profitable and honourable to himself, and more useful to others.
And there are among these writers _some, who think they might have risen
to the highest dignities in other professions, had they employed their
wit in those ways._ It is a mighty dishonour and reproach to any man
that is capable of being useful to the world in any _liberal and
virtuous_ profession, _to lavish out his life and wit in propagating
vice and corruption of manners_, and in battering from the stage the
strongest entrenchments and best works of religion and virtue. Whoever
makes this his choice, when the other was in his power, may he go off
the stage unpitied, _complaining of neglect and poverty, the just
punishments of his irreligion and folly!_"

[35] Mr. Malone conceives, that the Fables were published before the
"Satire upon Wit;" but he had not this evidence of the contrary before
him. It is therefore clear, that Dryden endured a second attack from
Blackmore, before making any reply.

[36] Since Scott wrote, the Collier-Congreve controversy has been the
subject of well-known essays by Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Macaulay.
Very recently a fresh and excellent account of Collier's book has
appeared in M.A. Beljame's _Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en
Angleterre au xviiieme siecle_ (Paris: Hachette, 1881), a remarkable
volume, to which, and to its author, I owe much.--Ed.

[37] In his apology for "The Tale of a Tub," he points out to the
resentment of the clergy, "those heavy illiterate scribblers, prostitute
in their reputations, vicious in their lives, and ruined in their
fortunes, who, to the shame of good sense, as well as piety, are
greedily read, merely upon the strength of bold, false, impious
assertions, mixed with unmannerly reflections on the priesthood." And,
after no great interval, he mentions the passage quoted, p. 375 "in
which Dryden, L'Estrange, and some others I shall not name, are levelled
at; who, having spent their lives in faction, and apostasies, and all
manner of vice, pretended to be sufferers for loyalty and religion. So
Dryden tells us, in one of his prefaces, of his merits and sufferings,
and thanks God that he possesses his soul in patience. In other places
he talks at the same rate."

[38] Vol. xviii.

[39] Thus in a lampoon already quoted (footnote 29, Section VI)

"Quitting my duller hopes, the poor renown
Of Eton College, or a Dublin gown."

Tom Brown makes the charge more directly. "But, p