"[20] Whatever was the progress of the dispute, it is certain
that Shadwell, as zealously attached to the Whig faction as Dryden to
the Tories, buckled on his armour among their other poetasters to
encounter the champion of royalty. His answer to "The Medal" is entitled
"The Medal of John Bayes:" it appeared in autumn 1681, and is
distinguished by scurrility, even among the scurrilous lampoons of
Settle, Care, and Pordage. Those, he coolly says, who know Dryden, know
there is not an untrue word spoke of him in the poem; although he is
there charged with the most gross and infamous crimes. Shadwell also
seems to have had a share in a lampoon, entitled "The Tory Poets," in
which both Dryden and Otway were grossly reviled.[21] On both occasions,
his satire was as clumsy as his overgrown person, and as brutally coarse
as his conversation: for Shadwell resembled Ben Jonson in his vulgar and
intemperate pleasures, as well as in his style of comedy and corpulence
of body.[22] Dryden seems to have thought, that such reiterated attacks,
from a contemporary of some eminence, whom he had once called friend,
merited a more severe castigation than could be administered in a
general satire. He therefore composed "Mac-Flecknoe, or a Satire on the
True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S., by the Author of Absalom and
Achitophel," which was published 4th October 1682. Richard Flecknoe,
from whom the piece takes its title, was so distinguished as a wretched
poet, that his name had become almost proverbial.
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