23

MAC FLECKNOE.

['THE life of a wit,' says Pope, 'is a warfare upon earth.' The observation applies with special force to Dryden. No man was ever so relentlessly waylaid by adversaries political, polemical, and poetical. He lived in a swarm of hornets. Critics, pamphleteers, playwrights, poetasters, all fell upon him. He was the common mark for the ribaldry and hostility of the stews of literature. He was attacked for his religion, his politics, his plays, his poems, his critical theories; he was accused of atheism, of profligacy, of literary and political prostitution; he was abused, ridiculed, mimicked, and bludgeoned. In the course of his career, he encountered opponents from all quarters-Stillingfleet, Collier, Buckingham, Rochester, Blackmore, Milbourne, Settle. But he was not of a temperament to bear these assaults passively. Resolved to make one signal example, he singled out Shadwell from the herd of his enemies, and gibbeted him in Mac Flecknoe. There was no disguise about the real intention of this crushing satire. It was printed on a sheet and a half of paper, at the low price of two pence, and bore upon its title-page the declaration of war: Mac Flecknoe; or, a Satire on the True-blue Protestant Poet, T. S. By the author of Absalom and Achitophel. The whole impression, published in October, 1682, went off in a few days.

The immediate provocation which appears to have led Dryden to take this summary vengeance on Shadwell was a scurrilous answer he had written to the Medal, called The Medal of John Bayes. But there were old scores besides that to settle between them. Shadwell and Dryden had formerly been friends, and even after the publication of Mac Flecknoe they were upon speaking terms, if Shadwell's statement may be believed, that he taxed Dryden with the authorship, which Dryden denied with execrations. The story, however, is scarcely credible; for, although Dryden may have. refused to avow his responsibility (a course since sanctioned

by still more remarkable examples *), the authorship of Mac Flecknoe was announced too plainly on the title-page to admit of a direct denial. Shadwell had offended Dryden in several ways, by crying him down as a hireling, and an atheist, and otherwise bringing his authority into contempt. But whatever his offences were, he paid a heavy penalty for them.

The best testimony to the great merits of Mac Flecknoe is the fact, that the satire has outlived the interest of the subject. Here was a quarrel between two authors, in which posterity has no concern; yet the salt of true wit has preserved it in lines that will always be read for the sake of their intrinsic excellence. This intellectual power of perpetuating ephemeral topics is not, however, without its drawbacks. It gives an undue advantage to the strong man over the weak, and transmits false estimates of its victims. There is no doubt that this is the case in reference to Shadwell; and justice demands that a word should be said on his behalf. He was not the blockhead 'confirmed in full stupidity' painted by Dryden. His plays, sealed up by their indecencies from the present generation, exhibit fertility of invention, and considerable capacity of observation. They are written, like everything he wrote, with headlong animal spirits, and a precipitancy that committed him to a thousand errors of judg ment. His faults are common to his age-gross licentiousness, bad taste, and a foolish contempt of art; while his merits are special to himself. No writer of that day portrayed contemporary habits and manners with so much freedom and fidelity; and, notwithstanding the inexpressible coarseness of his humour, Shadwell's scenes bring us more closely acquainted with the actual life of the time than those of any other dramatist, with the single exception of Etherege. This is no

* Swift and Scott.

† 'He has often called me an atheist in print,' says Dryden, on one occasion; 'I would believe more charitably of him, and that he only goes the broad way, because the other is too narrow for him.' The reader has not forgotten the description of Og.

slight distinction; and even Dryden himself once held Shadwell's comedies in such esteem as to pronounce a panegyric upon them, in his Epilogue to the Volunteers. Compare these lines with the Mac Flecknoe, and judge how far satire is to be trusted for an honest exposition of character. Dryden here flatters Shadwell upon the most vulnerable point of his vanity that assumption of a resemblance to Ben Jonson, which, of all things in the world! he prided himself upon most -just as grossly as he denounces him for it in Mac Flecknoe.

Shadwell, the great support of the comic stage,

Born to expose the follies of the age;
To whip prevailing vices, and unite

Mirth with Instruction, Profit with Delight;
For large ideas and a flowing pen,

First of our times, and second but to Ben.

