himself, when the relations between the two poets had been friendly, had spoken of him as "second but to Ben," but in this satire he is represented as the son, or the poetic successor, of a certain Richard Flecknoe, a contemporary poet and playwright, an Irishman, a Roman Catholic priest, and a Jesuit. This obscure and unfortunate writer, now remembered chiefly as the butt of Dryden's unsparing ridicule, seems to have had hard measure. His works, like many others that have been mercifully forgotten, while not immortal creations, are said to be by no means devoid of merit, yet their author, besides being pilloried by the greatest satirist of his time, was likewise made the object of an offensively personal attack by no less a poet than Andrew Marvell, in which Flecknoe's poverty, his dress, his mean lodgings, and emaciated appearance, were ridiculed with more bad taste than humor. Flecknoe, although not a genius, seems to have done nothing to deserve such merciless abuse, but it was a time of hard hitting and Dryden had no light hand. The enmity of the great satirist seems to have been inspired by nothing more than a petty resentment against Flecknoe for his well-merited attack upon the contemporary stage, of which Dryden was one of the pillars, for its immorality and worthlessness. The poem opens with the abdication of Flecknoe (who in fact had died shortly before) as absolute monarch of the kingdom of Nonsense in favor of Shadwell.

Mac Flecknoe. RICHARD FLECKNOE, an Irish poet, wit, and playwright, who settled in London about the Restoration and became a minor figure in its literary life. He died about 1678. In the sub-title we find the real object of the satire, T. S. (Thomas Shadwell). THOMAS SHADWELL (1640-1692) was prominent among the Whig writers of the time, Dryden being identified with the champions of the opposing, or Tory, party. Contemptuous reference is accordingly made to Shadwell as the " true-blue Protestant poet," i.e. the uncompromising, or thoroughgoing, poetic advocate of the faction arrayed against Church and King. The phrase "true-blue" being usually associated with the Covenanters, or Presbyterians (see Hudibras, I. 191, and Brewer's Phrase and Fable, "Blue"), the Puritan, or dissenting, element is probably here meant, as distinguished from the Anglican, or Church, party. Shadwell wrote some inferior verse, and seventeen comedies, which depict the social life of the time (and particularly its oddities, or "humors "), with more truth than decency. So far as the plays are concerned it is generally admitted that the charge of dulness is undeserved.

138.-25. Goodly fabrick. Shadwell was a man of huge, unwieldy bulk, and, apparently, of gross appearance. Dryden

"

satirizes his corpulence in a famous description of him, under the name of Og, in the Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel, in which he is pictured as "rolling home' from a tavern "round as a globe and liquored every chink."-29. Heywood and Shirley. THOMAS HEYWOOD (1581 ?-1640 ?) and JAMES SHIRLEY (1596-1666) were voluminous dramatic writers. Shirley was the last representative of the Elizabethan drama (see p. 604, supra).—33. Norwich drugget. "This stuff appears to have been sacred to the poorer votaries of Parnassus; and it is somewhat odd that it seems to have been the dress of our poet himself in the earlier stages of his fortune." (Scott.)36. King John of Portugal. An allusion to some work of Flecknoe's of which, so far as I am aware, nothing is now known.-42. Epsom blankets. An obscure expression. One of Shadwell's plays was called Epsom Wells; to blanket, or toss in a blanket, was used in the general sense of to punish; possibly the meaning is, "such a ridiculous spectacle was never seen, not even in your Epsom when you toss, or punish, everything in your blankets," but the explanation is far from satisfactory.-50. Morning toast. In Dryden's day and for some time later, the Thames continued to be used as a great water-highway by the Londoners. It afforded an ordinary and convenient avenue of travel, and was also a resort of pleasure-seekers. The river was still clear; and doubtless many who frequented it amused themselves by throwing bread or toast into the water, that they might watch the fish struggle for the fragments.

