Our author in his early years became acquainted with some of the brightest geniuses which then illuminated the regions of wit, such as Dryden, Wycherly, Congreve, and Southern.  Their conversation was in itself sufficient to divert his mind from the acquisition of any profitable art, or the exercise of any profession.  He ranked himself amongst the wits, and from that moment held every attainment in contempt, except what related to poetry, and taste.

Mr. Dennis, by the instances of zeal which he gave for the Protestant succession in the reign of King William, and Queen Anne, obtained the patronage of the duke of Marlborough, who procured him the place of one of the Queen’s waiters in the Custom-house, worth 120 l. per annum, which Mr. Dennis held for six years.  During the time he attended at the Custom-house, he lived so profusely, and managed his affairs with so little economy, that in order to discharge some pressing demands, he was obliged to dispose of his place.  When the earl of Hallifax, with whom he had the honour of being acquainted, heard of Mr. Dennis’s design, he sent for him, and in the most friendly manner, expostulated with him upon the folly, and rashness of disposing of his place, by which (says his lordship) you will soon become a beggar.  Mr. Dennis represented his exigences, and the pressing demands that were then made upon him:  which did not however satisfy his lordship, who insisted if he did sell it, it should be with some reversion to himself for the space of forty years, a term which the earl had no notion Mr. Dennis could exceed.  But he was mistaken in his calculation upon our poet’s constitution, who out-lived the term of forty years stipulated when he sold his place, and fulfilled in a very advanced age, what his lordship had prophesied would befal him.  This circumstance our author hints at in his dedication of his poem on the Battle of Ramellies, to lord Hallifax, ’I have lately, says he, had very great obligations to your lordship, you have been pleased to take some care of my fortune, at a time when I most wanted it, and had the least reason to expect it from you.’  This poem on the Battle of Ramellies is a cold unspirited performance; it has neither fire, nor elevation, and is the true poetical sister of another poem of his, on the Battle of Blenheim, addressed to Queen Anne, and for which the duke of Marlborough rewarded him, says Mr. Coxeter, with a present of a hundred guineas.  In these poems he has introduced a kind of machinery; good and bad angels interest themselves in the action, and his hero, the duke of Marlborough, enjoys a large share of the celestial protection.

Mr. Dennis had once contracted a friendship[B] with Sir Richard Steele, whom he afterwards severely attacked.  Sir Richard had promised that he would take some opportunity of mentioning his works in public with advantage, and endeavour to raise his reputation.  When Sir Richard engaged in a periodical paper, there was a fair occasion of doing it, and accordingly in one of his Spectators he quotes the following couplet, which he is pleased to call humorous, but which however is a translation from Boileau.