The best critical character of Shadwell is in the well-known lines of Rochester:

Of all the modern wits, none seem to me
Once to have touched upon true comedy,
But hasty Shadwell, and slow Wycherley.
Shadwell's unfinished works do yet impart
Great proofs of force of genius, none of art;

With just bold strokes he dashes here and there,
Showing great mastery with little care.

Rochester forgot Etherege, who was earlier than either, and in some respects better.

Mac Flecknoe (or rather, Flecknoe, the Mac being added by Dryden, with reference to Shadwell, to signify the son of Flecknoe) was an Irish Roman-catholic priest, doggrel sonneteer, and playwright, who, although selected as the stalking horse of the satire, once wrote in praise of Dryden.* Shadwell appears to have resented as the worst affront of all,

* Flecknoe's panegyric on Dryden was published with his name; but there is reason, nevertheless, to suspect that he was one of the laureate's masked assailants. Mr. P. Cunningham (Gen. Mag. 1850) gives some extracts from a pamphlet of the date of 1668, addressed to the Hon. E. Howard, and signed R. F., in which Dryden is scurrilously attacked for his defence of rhyme. Mr. Cunningham conjectures, from the identity of the initials, that the pamphlet was written by Flecknoe, and infers that it may have been the cause of Dryden's animosity against him. Flecknoe is supposed to have died about 1678.

the being represented as an Irishman, and took care to acquaint the public that he had never seen Ireland till he was three-and-twenty years old, and was there only four months; as if any one took the palpable ridicule of the satirist as matter of fact.

Leigh Hunt detects an odd blunder in Mac Flecknoe. 'It is a curious oversight of Dryden's in this satire,' he observes, ́that he should put the best of the wit into the mouth of Flecknoe himself.']

LL human things are subject to decay,

AL

-

And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey. This Flecknoe found, 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. This aged prince, now flourishing in peace, And blessed with issue of a large increase; Worn out with business, did at length debate To settle the succession of the state; And, pondering which of all his sons was fit To reign, and wage immortal war with wit, Cried, "Tis resolved! for nature pleads, that he Should only rule, who most resembles me. 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. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day. Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye, And seems designed for thoughtless majesty; Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain, And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.

Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee,*
Thou last great prophet of tautology.
Even I, a dunce of more renown than they,
Was sent before but to prepare thy way;
And, coarsely clad in Norwich drugget, came
To teach the nations in thy greater name.
My warbling lute-the lute I whilom strung,
When to King John of Portugal I sung-
Was but the prelude to that glorious day,
When thou on silver Thames didst cut thy way,
With well-timed oars before the royal barge,
Swelled with the pride of thy celestial charge;
And, big with hymn, commander of an host,-
The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets tossed.
Methinks I see the new Arion sail,

The lute still trembling underneath thy nail.
At thy well-sharpened thumb from shore to shore,
The trebles squeak for fear, the basses roar;
Echoes from Pissing-Alley, Shadwell call,
And Shadwell they resound from Aston-hall.
About thy boat the little fishes throng,
As at the morning toast that floats along.
Sometimes, as prince of thy harmonious band,
Thou wield'st thy papers in thy threshing hand.
St. André's feet ne'er kept more equal time,†
Not even the feet of thy own Psyche's rhyme:‡

* Subsequent criticism has vindicated Shirley, the last of the race of giants, from this unjust censure, however posterity may have left the voluminous Heywood to his fate. But Dryden's condemnation consigned him for a long time to oblivion. A complete edition of Shirley's plays, annotated by Mr. Gifford, with a biography by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, was published in 1833.

† St. André was a celebrated French dancing-master.

Shadwell's opera of Psyche was produced at Dorset Gardens in 1674. Singleton, alluded to a few lines lower down, was a musician. He is mentioned by Pepys as far back as 1660, when one night after supper the king 'did put a great affront upon his music, bidding them stop, and make the French music play.' The reference to his 'lute and sword' seems to confirm the supposition of the editor of the Diary, that Singleton was leader of the private band.