AN ESSAY UPON SATIRE.

AMONG the pieces fathered upon Dryden, without satisfactory reason, this contains as little internal evidence as any of having received even the touches of that great master. Yet, as is mentioned in the Life of our poet, the suspicion of being the author subjected him to the cowardly revenge of Rochester, who hired bravoes to beat Dryden, in return for the severity with which he is here treated. The versification is so harsh, and the satire so coarse and clumsy, that I can hardly consent to think that Dryden did more than revise and correct it. If he added a few lines here and there, he had so industriously levelled them with the rest of the performance, that they cannot be distinguished from it. The real author was Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.

Like other lampoons of the time, the "Essay on Satire" was handed about in manuscript copies, about November 1679. It is inserted in the quarto edition of Sheffield Duke of Buckingham's Works, with many alterations and improvements by Pope, to whose correction it had been subjected by the noble poet. It is obvious, and has been well argued by Mr Malone, that if Dryden had taken any considerable pains with the original copy, Pope would have had but little to do.

Sheffield, in his " Essay on Poetry," pays our author a very supercilious and aristocratic compliment on this, his own poem, having been attributed to him, and the castigation which ensued:

Though praised and punished for another's rhimes,
His own deserve as much applause sometimes.

It is thus that noble authors distribute their praise, like their bounty, duly seasoned with humbling admonition. In the copy of the Essay, revised by Pope, this impertinent couplet is omit

ted.

AN

ESSAY UPON SATIRE.

How dull, and how insensible a beast
Is man, who yet would lord it o'er the rest!
Philosophers and poets vainly strove

In every age the lumpish mass to move;
But those were pedants, when compared with these,
Who know, not only to instruct, but please.
Poets alone found the delightful way,
Mysterious morals gently to convey

**

In charming numbers; so that as men grew
Pleased with their poems, they grew wiser too.
Satire has always shone among the rest;
And is the boldest way, if not the best,
To tell men freely of their foulest faults,
To laugh at their vain deeds, and vainer thoughts.
In satire, too, the wise took different ways,
To each deserving its peculiar praise.
Some did all folly with just sharpness blame,
Whilst others laughed and scorned them into shame.
But of these two, the last succeeded best,
As men aim rightest when they shoot in jest.
Yet, if we may presume to blame our guides,
And censure those, who censure all besides,

* Would Dryden have pardoned such a rhyme ?

In other things they justly are preferred;
In this alone methinks the ancients erred:
Against the grossest follies they declaim;
Hard they pursue, but hunt ignoble game.
Nothing is easier than such blots to hit,
And 'tis the talent of each vulgar wit :
Pesides, 'tis labour lost; for, who would preach
Morals to Armstrong, * or dull Aston † teach?
'Tis being devout at play, wise at a ball,
Or bringing wit and friendship to Whitehall.
But with sharp eyes those nicer faults to find,
Which lie obscurely in the wisest mind,
That little speck which all the rest does spoil,-
To wash off that would be a noble toil;
Beyond the loose-writ libels of this age,
Or the forced scenes of our declining stage;

* Sir Thomas Armstrong, then an officer of the guards, and gentleman of horse to the king. He seems to have been remarkable for riot and profligacy, even in that profligate age; witness his stabbing a gentleman in the pit of the theatre. Thus principled, he became, unfortunately for himself and his patron, a favourite of the Duke of Monmouth, and engaged deeply in all his intrigues, particularly in that of the Rye-house plot, on the discovery of which he fled to Holland, of which he was a native: nevertheless, he was there seized and delivered. He was tried by Jefferies; and sustained the brutality of that judge with more spirit than his friends or his enemies expected. Upon a conviction of outlawry for treason, he was executed, June 1685.

† Aston is mentioned as a sort of half wit in some of the lampoons of the day; but I have not been able to trace any thing of his history, except that he seems to have been a courtier of the period; perhaps the same Colonel Aston, whom the reader will find in a subsequent note, acting as Mulgrave's second, in an intended duel with Rochester. If this be so, from the slight with which he is here mentioned, there may have been a coolness in their friendship, although, indeed, the mere want of morals was not considered as an insufferable stigma in the reign of Charles II., and might pass for a good-natured joke, were the epithet dull omitted. The name Aston is mentioned in the " Epistle to Ju

lian."