"I write chiefly to avoid idleness, and print to avoid the imputation
(of idleness), and as others do it to live after they are dead, I do
it only not to be thought dead whilst I am alive."[20:1]

Such frankness should have disarmed ridicule, but somehow or another
this amiable man came to be regarded as the type of a dull author, and
his name passed into a proverb for stupidity, so much so that when
Dryden in 1682 was casting about how best to give pain to Shadwell, he
devised the plan of his famous satire, "MacFlecknoe," where in biting
verse he describes Flecknoe (who was happily dead) as an aged Prince--

"Who like Augustus young
Was called to empire and had governed long;
In prose and verse was owned, without dispute,
Through all the realms of nonsense absolute."

Dryden goes on to picture the aged Flecknoe,

"pondering which of all his sons was fit
To reign and wage immortal war with Wit,"

and fixing on Shadwell.

"Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dulness from his tender years;
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity:
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense."