undiftinguishing reverence, and difcover no defect where there is elevation of rank and affluence of riches.

With his praises of others and of himfelf is always intermingled a strain of discontent and lamentation, a fullen growl of refentment, or a querulous murmur of distress. His works are under-valued, his merit is unrewarded, and he has few thanks to pay his ftars that he was born among Englishmen. To his criticks he is fometimes contemptuous, fometimes refentful, and sometimes fubmiffive. The writer who thinks his works formed for duration, mistakes his interest when he mentions his enemies. He degrades his own dignity by fhewing that he was affected by their cenfures, and gives lasting importance to names, which, left to themselves, would yanish from remembrance, From this principle Dryden did not oft depart; his complaints are for the greater part general; he feldom pollutes his page with an adverfe name. He condefcended indeed to a controverfy with Settle, in which he perhaps may be confidered rather as affaulting than repelling; and fince Settle is funk into oblivion, his libel remains injurious only to himfelf.

Among

Among anfwers to criticks, no poetical attacks, or altercations, are to be included; they are, like other effufions of ge

poems,

nius, produced as much to obtain praise as to óbviate cenfure. Thefe Dryden practised, and in thefe he excelled,

Of Collier, Blackmore, and Milbourne, he has made mention in the preface to his Fables. To the cenfure of Collier, whofe remarks may be rather termed admonitions than criticifms, he makes little reply; being, at the

age of fixty-eight, attentive to better things than the claps of a playhouse. He complains of Collier's rudeness, and the horfe-play of his raillery; and afferts that in many places he has perverted by his gloffes the meaning of what he cenfures; but in other things he confeffes that he is justly taxed; and fays, with great calmness and candour, I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts or expreffions of mine that can be truly accused of obscenity, immorality, or profaneness, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be friend, he will be glad of my repentance. Yet, as our beft difpofitions are imperfect, he left Atanding in the fame book a reflection on

my

Collier

Collier of great afperity, and indeed of more afperity than wit.

Blackmore he reprefents as made his enemy by the poem of Abfalom and Achitophel, which he thinks a little hard upon his fanatick patrons; and charges him with borrowing the plan of his Arthur from the preface to Juvenal, though he had, fays he, the bafeness not to acknowledge his benefactor, but instead of it to traduce me in a libel.

The libel in which Blackmore traduced him was a Satire upon Wit; in which, having lamented the exuberance of false wit and the deficiency of true, he proposes that all wit fhould be re-coined before it is current, and appoints masters of afsay who shall reject all that is light or debased.

'Tis true, that when the coarse and worthless drofs

Is purg'd away, there will be mighty loss; Ev'n Congreve, Southern, manly Wycherley, When thus refin'd, will grievous fufferers be; Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes, What horrid ftench will rife, what noifome fumes !

How will he fhrink, when all his lewd allay, And wicked mixture, fhall be purg'd away!

Thus

Thus ftands the paffage in the last edition; but in the original there was an abatement of the cenfure, beginning thus:

But what remains will be fo pure, 'twill bear Th' examination of the most severe.

Blackmore, finding the cenfure refented, and the civility difregarded, ungenerously omitted the fofter part. Such variations difcover a writer who confults his paffions more than his virtue; and it may be reasonably supposed that Dryden imputes his enmity to its true cause.

Of Milbourne he wrote only in general terms, fuch as are always ready at the call of anger, whether just or not: a fhort extract will be fufficient. He pretends a quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul upon priesthood; if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his share of the reparation will come to little. Let him be fatisfied that he Shall never be able to force himself upon me for an adverfary; I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him.

As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are fuch fcoundrels that they deferve

3

deferve not the leaft notice to be taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourne are only diftinguished from the crowd by being remembered to their infamy.

Dryden indeed discovered, in many of his writings, an affected and abfurd malignity to priefts and priesthood, which naturally raised him many enemies, and which was fometimes as unfeasonably resented as it was exerted. Trapp is angry that he calls the facrificer in the Georgicks the holy butcher: the translation is indeed ridiculous; but Trapp's anger arifes from his zeal, not for the author, but the priest; as if any reproach of the follies of paganism could be extended to the preachers of truth.

Dryden's dislike of the priesthood is imputed by Langbaine, and I think by Brown, to a repulse which he suffered when he folicited ordination; but he denies, in the preface to his Fables, that he ever defigned to enter into the church; and fuch a denial he would not have hazarded, if he could have been convicted of falsehood.

Malevolence to the clergy is feldom at a great distance from irreverence of religion,

and