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Charles II. was happy to have so fluent a pen, to lampoon or satirize his
enemies, or to make indecent comedies for his amusement; while Dryden's
aim seems to have been scarcely higher than preferment at court and
honored contemporary notoriety for his genius. But if the great majority
lauded and flattered him, he was not without his share in those quarrels
of authors, which were carried on at that day not only with goose-quills,
but with swords and bludgeons. It is recorded that he was once waylaid by
the hired ruffians of the Earl of Rochester, and beaten almost to death:
these broils generally had a political as well as a social significance.
In his quarrels with the literary men, he used the shafts of satire. His
contest with Thomas Shadwell has been preserved in his satire called
McFlecknoe. Flecknoe was an Irish priest who wrote dull plays; and in this
poem Dryden proposes Shadwell as his successor on the throne of dulness.
It was the model or suggester of Pope's _Dunciad_; but the model is by no
means equal to the copy.


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