des triumphant between stool and stool.
Well, let him go,--'tis yet too early day
To get himself a place in farce or play;
We know not by what name we should arraign him,
For no one category can contain him.
A pedant,--canting preacher,--and a quack,
Are load enough to break an ass's back.
At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write,
Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite;
One made the doctor, and one dubbed the knight."

[49] One of these well-meaning persons insulted the ashes of Dryden
while they were still warm, in "An Epistle to Sir Richard Blackmore,
occasioned by the New Session of the Poets." Marked by Mr. Luttrell, 1st
November 1700.

"His mighty Dryden to the shades is gone,
And Congreve leaves successor of his throne:
Though long before his final exit hence,
He was himself an abdicated Prince;
Disrobed of all regalities of state,
Drawn by a hind and panther from his seat.
Heir to his plays, his fables, and his tales,
Congreve is the poetic prince of Wales;
Not at St. Germains, but at Will's, his court,
Whither the subjects of his dad resort;
Where plots are hatched, and councils yet unknown,
How young Ascanius may ascend the throne,
That in despite of all the Muses' laws,
He may revenge his injured father's cause,
Go, nauseous rhymers, into darkness go,
And view your monarch in the shades below,
Who takes not now from Helicon his drink,
But sips from Styx a liquor black as ink;
Like Sisyphus a restless stone he turns,
And in a pile of his own labours burns;
Whose curling flames most ghastly fiends do raise,
Supplied with fuel from his impious plays;
And when he fain would puff away the flame,
One stops his mouth with bawdy Limberham;
There, to augment the terrors of the place,
His Hind and Panther stare him in the face;
They grin like devils at the cursed toad,
Who made [them] draw on earth so vile a load.
Could some infernal painter draw the sight,
And once transmit it to the realms of light,
It might our poets from their sins affright;
Or could they hear, how there the sons of verse
In dismal yells their tortures do express;
How scorched with ballads on the Stygian shore,
They horrors in a dismal chorus roar;
Or see how the laureate does his grandeur bear,
Crowned with a wreath of flaming sulphur there.
This, sir, 's your fate, cursed critics you oppose,
The most tyrannical and cruel foes;