• When a London grand jury refused to indict

Shaftesbury for treason, his fellow Whigs voted him a

medal. In response Dryden published early in 1682
The Medall, a work full of unsparing invective against
the Whigs, prefaced by a vigorous and plainspoken
prose “Epistle to the Whigs.”
• Of the replies to “The Medal” the most famous are “The
Medal of John Bayes” by Thomas Shadwell and Samuel
Pordage’s “The Medal Revers’d.” Shadwell’s retort hit a
particularly sensitive nerve within Dryden and was
largely responsible for the rejoinder to it that Dryden
would publish just two year later titled Mac Flecknoe: A
Satire upon the True-blue Protestant Poet T.S.
• Dryden had been feuding with Thomas Shadwell,
arrival poet over the theory of comedy for years in
various prefaces and dedications, but the two had
remained relatively conciliatory. In early 1676,
however, Shadwell broke the facade of civility and
lampooned Dryden in his comedy The Virtuoso.
• Dryden responded with a vengeance, beginning in
1676, Dryden wrote one of the two greatest satires in
English against rival poets, Mac Flecknoe (the other
is Pope’s Dunciad, 1728—1743). He finished it by
1678, though it circulated in manuscript until
unauthorized publication in 1682.
The name given to the poet was from an Irish Catholic
priest and minor poet, Richard Flecknoe, who had died
in 1678. Dryden sets the scene as if Flecknoe appointed
Shadwell successor to "realms of Nonsense" just prior to
his death; the Mac prefix means "son of."
"MacFlecknoe" opens in Augusta [England] with its
ruler, Flecknoe, forced to determine who will assume
his place as leader of the empire. Flecknoe selects the
one who most resembles him, noting:
Sh-alone my perfect image bears
Mature in dullness from his tender years.
Sh-alone of all my sons is he
Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.
Shadwell arrives in London, outfitted like a king.
Flecknoe chooses for his throne a neighborhood of
brothels and theaters birthing bad actors. Dryden also
alludes to some of the historical Shadwell’s plays, like
Epsom Wells and Psyche, and mocks another
contemporary writer, Singleton, who is envious that he
wasn’t chosen as successor to the throne.
As the coronation begins, Dryden describes the streets
as filled with the limbs of other poets. Once more, the
poet mentions human waste and links it with Shadwell’s
writing. After the crown is placed on his head, Shadwell
sits on the throne and the former king prepares to give
the cheering crowd a speech.
The former king begins by presenting the land over
which the new king will rule, a territory where no one
lives. Flecknoe praises Shadwell’s abilities and then
ends his speech by telling Shadwell to continue to
remain dull and to avoid trying to be like Jonson.
Flecknoe concludes by exhorting his son not to focus on
real plays but rather to work on acrostics or anagrams.
His last words are cut off and he sinks below the stage.
His mantle falls on Shadwell, which is appropriate
because he has twice as much “talent” as his father.
In the midst of this political activity Dryden published
another major poem on a radically different topic, Religio
Laici or a Laymans Faith (1682). The poem is a response to
a French work, translated into English as A Critical History
of the Old Testament (1682). The original was by a French
priest, Richard Simon, and examines the biblical text, its
errors and contradictions. Dryden’s response is a
declaration of faith in the few fundamental truths of
Christianity that are-
“uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, intire,
In all things which our needfull Faith require”
The poem was a literary defense of the Protestant
Anglican Church against arguments made by Deists,
Catholics and Dissenting opinions.
• Essentially, Dryden was using Religio Laici to proclaim
his support of the Church of England as the one true
Church. The poem, consisting of 456 lines of heroic
couplets, divides into several logical sections.
• By 1685, with the publication of Sylvae, a poetical
miscellany, Dryden had become a major translator,
having turned his hand to Ovid and Virgil in 1680
(Ovid’s Epistles) and Theocritus in 1684 (Miscellany
Poems) and then Lucretius and Horace in 1685
(Sylvae).
• In 1684 Dryden also published what many consider
his best elegiac poem, “To the Memory of Mr.
Oldham.”
• The poem, consisting of 456 lines of heroic couplets,
divides into several logical sections.
• By 1685, with the publication of Sylvae,, Dryden had
become a major translator, having turned his hand to
Ovid and Virgil in 1680 (Ovid’s Epistles) and
Theocritus in 1684 (Miscellany Poems) and then
Lucretius and Horace in 1685 (Sylvae).
• In 1684 Dryden also published what many consider his
best elegiac poem, “To the Memory of Mr. Oldham.”
Dryden laments Oldham’s early death but insists that
longer time would have added nothing to Oldham’s wit
and verse but metrical regularity.
