the pieces designed for such occasions.  Crowne, though he was a tolerable comic writer,[11] had no turn whatever for tragedy, or indeed for poetry of any kind.  But the splendour of the scenery and dresses, the quality of the performers, selected from the first nobility, and the favour of the sovereign, gave “Calisto” a run of nearly thirty nights.  Dryden, though mortified, tendered his services in the shape of an epilogue, to be spoken by Lady Henrietta Maria Wentworth.[12] But the influence of his enemy, Rochester, was still predominant, and the epilogue of the laureate was rejected.[13]

The author of “Calisto” also lost his credit with Rochester, so soon as he became generally popular; and shortly after the representation of that piece, its fickle patron seems to have recommended to the royal protection, a rival more formidable to Dryden than either Settle or “starch Johnny Crowne."[14] This was no other than Otway, whose “Don Carlos” appeared in 1676, and was hailed as one of the best heroic plays which had been written.  The author avows in his preface the obligations he owed to Rochester, who had recommended him to the king and the duke, to whose favour he owed his good success, and on whose indulgence he reckoned as insuring that of his next attempt.[15] These effusions of gratitude did not, as Mr. Malone observes, withhold Rochester, shortly after, from lampooning Otway, with circumstances of gross insult, in the “Session of the Poets."[16] In the same preface, Otway, in very intelligible language, bade defiance to Dryden whom he charges with having spoken slightly of his play.[17] But although Dryden did not admire the general structure of Otway’s poetry, he is said, even at this time, to have borne witness to his power of moving the passions; an acknowledgment which he long afterwards solemnly repeated.  Thus Otway, like many others, mistook the character of a pretended friend, and did injustice to that of a liberal rival.  Dryden and he indeed never appear to have been personal friends, even when they both wrote in the Tory interest.  It was probably about this time that Otway challenged Settle, whose courage appears to have failed him upon the occasion.

Rochester was not content with exciting rivals against Dryden in the public opinion, but assailed him personally in an imitation of Horace, which he quaintly entitled, “An Allusion to the Tenth Satire.”  It came out anonymously about 1678, but the town was at no loss to guess that Rochester was the patron or author.  Much of the satire was bestowed on Dryden, whom Rochester for the first time distinguishes by a ridiculous nickname, which was afterwards echoed by imitating dunces in all their lampoons.  The lines are more cutting, because mingled with as much praise as the writer probably thought necessary to gain the credit of a candid critic.[18] Dryden, on his part, did not view with indifference these repeated direct and indirect attacks on his literary reputation