by Rochester.  In the preface to “All for Love,” published in 1678, he gives a severe rebuke to those men of rank, who, having acquired the credit of wit, either by virtue of their quality, or by common fame, and finding themselves possessed of some smattering of Latin, become ambitious to distinguish themselves by their poetry from the herd of gentlemen.  “And is not this,” he exclaims, “a wretched affectation, not to be contented with what fortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, but they must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose their nakedness to public view?  Not considering that they are not to expect the same approbation from sober men, which they have found from their flatterers after the third bottle.  If a little glittering in discourse has passed them on us for witty men, where was the necessity of undeceiving the world?  Would a man who has an ill title to an estate, but yet is in possession of it; would he bring it of his own accord to be tried at Westminster?  We who write, if we want the talent, yet have the excuse, that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble out of mere wantonness, take pains to make themselves ridiculous?  Horace was certainly in the right, where he said, ’That no man is satisfied with his own condition.’  A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented, because the poets will not admit them of their number.  Thus the case is hard with writers:  if they succeed not, they must starve; and if they do, some malicious satire is prepared to level them, for daring to please without their leave.  But while they are so eager to destroy the fame of others, their ambition is manifest in their concernment; some poem of their own is to be produced, and the slaves are to be laid flat with their faces on the ground, that the monarch may appear in the greater majesty.”  This general censure of the persons of wit and honour about town, is fixed on Rochester in particular not only by the marked allusion in the last sentence, to the despotic tyranny which he claimed over the authors of his time, but also by a direct attack upon such imitators of Horace, who make doggrel of his Latin, misapply his censures, and often contradict their own.  It is remarkable, however, that he ascribes this imitation rather to some zany of the great, than to one of their number; and seems to have thought Rochester rather the patron than the author.

At the expense of anticipating the order of events, and that we may bring Dryden’s dispute with Rochester to a conclusion, we must recall to the reader’s recollection our author’s friendship with Mulgrave.  This appears to have been so intimate, that, in 1675, that nobleman intrusted him with the task of revising his “Essay upon Satire:”  a poem which contained dishonourable mention of many courtiers of the time, and was particularly severe on Sir Car Scrope