But the main offence lies in the following passage:-- "Set forth your edict; let it be enjoined, That all defective species be recoined; St. E--m--t and R--r both are fit To oversee the coining of our wit. Let these be made the masters of essay, They'll every piece of metal touch and weigh, And tell which is too light, which has too much allay. 'Tis true, that when the coarse and worthless dross Is purged away, there will be mighty loss. E'en Congreve, Southerne, manly Wycherly, When thus refined, will grievous sufferers be. Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes, What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes! How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay, And wicked mixture, shall be purged away? When once his boasted heaps are melted down, A chest-full scarce will yield one sterling crown. Those who will D--n--s melt, and think to find A goodly mass of bullion left behind, Do, as the Hibernian wit, who, as 'tis told, Burnt his gilt feather, to collect the gold. * * * * * But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear The examination of the most severe; 'Twill S--r's scales, and Talbot's test abide, And with their mark please all the world beside." These repeated attacks at length called down the vengeance of Dryden. who thus retorted upon him in the preface to the Fables:-- "As for the City Bard, or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to me is, that I was the author of 'Absalom and Achitophel,' which he thinks, is a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London. "But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing ill is to be spoken of the dead; and, therefore, peace be to the manes of his 'Arthurs.' I will only say, that it was not for this noble knight that I drew the plan of an epic poem on King Arthur, in my preface to the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected them, as Dares did the whirl bats of Eryx, when they were thrown before him by Entellus: yet from that preface, he plainly took his hint; for he began immediately upon the story, though he had the baseness not to acknowledge his benefactor, but, instead of it, to traduce me in a libel." Blackmore, who had perhaps thought the praise contained in his two last couplets ought to have allayed Dryden's resentment, finding that they failed in producing this effect, very unhandsomely omitted them in his next edition, and received, as will presently be noticed, another flagellation, in the last verses Dryden ever wrote.