the graceful action, incomparable beauty,
and splendid habits of those ladies who accompanied them, afforded the
spectators extraordinary delight." "Calisto" was therefore performed
thirty times.

The author's gratitude for his lordship's patronage was only equalled
by his disappointment upon its hasty withdrawal. Growing weary of him,
Rochester found a more worthy object for his favour in Thomas Otway, a
poet rich in all the miseries which afflicted genius in those days. Son
of the rector of Woolbeding, pupil at Winchester School, and commoner
of Christchurch, Cambridge, he had on his arrival in town vainly sought
employment as an actor, and barely earned bread as a play-writer. Before
he became a PROTEGE of my Lord Rochester he had written "Alcibiades," a
tragedy, he being then, in 1665, in his twenty-fifth year. His next play
was "Don Carlos, Prince of Spain," which, through the earl's influence,
gained great success. In the preface to this tragedy he acknowledges his
unspeakable obligations to my lord, who he says made it his business to
establish "Don Carlos" in the good opinion of the king and of his royal
highness the Duke of York. Unwarned by the fate of his predecessors,
and heedless of the fickleness of his patron, he basked in hope in the
present, mercifully unconscious of the cruel death by starvation which
awaited him in the future. Alas! Rochester not only forsook him, but
loaded him with satire in a poem entitled "Session of the Poets."

In verses which he wrote soon after, entitled "An Allusion to the Tenth
Satire," Rochester likewise attacked Dryden; who, in the preface of his
"All for Love," replied in like manner. Then there appeared an "Essay on
Satire," which ridiculed the king, dealt severely with his mistresses,
said uncivil things of the courtiers in general, and of my Lord
Rochester in particular. The noble earl was indeed described as being
"lewd in every limb," affected in his wit, mean in his actions, and
cowardly in his disposition. Now, though this was conceived and brought
forth by my Lord Mulgrave, Rochester suspected Dryden of its authorship,
and resolved to punish him forthwith. Accordingly on the night of the
18th of December, 1679, when Dryden was passing through Rose Street,
Covent Garden, on his homeward way from Will's Coffee House, he was
waylaid by some ruffians, and, before he could draw his sword, promptly
surrounded and severely beaten.

This occurrence caused considerable