crowne to write the masque of “Calisto,” which was acted by the lords and ladies of the court of Charles in 1675.  Nothing could be more galling towards Dryden, a part of whose duty as poet-laureate was to compose