SETTLE, ELKANAH (1648-1724).—­Poet and dramatist, ed. at Oxf., was the author of a number of turgid dramas, now unreadable and unread, but which in their day were held to rival Dryden, who pilloried S. as Doeg in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel.  S. essayed a reply in Absalom Senior.  He wrote against the Papists, but recanted, and made amends by a Narrative of the Popish Plot, in which he exposed the perjuries of Titus Oates.  He was appointed City Poet.  Latterly he had a booth in Bartholomew Fair.  He d. in the Charterhouse.  His plays include Cambyses (1666), Empress of Morocco (1671), Love and Revenge (1675), The Female Prelate, Distressed Innocence (1691), and the Ladies’ Triumph (1718).

SHADWELL, THOMAS (1640 or 1642-1692).—­Dramatist and poet, belonged to a good Staffordshire family, was b. in Norfolk, ed. at Camb., and after studying law travelled, and on his return became a popular dramatist.  Among his comedies, in which he displayed considerable comic power and truth to nature, may be mentioned The Sullen Lovers (1668), Royal Shepherdess (1668), The Humourists (1671), and The Miser (1672).  He attached himself to the Whigs, and when Dryden attacked them in Absalom and Achitophel and The Medal, had the temerity to assail him scurrilously in The Medal of John Bayes (1682).  The castigation which this evoked in MacFlecknoe and in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, in which S. figures as “Og,” has conferred upon him an unenviable immortality.  He may have found some consolation in his succession to Dryden as Poet Laureate when, at the Revolution, the latter was deprived of the office.

Other plays are Epsom Wells (1673), The Virtuoso (1676), Lancashire Witches (1681), The Volunteers (1693), etc.

SHAFTESBURY, ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, 3RD EARL OF (1671-1713).—­Philosopher, b. in London, grandson of the 1st Earl, the eminent statesman, the “Achitophel” of Dryden.  After a private education under the supervision of Locke, and a short experience of Winchester School, he travelled much on the Continent.  On succeeding to the earldom in 1699 he took a prominent part in the debates of the House of Lords, but devoted himself mainly to philosophical and literary pursuits.  His coll. writings were pub. in 1711 under the title of Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times.  In his philosophy he maintains, as against Hobbes, the existence of a moral sense, a view subsequently developed by the Scottish school of philosophy.  The style of S. is stately and sonorous but laboured.  He d. at Naples, whither he had gone in search of health, at the early age of 42.  Though his writings are directed strongly against Atheism, they have been held to be hostile to a belief in revelation.