I know you gentlemen of _Will_’s coffee-house, will be glad to hear some news of Mr. _Dryden_, I must tell you then, that we had the devil all of combustions and quarrels here in hell since that famous bard’s arrival among us. The _Grecians_, the _Romans_, the _Italians_, the _Spaniards_, the _French_, but especially the _Dutch_ authors, have been upon his back; _Homer_ was the first that attack’d him for justifying _Almanzor_’s idle rants and monstrous actions by the precedent of _Achilles_. The two poets, after a little squabbling, were without much difficulty perswaded to let their two heroes fight out the quarrel for them, but the nimble-heel’d _Græcian_ soon got the whip-hand of the furious _Almanzor_, and made him beg pardon. _Horace_ too grumbled a little in his gizzard at him for affirming _Juvenal_ to be a better satirist than himself; but upon second thoughts thought it not worth his while to contest the point with him. Once it happen’d, that Mr. _Bays_ came into our room when _Petronius Arbiter_ was diverting us with a very fine _nouvelle_. Mons. _Fontaine_, Sir _Philip Sidney_, Mr. _Waller_, my late lord _Rochester_, with Sir _Charles Sidley_, compos’d part of this illustrious audience; when Mr. _Dryden_ unluckily spoil’d all by asking the latter, what the facetious gentleman’s name was, that talk’d so agreeably? How, says Sir _Charles Sidley_, hadst thou the impudence, in the preface before thy _English Juvenal_, to say, that so soon as the pretended _Belgrade_ supplement of _Petronius_’s fragments came into _England_, thou couldst tell upon reading but two lines of that edition, whether it was genuine or no; and here hast thou heard the noble author himself talk above an hour by the clock, and could not find him out? Upon this the old bard retired in some disorder; but what happened to him a day or two after was more mortifying.