ely wreaked his malice on me for
spoiling his three months labour; but in it he has done me all the
honour a man can receive from him, which is to be railed at by him. If I
had ill-nature enough to prompt me to wish a very bad wish for him, it
should be that he would go and finish his translation. By that it will
appear whether the English nation, which is the most competent judge of
this matter, has upon seeing this debate, pronounced in M. Varillas's
favour or me. It is true, Mr. Dryden will suffer a little by it; but at
least it will serve to keep him in from other extravagancies; and if he
gains little honour by this work, yet he cannot lose so much by it, as
he has done by his last employment.'

When the revolution was compleated, Mr. Dryden having turned Papist,
became disqualified for holding his place, and was accordingly
dispossessed of it; and it was conferred on a man to whom he had a
confirmed aversion; in consequence whereof he wrote a satire against
him, called Mac Flecknoe, which is one of the severest and best; written
satires in our language.

Mr. Richard Flecknoe, the new laureat, with whose name it is inscribed,
was a very indifferent poet of those times; or rather as Mr. Dryden
expresses it, and as we have already quoted in Flecknoe's life.

In prose and verse was own'd without dispute,
Thro' all the realms of nonsense absolute.

This poem furnished the hint to Mr. Pope to write his Dunciad; and it
must be owned the latter has been more happy in the execution of his
design, as having more leisure for the performance; but in Dryden's Mac
Flecknoe there are some lines so extremely pungent, that I am not quite
certain if Pope has any where exceeded them.

In the year wherein he was deprived of the laurel, he published the life
of St. Francis Xavier, translated from the French of father Dominic
Bouchours. In 1693 came out a translation of Juvenal and Persius; in
which the first, third, sixth, tenth, and fifteenth satires of Juvenal,
and Persius entire, were done by Mr. Dryden, who prefixed a long and
ingenious discourse, by way of dedication, to the earl of Dorset. In
this address our author takes occasion a while to drop his reflexions
on Juvenal; and to lay before his lordship a plan for an epic poem: he
observes, that his genius never much inclined him to the stage; and that
he wrote for it rather from necessity than inclination. He complains,
that his circumstances are such as not to suffer