Street, rushed out and severely beat and wounded him. That Dryden was
the author of the lines on Rochester has been doubted, although we think
they very much resemble a rough and hurried sketch from his pen; that
Rochester deserved the truculent treatment he received in them, this
anecdote sufficiently proves. It was partly, indeed, the manner of the
age. Had this nobleman existed _now_, and been pilloried by a true and
powerful pen, he would, in addition to his own anonymous assaults, have
stirred up a posse of his creatures to assist him in seeking, by
falsehoods, hypercriticisms, and abuse, to diminish the influence and
take away the good name of his opponent. The Satanic spirit is always
the same--its weapons and instruments are continually changing.

Soon after this, Dryden translated the Epistles of Ovid, thus breathing
himself for the far greater efforts which were before him. His mind
seems, for a season, to have balanced between various poetic plans. On
the one hand, the finger of his good genius showed him the fair heights
of epic song, waiting to be crowned by the coming of a new Virgil; on
the other side, the fierce fires of his passions pointed him downwards
to his many rivals and foes--the Cliffords, Leighs, Ravenscrofts,
Rochesters, and Settles--who seemed lying as a mark for his satiric
vengeance. He meditated, we know, an epic on Arthur, the hero of the
Round Table, and had, besides, many arrears of wrath lying past for
discharge; but circumstances arose which turned his thoughts away, for a
season, in a different direction from either Arthur or his personal
foes.

The political aspects of the times were now portentous in the extreme.
Charles II. had, partly by crime, partly by carelessness, and partly by
ill-fortune, become a most unpopular monarch, and the more so, because
the nation had no hope even from his death, since it was sure to hand