King in person, to make this the subject of a second satire; and, with
great rapidity, he produced "The Medal--a Satire against Sedition,"
which, completing and colouring the photograph of Shaftesbury, formed
the real Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel." What bore that name
came a year afterwards, when the times were changed, was written partly
by a feebler hand--Nahum Tate; and flew at inferior game--Dryden's own
personal rivals and detractors.

The principal of these was Shadwell, who had been an early friend of
Dryden's, and who certainly possessed a great deal of wit and talent, if
he did not attain to the measure of poetic genius. His principal power
lay in low comedy--his chief fault lay in his systematic and avowed
imitation of the rough and drunken manners of Ben Jonson. In the eye of
Dryden--whose own habits were convivial, although not to the same
extent--the real faults of his opponent were his popularity as a comic
writer, and his politics. Shadwell was a zealous Protestant, and the
bitterest of the many who replied to the "Medal." For this he became the
hero of "MacFlecknoe"--a masterly satire, holding him up to infamy and
contempt--besides sitting afterwards for the portrait of Og, in the
second part of "Absalom and Achitophel." Shadwell had, by and by, his
revenge, by obtaining the laureateship, after the Revolution, in room of
Dryden, and no doubt used the opportunity of drowning the memory of
defeat in the butt of generous canary which had now for ever passed the
door of his formidable rival.

Dryden's circumstances, at this time, were considerably straitened. His
pension as laureate was not regularly paid; the profits from the theatre
had somewhat fallen off. He tried in various ways, by prefacing a
translation of "Plutarch's Lives," by publishing a miscellany of
versions from Greek and Latin authors, and by writing prologues to plays