"A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull, For writing treason and for writing dull; To die for faction is a common evil, But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil. Hadst thou the glories of thy King exprest, Thy praises had been satires at the best; But thou in clumsy verse, unlicked, unpointed, Hast shamefully defied the Lord's anointed. I will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes, For who would read thy life that reads thy rhymes? But of King David's foes be this the doom,-- May all be like the young man Absalom; And for my foes may this their blessing be,-- To talk like Doeg and to write like thee." Refinement of tone is not the distinguishing characteristic of satire of this sort. It does not attack its object by delicate insinuation or remote suggestion. It operates by heavy downright blows which crush by the mere weight and power of the stroke. There was in truth in those days a certain brutality not only permitted but expected in the way men spoke of each other, and Dryden conformed in this as in other respects to the manners and methods of his age. But of its kind the attack is perfect. The blows of a bludgeon which make of the victim a shapeless mass kill as effectively as the steel or poison which leaves every feature undisturbed, and to the common apprehension it serves to render the killing more manifest. At any rate, so long as a person has been done to death, it makes comparatively little difference how the death was brought about; and the object in this instance of Dryden's attack, though a man of no mean abilities, has never recovered from the demolition which his reputation then underwent.