139.-53. St. André. A fashionable dancing-master of the time. 54. Psyche. The name of a very inferior opera by Shadwell, written in five weeks and produced in 1675.-57. Singleton. An opera-singer and musician then somewhat prominent. He took the part of Vallerius (see 1. 59), one of the chief characters in Sir William Davenant's opera of The Siege of Rhodes.-64. Augusta was the title given by the Romans to London (Londinium Augusta) and to other cities in honor of the Emperor Augustus. The city is not infrequently thus referred to by the poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (See Gay's Trivia, III. 145; Falconer's Shipwreck, 1. 3.)-65. Fears inclined. The Popish Plot, the apprehensions of civil war, the arrest of Shaftesbury, etc., had kept London in a panic of dread and feverish excitement.-67. Barbican. A round tower of Roman construction which stood near the junction of Barbican Street (to which it had given its name) and Aldgate Street. It was on the northern line of the old city wall. Hight: = was called (A. S. hátan).—72. A. Nursery. A school of acting established in 1665 by Charles II. on petition of Thomas Killigrew and Sir William Davenant, and

designed to furnish actors for the theatres under the management of the petitioners. The right to "act plays and entertainments of the stage" was given in the patent, and at the Nursery youthful aspirants made their first crude attempts. Pepys visited it and found "the music better than we looked for, and the acting not worse, because I expected as bad as could be; and I was not much mistaken, for it was so." Diary, Feb. 24, 1678. See also ib., Aug. 2, 1664, and Molloy's Famous Plays, p. 13, etc.-78. Maximius. Maximin, the defiaut hero of Dryden's Tyrannic Love. -81. Simkin "was a cobbler in an interlude of the day. Shoemaking was especially styled the gentle craft.'" (Hales.)-83. Clinches = puus. (See Johnson's Dict.; Popes Dunciad, I. 63.)—84. Panton, a noted punster.-87. Dekker (Thomas), cir. 1570-1637, an Elizabethau dramatist satirized by Ben Jonson in The Poetaster.

140.-91. Worlds of Misers. "Shadwell translated, or rather imitated, Molière's L'Avare, under the title of The Miser." (Scott.) The Humourists is also the name of one of Shadwell's plays; Ramond (1. 93) is a character in it, while Bruce appears in another play, The Virtuoso. Both are described as gentlemen of wit.-97. Near Bunhill and distant Watling Street. Bunhill was in what were then the outskirts of the City in a northerly direction. The Watling Street here referred to is apparently the short street of that name that, in Dryden's time as now, led into the open space back of St. Paul's. The Nursery, the scene of MacFleknoe's abdication, was, in general terms, between the two points (see n. to 11. 67 and 72, supra), but nearer to Bunhill. A good map of London will make the exact relation of the places clear; the sense is that they came from north and south.-102. Ogleby (John), 1600-1676. A Scotch versifier, now chiefly remembered by the satiric allusions of Dryden and Pope (Dunciad, I. 141 and 328). He was dancing-master to the Earl of Strafford, and later published translations of Vergil and Homer.-104. Bilked defrauded.-105. Herringman (Henry). A leading publisher of the day.-108. Young Ascanius. The son of Æneas. Ascanius depended the succession and the future greatness of Rome. (See Virgil's Eneid, passim.)—110. Glories, i.e. a sacred light, or fire; often used to signify the nimbus of a saint. The reference here is to the harmless flame that played about the head of the young Iülus (Ascanius); a portent of royal power (Æn. II. 682). Dryden in his translation of the passage uses the same word, "lambent," to describe the flame that he here applies to "dulness."-120. Sinister. Used here in its primary meaning of left as opposed to dexter, right, dextrius. The accent should be on the second syllable (see Dict.). The ball, or orb, representing the world and hence

=

Ou

sometimes called the mound (Fr. monde), was an emblem of royal power borrowed from the Roman emperors. English sovereigns "held it in their right hand at coronation, and carried it in their left on their return to Westminster Hall." (Hare's Walks in London, 385.) (See also Hen. V. IV. 1. 277, and Macbeth, IV. 1. 121.)-125. Recorded Psyche, i.e. the opera of Psyche which was sung, or recorded. To sing is one of the accepted meanings of to record: "To hear the lark record her hymns." (Fairfax.) A recorder is a small flute, as in Hamlet.

