They roar so loud, you'd think, behind the stairs, Tom Dove, and all the brotherhood of bears.] [Footnote 64: Quack Maurus is the noted Sir Richard Blackmore, who, if he was not witty himself, was the cause of more wit in others than most who have favoured the world with their writings. In his Satire against Wit, he had proposed a sort of mint, in which the works of the witty should be purified and re-coined: 'Tis true, that, when the coarse and worthless dross Is purged away, there will be mighty loss: Even 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! How will he shrink when all his lewd allay And wicked mixture shall be purged away? In the first edition of the Poem, this lumbering attack upon Dryden concluded with a compliment: But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear The examination of the most severe. But Blackmore, when our author had retaliated upon him in the Preface to the Fables, "finding," says Dr Johnson, "the censure resented, and the civility disregarded, ungenerously omitted the softer part. Such variations discover a writer who consults his passions more than his virtue, and it may be reasonably supposed that Dryden attributes his enmity to its true cause,"--his attack upon Blackmore's fanatic patrons in the city. He had also assailed our author in the Preface to his "Prince Arthur;" which, after a general and bitter complaint of the profligacy of the stage, contains these personal remarks levelled against Dryden. "And there are, among these writers, some who think they might have arisen to the highest dignities in other professions, had they employed their wit in those ways. 'Tis a mighty dishonour and reproach to any man, that is capable of being useful to the world in any liberal or virtuous profession, to lavish out his life and wit in propagating vice and corruption of manners, and in battering from the stage the strongest entrenchments and best works of religion and virtue. Whoever makes this his choice, when the other was in his power, may he go off the stage unpitied, complaining of _neglect_ and _poverty_, the just punishment of his irreligion and folly." This reproach, which touched some very tender points, was not to be tolerated or forgot by Dryden.] [Footnote 65: Blackmore was a commoner of Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he remained thirteen years, and took the degree of Master of Arts on 3d June, 1676; but he did not take his medical degrees there, and appears not to have studied physic regularly, as he was for some time a school-master; when, according to Col. Coddrington,