The “Essay on Satire,” though written, as appears from the title-page of the last edition, in 1675, was not made public until 1679, when several copies were handed about in manuscript.  Rochester sends one of these to his friend Henry Saville, on the 21st of November 1679, with this observation:—­“I have sent you herewith a libel, in which my own share is not the least.  The king, having perused it, is no way dissatisfied with his.  The author is apparently Mr. Dr[yden], his patron, Lord M[ulgrave,] having a panegyric in the midst.”  From hence it is evident, that Dryden obtained the reputation of being the author; in consequence of which, Rochester meditated the base and cowardly revenge which he afterwards executed; and he thus coolly expressed his intention in another of his letters:—­“You write me word, that I’m out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes.  He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing owl.  If he falls on me at the blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please; and leave the repartee to black Will with a cudgel.”

In pursuance of this infamous resolution, Dryden, upon the night of the 18th December 1679, was waylaid by hired ruffians, and severely beaten, as he passed through Rose-street, Covent-garden returning from Will’s Coffee-house to his own house in Gerrard-street.  A reward of L50 was in vain offered, in the London Gazette and other newspapers, for the discovery of the perpetrators of this outrage.[20] The town was, however, at no loss to pitch upon Rochester as the employer of the bravoes, with whom the public suspicion joined the Duchess of Portsmouth, equally concerned in the supposed affront thus avenged.  In our time, were a nobleman to have recourse to hired bravoes to avenge his personal quarrel against any one, more especially a person holding the rank of a gentleman, he might lay his account with being hunted out of society.  But in the age of Charles, the ancient high and chivalrous sense of honour was esteemed Quixotic, and the civil war had left traces of ferocity in the manners and sentiments of the people.  Rencounters, where the assailants took all advantages of number and weapons, were as frequent, and held as honourable, as regular duels.  Some of these approached closely to assassination; as in the famous case of Sir John Coventry, who was waylaid, and had his nose slit by some young men of high rank, for a reflection upon the king’s theatrical amours.  This occasioned the famous statute against maiming and wounding, called the Coventry Act; an Act highly necessary, since so far did our ancestors’ ideas of manly forbearance differ from ours, that Killigrew introduces the hero of one of his comedies, a cavalier, and the fine gentleman of the piece, lying in wait for, and slashing the face of a poor courtezan, who had cheated him.[21]