[32] See this Epistle. It was prefixed to "Alexander the Great;" a play, the merits and faults of which are both in extreme. SECTION IV. _Dryden's Controversy with Settle--with Rochester--He is assaulted in Rose-street--Aureng-Zebe--Dryden meditates an Epic Poem--All for Love-- Limberham--Oedipus--Troilus and Cressida--The Spanish Friar--Dryden supposed to be in opposition to the Court._ "The State of Innocence" was published in 1674, and "Aureng-Zebe," Dryden's next tragedy, appeared in 1675. In the interval, he informs us, his ardour for rhyming plays had considerably abated. The course of study which he imposed on himself doubtless led him to this conclusion. But it is also possible, that he found the peculiar facilities of that drama had excited the emulation of very inferior poets, who, by dint of show, rant, and clamorous hexameters, were likely to divide with him the public favour. Before proceeding, therefore, to state the gradual alteration in Dryden's own taste, we must perform the task of detailing the literary quarrels in which he was at this period engaged. 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.