served to the
everlasting shame of their authors, on the lowest shelf of the records
of their enemy's fame.

Two years after, occurred the famous controversy between Dryden and
Settle. Poor Elkanah Settle seemed raised up like another Mordecai to
poison the peace and disturb the false self-satisfaction of
Dryden,--raised up, rather--shall we say?--to wean the poet from a
sphere where his true place and power were not, and to prepare him for
other stages, where he was yet destined far more powerfully to play his
part. At all events, this should have been his inference from the
success of Settle. It should have taught him that a scene where a
pitiful poetaster, backed by mob-favour and the word of a Rochester,
could eclipse his glory, was no scene for him; and he ought instantly,
with proud humility, to have left the theatre for ever. Instead of this,
he fell into a violent passion with one who, like himself, had levelled
his desires to the "claps of multitudes," and had ravished the larger
share of the coveted prize! And so there commenced a long and ludicrous
controversy--dishonourable to Settle much; to Rochester and Dryden
more--between a mere insolent twaddler and a man of real and
transcendent genius. The particulars of the struggle are too humiliating
and contemptible to deserve a minute record. Suffice it, that Dryden,
assisted by his future foe, Shadwell, wrote a scurrilous attack on
Settle, and his successful play, "The Empress of Morocco;" to which
Settle, nothing daunted, replied in terms of equal coarseness, and that
Rochester, the patron of Settle, became mixed up in the fray, till,
having been severely handled by Dryden in his "Essay on Satire,"--a
production generally, and we think justly, attributed to Mulgrave and
Dryden in conjunction,--he took a mean and characteristic revenge. He
hired bravoes, who, waiting for Dryden as he was returning, on the 18th
December 1679, from Will's coffee-house to his own house in Gerard
Street, rushed out and severely beat and wounded him. That Dryden was
the author of the lines on Rochester has been doubted, although we think
they very much resemble a rough and hurried sketch from his pen; that
Rochester deserved the truculent treatment he received in them, this
anecdote sufficiently proves. It was partly, indeed, the manner of the
age. Had this nobleman existed _now_, and been pilloried by a true and
powerful pen, he would, in addition to his own anonymous assaults, hav