true to figure in an adulatory dedication; and, indeed, Prior may have used the word "equivalent" loosely, and had Dorset's gift been more than a year's income, Dryden would hardly have called it a "present,"--a phrase scarcely applicable to the grant of a pension.<a href="#1.22">[22]</a>
Dismissed from office and restored to labors more congenial than the dull polemics which had recently engaged his mind, Dryden found himself obliged to work vigorously or starve. He fell into the hands of the booksellers. The poems, it deserves remark, upon which his fame with posterity must finally rest, were all produced within the period bounded by his deposition and his death. The translations from Juvenal, the versions of Persius and of Virgil, the Fables, and the "Ode upon St. Cecilia's Day," were the works of this period. He lived to see his office filled successively by a rival he despised and a friend who had deserted him, and in its apparently hopeless degradation perhaps found consolation for its loss.
Thomas Shadwell was the Poet-Laureate after Dryden, assuming the wreath in 1689. We have referred to his origin; Langbaine gives 1642 as the date of his birth; so that he must have set up as author early in life, and departed from life shortly past middle-age. Derrick assures us that he was lusty, ungainly, and coarse in person,--a description answering to the full-length of Og. The commentators upon "MacFlecknoe" have not made due use of one of Shadwell's habits, in illustration of the reason why a wreath of poppies was selected for the crown of its hero. The dramatist, Warburton informs us, was addicted to the use of opium, and, in fact, died of an overdose of that drug. Hence
"His temples, last, with poppies were o'er-spread,
That nodding seemed to consecrate his head."
A couplet which Pope echoes in the "Dunciad":--
"Shadwell nods, the poppy on his brows."
A similar allusion may be found in the character of Og:--
"Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink," etc.
That the Laureate was heavy-gaited in composition, taking five years to finish one comedy,--that he was, on the other hand, too swift, trusting Nature rather than elaborate Art,--that he was dull and unimaginative,--that he was keen and remarkably sharp-witted,--that he affected a profundity of learning of which he gave no evidences,--that his plays were only less numerous than Dryden's, are other particulars we gather from conflicting witnesses of the period. Certainly, no one of the Laureates, Cibber excepted, was so mercilessly lampooned. What Cibber suffered from the "Dunciad" Shadwell suffered from "MacFlecknoe." Incited by Dryden's example, the poets showered their missiles at him, and so perseveringly as to render him a traditional butt of satire for two or three generations. Thus Prior:--
"Thus, without much delight or grief,
I fool away an idle life,
Till Shadwell from the town retires,
Choked up with fame and sea-coal fires,
To bless the wood with peaceful lyric:
Then hey for praise and panegyric;
Justice restored, and nations freed,
And wreaths round William's glorious head."
And Parnell:--
"But hold! before I close the scene,
The sacred altar should be clean.