141.-129. Poppets. "Perhaps in allusion to Shadwell's frequent use of opium as well as to his dulness." (Scott.)— 149. Virtuosos. The Virtuoso was a comedy of Shadwell's, first produced in 1676. Poor Shadwell was accused by some of too much haste, hence the charge is that he wrote with the slowness that discloses incapacity.-151. Gentle George, i.e. Sir George Etheridge (cir. 1636-1689). He was a famous wit, fine gentleman, and comedy-writer; the companion of Sedley, Rochester, and other gay courtiers of Charles II.'s court. Dorimant, Loveit, etc., are characters in his comedies. The contrast is between the intentional frivolity of such young exquisities as Sir Fopling Flutter, or the gay and unprincipled Dorimant, who are at least amusing in their folly, and the unintentional but inevitable dulness of Shadwell's personages.

142.-163. Alien Sedley, i.e. Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701), alluded to above as the companion of Etheridge, and like him a wit and patron of literature. He is called alien because he assisted Shadwell with his comedy of Epsom Wells, or, as Dryden insinuates, larded its prose with a wit alien to its native dulness.-168. Sir Formal. A grandiloquent and conceited character in The Virtuoso. The insinuation is that Shadwell himself wrote in the pompous style affected by this character, and that he uses it in his "northern dedications," i.e. certain dedications of his to the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle.-179. Nicander, a lover in the opera of Psyche.188. New humours (see Shadwell, p. 625-6). To understand this passage and its context, we must remember that Shadwell aspired to be a follower of Ben Jonson, and that in presenting humours," or types of eccentricity, he followed Jonson's lead. Dryden has particularly in mind some lines of eulogy on Jonson in the epilogue to Shadwell's Humourists, wherein a humour is described as the bias of the mind ":

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"By which with violence 'tis one way inclined;

It makes our actions lean on one side still,
And in all changes that way bends our will."

Dryden, in paraphasing this passage, declares that dulness isthe weight, or bias, which inclines all Shadwell's writing toward

stupidity. (See Dict. for original meaning of bias, and cf., e.g., The Taming of the Shrew, IV. 5. 25.)-193. Mountainbelly. The expression is taken from Ben Jonson's goodnatured allusion to his own bulky person: "my mountain-belly and my rocky face." Dryden admits that Shadwell did indeed resemble Jonson in corpulence; but, unlike Jonson's, his is size without mind; his bloated form is but a "tympany of sense," i.e. it is empty or hollow, as a drum, but morbidly inflated by a windy distension." (See "Tympany," Cent. Dict.) A very hogshead, in this sense, in gross mass of flesh, he is in truth but a "kilderkin," or diminutive barrel, in wit, or intellect.

143.-204. Mild anagram. Anagrams, acrostics, poems in the shape of a cross, an altar, etc., and such other ingenious trifles, were common in the early seventeenth century. One of George Herbert's poems (Easter Wings) is in the form of a pair of wings. Hales refers us to Spectator, Nos. 58, 60, and Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, Literary Follies."212. Bruce and Longville. "Two very heavy characters in Shadwell's Virtuoso, whom he calls gentlemen of wit and good sense." (Derrick.) These two gentlemen dispose of Sir Formal Trifle in the midst of his declamation by unfastening a trapdoor on which he is standing, whereupon he precipitately disappears.

ACHITOPHEL.

Absalom and Achitophel, from which this extract is taken, is the earliest of Dryden's satires, and among the greatest satires of the literature in brilliancy and incisive power. It was directed against the versatile, able, but unscrupulous politician, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury, who appears in it under the name of Achitophel. The poem was written towards the close of 1681, at a critical juncture in public affairs. Shaftesbury (who had opposed the succession of the king's brother James, and favored that of the Duke of Monmouth) was then in the Tower awaiting his trial for high treason. Dryden, believing that Shaftesbury had nearly precipitated a civil war, found in the revolt of Absalom and Achitophel, the former counsellor of David (II. Sam. xv.), a Biblical parallel sufficiently close for his purpose. The tremendous indictment of Shaftesbury in the passage quoted is a masterpiece of pitiless analysis and satiric portraiture. Shaftesbury's character and career have been much discussed: the student should compare the views expressed by Dryden with those of Macaulay, W. D. Christie, H. D. Traill, and others.

154. Unfixed in principles and place. See any life of Lord Shaftesbury for an account of the daring changes which