the mitre is an
emblem.

L. M. M. R.

* * * * *

DRYDEN'S ESSAY UPON SATIRE.

(Vol. ii., pp. 422. 462.)

The Query proposed by your correspondent, as to the authorship of the
_Essay on Satire_, is a very interesting one, and I am rather surprised
that it has not yet been replied to. In favour of your correspondent's
view, and I think it is perhaps the strongest argument which can be
alleged, is Dean Lockier's remark:--

"Could anything be more impudent than his (Sheffield's) publishing that
satire, for writing which Dryden was beaten in Rose Alley (and which
was so remarkably known by the name of the 'Rose Alley Satire') as his
own? Indeed he made a few alterations in it, but these were only
verbal, and generally for the worse."--Spence's _Anecdotes_, edit.
Singer, p. 64.

Dean Lockier, it must be observed, was well acquainted with Dryden from
1685 to the time of his death; and appears to speak so positively that he
would seem to have acquired his knowledge from Dryden's own information.
His first introduction to that great poet arose from an observation made in
Dryden's hearing about his Mac Fleckno; and it is therefore the more likely
that he would be correctly informed as to the author's other satires. Dean
Lockier was, it may be added, a good critic; and his opinions on literary
subjects are so just, that it is to be regretted we have only very few of
them.

I confess I do not attach much weight to the argument arising from the
lines on the Earl of Mulgrave himself contained in the poem. To transfer
suspicion from himself, in so general a satire, it was necessary to include
his own name amongst the rest; but, though the lines are somewhat obscure,
it is, after all, as respects him, compared with the other persons
mentioned, a very gentle flagellation, and something like what children
call a make-believe. Indeed Rochester, in a letter to his friend Henry
Saville (21st Nov. 1679), speaks of it as a panegyric.

On the other hand, Mulgrave expressly denied Dryden's being the author, in
the lines in his _Essay on Poetry_,--

"Tho' praised and punished for another's rhymes."

and by inference claimed the poem, or at least the lines on Rochester, as
his own. Dryden, in the Preface to his Virgil, praises the _Essay on
Poetry_ in the highest terms; but says not a word to dispute Mulgrave's
statement, though he might then have safely claimed the _Essay o