the satire of "Absalom and Achitophel." Its poetical
merits--the choice of the names and period, although this is borrowed
from a previous writer--the appearance of the poem at the most critical
hour of the crisis--and, above all, the portraitures of character, so
easy and so graphic, so free and so fearless, distinguished equally by
their animus and their animation, and with dashes of generous painting
relieving and diversifying the general caricature of the
style,--rendered it instantly and irresistibly popular. It excited one
universal cry--from its friends, of admiration, and from its enemies, of
rage. Imitations and replies multiplies around it, and sounded like
assenting or like angry echoes. It did not, indeed, move the grand jury
to condemn Shaftesbury; but when, on his acquittal, a medal was struck
by his friends, bearing on one side the head and name of Shaftesbury,
and on the other, the sun obscured by a cloud rising over the Tower and
City of London, Dryden's aid was again solicited by the Court and the
King in person, to make this the subject of a second satire; and, with
great rapidity, he produced "The Medal--a Satire against Sedition,"
which, completing and colouring the photograph of Shaftesbury, formed
the real Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel." What bore that name
came a year afterwards, when the times were changed, was written partly
by a feebler hand--Nahum Tate; and flew at inferior game--Dryden's own
personal rivals and detractors.

The principal of these was Shadwell, who had been an early friend of
Dryden's, and who certainly possessed a great deal of wit and talent, if
he did not attain to the measure of poetic genius. His principal power
lay in low comedy--his chief fault lay in his systematic and avowed
imitation of the rough and drunken manners of Ben Jonson. In the eye of
Dryden--whose own habits were convivial, although not to the same
extent--the real faults of his opponent were his popularity as a comic
writer, and his politics. Shadwell was a zealous Protestant, and the
bitterest of the many who replied to the "Medal." For this he became the
hero of "MacFlecknoe"--a masterly satire, holding him up to infamy and
contempt--besides sitting afterwards for the portrait of Og, in the
second part of "Absalom and Achitophel." Shadwell had, by and by, his
revenge, by obtaining the laureateship, after the Revolution, in room of
Dryden, and no doubt used the opportunity of drowning the memory