[40] Sir Robert Stapylton, a gentleman of an ancient family in Yorkshire, who followed the fortune of Charles I. in the civil war, besides several plays and poems, published a version of Juvenal, under the title of "The manners of Men described in sixteen Satires by Juvenal." There are two editions, the first published in 1647, and the last and most perfect in 1660. Sir Robert Stapylton died in 1669. His verse is as harsh and uncouth as that of Holyday, who indeed charged him with plagiary; though one would have thought the nature of the commodity would have set theft at defiance. [41] I presume, this celebrated finisher of the law, who bequeathed his name to his successors in office, was a contemporary of our poet. In the time of the rebellion, that operator was called Gregory, and is supposed, with some probability, to have beheaded Charles I. See the evidence for the prisoner in Hulet's trial after the Restoration. _State Trials_, Vol. II. p. 388. [42] This is a strange averment, considering the "Reflections upon Absalom and Achitophel, by a Person of Honour," in composing and publishing which, the Duke of Buckingham, our author's Zimri, shewed much resentment and very little wit. See Vol. IX. p. 272. [43] _Persius exclamat, Per magnos, Brute, deos te Oro, qui regis consueris tollere, cur non Hunc Regem jugulas? Operum hoc mihi crede tuorum est._ HOR. Satire 8. Lib. I. [44] This gentleman, who was as great a gambler as a punster, regaled with his quibbles the minor class of the frequenters of Will's coffee-house, who, having neither wit enough to entitle them to mix with the critics who associated with Dryden, and were called _The Witty Club_, or gravity enough to discuss politics with those who formed the Grave Club, were content to laugh heartily at the puns and conundrums of Captain Swan. [45] Mr Lewis Maidwell, the author of a comedy called "The Generous Enemies," represented by the Duke's company 1680. In the prologue, as Mr Malone informs us, there is an allusion to Rochester's mean assault on Dryden: Who dares be witty now, and with just rage Disturb the vice and follies of the age? With knaves and fools, satire's a dangerous fault; They will not let you rub their sores with salt: Else _Rose street ambuscades_ shall break your head, And life in verse shall lay the poet dead. It is only farther known of this gentleman, that he was a friend of Shadwell, who gave him the epilogue for his comedy, and that he taught a private school. [46] The Roman exclamation of high contentment at a recitation, like our _bravo! bravissimo!_ [47] Dryden, in his Epistle to Sir George Etherege, has shewn, however, how completely he was master even of a measure he despised. [48] Scarron's _Virgile Travesti_.