• The Pious Memory of the Accomplish'd Young Lady
Mrs. Anne Killigrew, published in 1686, is an elegy in
the memory of Anne Killigrew, a British poet who lived
between 1660 and 1685. Dryden was one of Anne’s
admirers and praised her literary aptitude, comparing
her to Sapho, a Greek writer commonly regarded as
one of the greatest lyric poets in antiquity.
• Dryden’s next major poem was another elegy, for Charles
II, who died in 1685. As poet laureate Dryden produced
Threnodia Augustalis: A Funeral-Pindarique Poem Sacred
to the Happy Memory of King Charles II.
In 1685, as king James II seemed to be moving to Catholic
toleration, Dryden was received into the Roman Catholic
church. In his longest poem, the beast fable The Hind and
the Panther (1687), he argued the case for his adopted
church against the Church of England and the sects. Ever
since, he has been attacked for insincerity and
opportunism. The critic Margaret Doody has called it "the
great, the undeniable, sui generis poem of the Restoration
era…
• The poem is divided in three parts: The first part is a
description of the major religions in England during
Dryden’s time. The poem starts by presenting the hind, a
pure creature, being haunted by hounds. The hind is the
Catholic Church while the panther is the Anglican Church.
Next, he describes the bear as the independents, the
atheists as a buffoon ape, the Baptists as a boar.
• The second part is a controversial dialogue between the
Hind and the Panther as they stroll together.
• The last part is composed of two fables, the Panther tells
the story of the Swallows who were destroyed because
they followed the advice given by the Martins and then
the Hind tells the fable of the Buzzard, an allegory
towards the savagery of the Anglican Party.
• The poem was answered by a flurry of hostile pamphlets,
the best-known being The Hind and the Panther
Transvers'd to the Story of the Country Mouse and the
City Mouse by Matthew Prior and Charles Montagu.
• The abdication of James II in 1688 destroyed Dryden’s
political prospects, and he lost his laureateship to
Shadwell. He turned to the theatre again. In the 1680s
and ’90s Dryden supervised poetical miscellanies and
translated the works of Juvenal and Persius for the
publisher Jacob Tonson with success.
• Dryden continued to write excellent occasional verse,
from prologues and epilogues to elegies to verse epistles.
Eleonora (1692), a commissioned elegy.
• In 1697 Dryden penned one of the greatest odes,
Alexander’s Feast; Or The Power of Musique. It is
Dryden’s second ode honoring Saint Cecilia, the patron
saint of music. The poem’s theme, the power of music to
move human emotions, is identical with that of “A Song
for St. Cecilia’s Day,” written a decade earlier.
• The Greeks are celebrating their victory over the Persian
King Darius when the musician at the banquet,
Timotheus, is called upon to perform. Timotheus creates
within Alexander the Great a sense that he has become a
deity. An alteration of tone changes his mood to a desire
for pleasure, and following this a longing for love of his
mistress Thaïs, who sits beside him.
• Somber strains evoke pity for the fallen Darius, but these
are followed by tones calling for revenge on behalf of
Greek soldiers who have perished. Alexander and his
mistress and their company rush out, torches in hand, to
burn the Persian city Persepolis. The poem concludes with
a grand chorus, stressing the power of music to move
emotions and contrasting the legend of Saint Cecilia with
the power of Timotheus.
• The intricate form resembles the Pindaric ode in its
lengthy and complicated irregular stanzas, yet its linear
organization follows the tradition of Horace.
Dryden’s great late work was his complete translation of Virgil,
contracted by Tonson in 1694 and published in 1697.
• His last work for Tonson was Fables Ancient and Modern
(1700), which were mainly verse adaptations from the
works of Ovid, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Giovanni Boccaccio,
introduced with a critical preface. He died in 1700 and
was buried in Westminster Abbey between Chaucer and
Abraham Cowley in the Poets’ Corner.
Dryden tuned the numbers of English
poetry…Samuel Johnson
Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next, in majesty; in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go.
To make a third, she joined the former two.
Under Mr. Milton's Picture (1688).
Of these the false Achitophel was first,
A name to all succeeding ages cursed.
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
…
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
All human things are subject to decay,
And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
Mac Flecknoe
For truth has such a face and such a mien
As to be loved needs only to be seen.
The Hind and the Panther
Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure;
Rich the treasure;
Sweet the pleasure;
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
Alexander’s Feast
What is there in Dryden? Much, but above all this: he is the
most masculine of our poets; his style and his rhythms lay
the strongest stress of all our literature on the naked thew
and sinew of the English language.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
. . . . . . . . . Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
Alexander Pope, The First Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
Dryden has neither a tender heart nor a lofty sense of moral
dignity: where his language is poetically impassioned it is
mostly upon unpleasing subjects; such as the follies, vice,
and crimes of classes of men or of individuals.
William Wordsworth
Samuel Butler 1612-80
poet and satirist, famous as the author of Hudibras, the
most memorable burlesque poem in the English language
and the first English satire to make a notable and
successful attack on ideas rather than on personalities.
