ut of the partisans of Monmouth and Shaftesbury for his own
particular severity, were Robert Ferguson, afterwards well known by the
name of The Plotter; Forbes; Johnson, author of the parallel between
James, Duke of York, and Julian the Apostate; but, above all, Settle and
Shadwell, whom, under the names of Doeg and Og, he has depicted in the
liveliest colours his poignant satire could afford. They who have
patience to look into the lampoons which these worthies had published
against Dryden, will, in reading his retort, be reminded of the combats
between the giants and knights of romance. His antagonists came on with
infinite zeal and fury, discharged their ill-aimed blows on every side,
and exhausted their strength in violent and ineffectual rage. But the
keen and trenchant blade of Dryden never makes a thrust in vain, and
never strikes but at a vulnerable point. This, we have elsewhere
remarked, is a peculiar attribute of his satire;[24] and it is difficult
for one assailed on a single ludicrous foible to make good his
respectability though possessed of a thousand valuable qualities; as it
was impossible for Achilles, invulnerable everywhere else, to survive
the wound which a dexterous archer had aimed at his heel. With regard to
Settle, there is a contempt in Dryden's satire which approaches almost
to good-humour, and plainly shows how far our poet was now from
entertaining those apprehensions of rivalship, which certainly dictated
his portion of the "Remarks on the Empress of Morocco." Settle had now
found his level, and Dryden no longer regarded him with a mixture of
rage and apprehension, but with more appropriate feelings of utter
contempt. This poor wight had acquired by practice, and perhaps from
nature, more of a poetical ear than most of his contemporaries were
gifted with. His "blundering melody," as Dryden terms it, is far sweeter
to the ear than the flat and ineffectual couplets of Tate; nor are his
verses always destitute of something approaching to poetic fancy and
spirit. He certainly, in his transposition of "Absalom and Achitophel,"
mimicked the harmony of his original with more success than was attained
by Shadwell, Buckingham or Pordage.[25] But in this facility of
versification all his merit began and ended; in our author's phrase,

"Doeg, though without knowing how or why,
Made still a blundering kind of melody;
Spurred boldly on, and dashed though thick and thin,
Through sense and nonsens