When the _Athenian Gazette_ was fairly and fully launched, a rival paper, entitled the _Lacedemonian Mercury_, was published by Brown & Pate. This was a trifling and even profane performance. The sole purpose of the writers “seemed to be to laugh and ridicule solidity and seriousness out of the world.”[41] This aroused the ire and energies of Wesley, Sault, and Dunton, and they succeeded in putting down the rival and ungodly upstart. A little later, an attack was made upon their publication, by Elkanah Settle, who brought out a play, entitled “The New Athenian Comedy; containing the Politicks, Oeconomicks, Tacticks, Crypticks, Apocalypticks, Stypticks, Scepticks, Pneumaticks, Theologicks, and Dogmaticks of our most learned Society.” Settle was born at Dunstable, in 1648, and was educated at Trinity College, Oxford. He began life by publishing two political pamphlets, which were publicly burnt, on the accession of James II.[42] After this, he turned Tory, wrote a poem on James’s coronation, and published an essay weekly on behalf of James’s administration. He was called the city poet, because he had a salary for writing a poem annually on the Lord Mayor’s day. Afterwards he was reduced to such extreme poverty, that he was not only obliged to write farces for Bartholomew fair, but to act in them himself. In a farce, called St George and the Dragon, he acted the dragon, a circumstance referred to by Dr Young in the following lines:— “Poor Elkanah, all other changes past, For bread, in Smithfield, dragons hiss’d at last, Spit streams of fire, to make the butchers gape, And found his manners suited to his shape.” ----- Footnote 41: _Athenian Oracle_, vol. iv. p. 69. Footnote 42: Dryden’s _Mis. Works_, vol. i., notes, p. 67, 1760. ----- Settle died in 1723, the author of ten tragedies, three operas, a comedy, and a pastoral, all of which are now forgotten. His comedy was written against Wesley, Sault, and Dunton; but Dunton says it “was a poor performance, and failed in its design.”