The chief
of his rivals was Elkanah Settle, a person afterwards utterly
contemptible; but who, first by the strength of a party at court, and
afterwards by a faction in the state, was, for a time, buoyed up in
opposition to Dryden. It is impossible to detail the progress of the
contest for public favour between these two ill-matched rivals, without
noticing at the same time Dryden's quarrel with Rochester, who appears
to have played off Settle in opposition to him, as absolutely, and
nearly as successfully, as Settle ever played off the literary
[literal?] puppets, for which, in the ebb of his fortune, he
wrote dramas.
In the year 1673, Dryden and Rochester were on such friendly terms, that
our poet inscribed to his lordship his favourite play of "Marriage a la
Mode;" not without acknowledgment of the deepest gratitude for favours
done to his fortune and reputation. The dedication, we have seen, was so
favourably accepted by Rochester, that the reception called forth a
second tribute of thanks from the poet to the patron. But at this point,
the interchange of kindness and of civility received a sudden and
irrecoverable check. This was partly owing to Rochester's fickle and
jealous temper, which induced him alternately to raise and depress the
men of parts whom he loved to patronise; so that no one should ever
become independent of his favour, or so rooted in the public opinion as
to be beyond the reach of his satire; but it may also in part be
attributed to Dryden's attachment to Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave,
afterwards Duke of Buckingham, then Rochester's rival in wit and
court-favour, and from whom he had sustained a deadly affront, on an
occasion, which, as the remote cause of a curious incident in Dryden's
life, I have elsewhere detailed in the words of Sheffield himself.
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