illustration;
yet so difficult is it, even for the best poet, to feign a sorrow which
he feels not, or to describe with appropriate and animated colouring a
person whom he has never seen, that Dryden's poem resembles rather an
abstract panegyric on an imaginary being, than an elegy on a real
character. The elegy was published early in 1692.

In 1693, Tonson's Third Miscellany made its appearance, with a
dedication to Lord Ratcliffe, eldest son of the Earl of Derwentwater,
who was himself a pretender to poetry, though our author thought so
slightly of his attempts in that way, that he does not even deign to
make them enter into his panegyric, but contents himself with saying,
"what you will be hereafter, may be more than guessed by what you are at
present." It is probable that the rhyming peer was dissatisfied with
Dryden's unusual economy of adulation; at least he disappointed some
expectations which the poet and bookseller seem to have entertained of
his liberality.[7] This dedication indicates, that a quarrel was
commenced between our author and the critic Rymer. It appears from a
passage in a letter to Tonson, that Rymer had spoken lightly of him in
his last critique (probably in the short view of tragedy), and that the
poet took this opportunity, as he himself expresses it, to snarl again.
He therefore acquaints us roundly, that the corruption of a poet was the
generation of a critic; exults a little over the memory of Rymer's
"Edgar," a tragedy just reeking from damnation; and hints at the
difference which the public is likely to experience between the present
royal historiographer and him whose room he occupied. In his epistle to
Congreve, alluding to the same circumstance of Rymer's succeeding to the
office of historiographer, as Tate did to the laurel, on the death of
Thomas Shadwell, in 1692, Dryden has these humorous lines:

"O that your brows my laurel had sustained!
Well had I been deposed, if you had reigned:
The father had descended for the son;
For only you are lineal to the throne.
Thus, when the state one Edward did depose,
A greater Edward in his room arose:
But now not I, but poetry, is cursed;
For Tom the second reigns like Tom the first.
But let them not mistake my patron's part,
Nor call his charity their own desert."

From the letter to Tonson above referred to, it would seem that the
dedication of the Third Miscellany gave offence to Queen Mary, being
understood to refle