he
city-laureate;[29] but, in despite of that provision, was reduced by
want to write plays, like Ben Jonson's Littlewit, for the profane
_motions_, or puppet-shows, of Smithfield and Bartholomew fairs. Nay,
having proceeded thus far in exhibiting the truth of Dryden's
prediction, he actually mounted the stage in person among these wooden
performers, and combated St. George for England in a green dragon of his
own proper device. Settle was admitted into the Charterhouse in his old
age, and died there in 1723. The lines of Pope on poor Elkanah's fate
are familiar to every poetical reader:--

"In Lud's old walls though long I ruled, renowned
Far as loud Bow's stupendous bells resound;
Though my own aldermen conferred the bays,
To me committing their eternal praise,
Their full-fed heroes, their pacific mayors,
Their annual trophies and their monthly wars;
Though long my party built on me their hopes,
For writing pamphlets, and for roasting popes;
Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on!
Reduced at last to hiss in my own dragon.
Avert it, heaven! that thou, or Cibber, e'er
Should wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair!
Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets,
The needy poet sticks to all he meets;
Coached, carted, trod upon, now loose, now fast,
And carried off in some dog's tail at last."

As Dryden was probably more apprehensive of Shadwell, who, though a
worse poet than Settle, has excelled even Dryden in the lower walks of
comedy, he has treated him with sterner severity. His person, his
morals, his manners and his politics, all that had escaped or been but
slightly touched upon in "Mac-Flecknoe," are bitterly reviewed in the
character of Og; and there probably never existed another poet, who, at
the distance of a month, which intervened between the publication of the
two poems, could resume an exhausted theme with an energy which gave it
all the charms of novelty. Shadwell did not remain silent beneath the
lash; but his clamorous exclamations only tended to make his castigation
more ludicrous.[30]

The Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel" was followed by the
"_Religio Laici_," a poem which Dryden published in the same month of
November 1682. Its tendency, although of a political nature, is so
different from that of the satires, that it will be most properly
considered when we can place it in contrast to the "Hind and Panther."
It was addressed to Henry Dickinson,