ly and unexpectedly to my relief.
That favour, my lord, is of itself sufficient to bind any grateful man
to a perpetual acknowledgment, and to all the future service which one
of my mean condition can be ever able to perform. May the Almighty God
return it for me, both in blessing you here, and rewarding you
hereafter!"--_Essay on Satire_, vol. xiii.

[2] So says Ward, in the London Spy.

[3] "Dryden, though my near relation," says Swift, "is one whom I have
often blamed, as well as pitied." Mr. Malone traces their consanguinity
to Swift's grandmother, Elizabeth Dryden, being the daughter of a
brother of Sir Erasmus Driden, the poet's grandfather; so that the Dean
of St. Patrick's was the son of Dryden's second cousin, which, in
Scotland, would even yet be deemed a near relation. The passages in
prose and verse, in which Swift reflects on Dryden, are various. He
mentions, in his best poem, "The Rhapsody,"

"The prefaces of Dryden,
For these our cities much confide in,
Though merely writ at first for filling,
To raise the volume's price a shilling."

He introduces Dryden in "The Battle of the Books," with a most
irreverent description; and many of the brilliant touches in the
following assumed character of a hack author, are directed against our
poet. The malignant allusions to merits, to sufferings, to changes of
opinion, to political controversies, and a peaceful consciences, cannot
be mistaken. The piece was probably composed _flagrante odio_, for it
occurs in the Introduction to "The Tale of a Tub," which was written
about 1692. "These notices may serve to give the learned reader an idea,
as well as taste, of what the whole work is likely to produce, wherein I
have now altogether circumscribed my thoughts and my studies; and, if I
can bring it to a perfection before I die, I shall reckon I have well
employed the poor remains of an unfortunate life. This indeed is more
than I can justly expect, from a quill worn to the pith in the service
of the state, in _pros_ and _cons_ upon popish plots, and meal tubs, and
exclusion bills, and passive obedience, and addresses of lives and
fortunes, and prerogative, and property and liberty of conscience, and
letters to a friend: from an understanding and a conscience, threadbare
and ragged with perpetual turning; from a head broken in a hundred
places by the malignants of the opposite factions; and from a body spent
with poxes ill cured, by trusting to bawds an