The first part of Hudibras was published anonymously in
1663. Its immediate success resulted in a spurious second
part; the authentic second part was published in 1664.
The two parts, plus “The Heroical Epistle of Hudibras to
Sidrophel,” were reprinted together in 1674. In 1678 a
third (and last) part was published. It is a scathing satire
of Puritanism and the Parliamentarian cause from a
Royalist perspective.
The title of the poem is taken from the name of a knight
in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.
Sir Hudibras, a Presbyterian knight, is among those who
rode out against the monarchy during England’s civil war.
He is a proud man, one who bends his knee to nothing but
chivalry and suffers no blow but that which was given
when he was dubbed a knight. Although he has some wit,
he is shy about displaying it.
He knows Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; indeed, his talk is a
piebald dialect, so heavily is it larded with Greek and
Latin words and tags. He is learned in rhetoric, logic, and
mathematics, and he frequently speaks in a manner
demonstrating his learning.
His notions fit things so well that he is often puzzled to
decide what his notions are and what reality is. He rides a
skinny old nag and he encourages his horse with a single
old spur. Sir Hudibras has a squire named Ralpho, who is
an Independent in religion.
Sir Hudibras and Ralpho ride forth from the knight’s home
to reform what they call sins and what the rest of the
world regards as mild amusement. They come to a town
where the people dance to a fiddle. When the knight
advances, however, he is met by an unsympathetic crowd.
Among the rabble are several leaders. One is Crowdero, a
fiddler with a wooden leg. When Sir Hudibras calls upon
the people to disperse and return quietly to their homes,
leaving Crowdero a prisoner, a fight begins.
His notions fit things so well that he is often puzzled to
decide what his notions are and what reality is. He rides a
skinny old nag and he encourages his horse with a single
old spur. Sir Hudibras has a squire named Ralpho, who is
an Independent in religion.
The knight and his squire sally forth and come upon some
people bear-baiting. After deciding that this is anti-
Christian they attack the baiters and capture one after
defeating the bear. The defeated group of bear-baiters
then rallies and renews the attack, capturing the knight
and his squire.
The second part describes how the knight's imprisoned
condition is reported by Fame to a widow Hudibras has
been wooing, who then comes to see him.
She complains that he does not love her and he promises
to flagellate himself if she frees him. Once free he regrets
his promise and debates with Ralpho how to avoid his
fate, with Ralpho suggesting that oath breaking is next to
saintliness. Hudibras then tries to convince Ralpho to
accept the beating in his stead but he declines the offer.
They are interrupted by a skimmington, a procession
where women are celebrated and men made fools. He
decides to visit an astrologer, Sidrophel, to ask him how
he should woo the widow but they get into an argument
and after a fight the knight and squire run off in different
directions believing they have killed Sidrophel.
The third part begins with Hudibras going to the widow's
house to explain the details of the whipping he had
promised to give himself but Ralpho had got there first
and told her what had actually happened. Suddenly a
group rushes in and gives him a beating and supposing
them to be spirits from Sidrophel, he confesses his sins.
Hudibras then visits a lawyer who convinces him to write a letter
to the widow. The poem ends with their exchange of letters in
which the knight's arguments are rebuffed by the widow.
Before the visit to the lawyer there is a digression of an
entire canto in which much fun is had at the events after
Oliver Cromwell's death. The succession of his son
Richard Cromwell is told with no veil of fiction.
Butler was so successful in making fun of the Puritans in
Hudibras that the poem became a model of verse form.
“Hudibrastic verse” is deliberately bad poetry, with jingle-
jangle lines of iambic tetrameter, rhymed in couplets.
A clearly intended parallel also exists between Sir
Hudibras and Ralpho and Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
When civil fury first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why;
When hard words, jealousies, and fears,
Set folks together by the ears, His notions fitted things so well,
That which was which he could not tell;
But oftentimes mistook th' one
For th' other, as great clerks have done.
Butler’s other works include “The Elephant in the Moon”
(1676), about a mouse trapped in a telescope, a satire on Sir
Paul Neale of the Royal Society.
“Repartees between Puss and Cat at a Caterwalling,”
laughing at the absurdities of contemporary rhymed heroic
tragedy. Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Mr. Samuel
Butler, in two volumes (1759), was edited by Robert Thyer
from Butler’s papers and includes more than 100 brilliant
prose “Characters”.
A News-monger is a Retailer of Rumour, that takes up upon Trust, and sells as
cheap as he buys. He deals in a perishable Commodity, that will not keep: for if
it be not fresh it lies upon his Hands, and will yield nothing. True or false is all
one to him; for Novelty being the Grace of bothe, a Truth grows stale as soon
as a Lye...— Samuel Butler, Characters