PERSONAL Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin,

Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in;

Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And, in one word, heroically mad,

He was too warm on picking-work to dwell, But faggoted his notions as they fell,

And, if they rhymed and rattled, all was well.

Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire, For still there goes some thinking to illnature;

He needs no more than birds and beasts to think,

All his occasions are to eat and drink.

If he call rogue and rascal from a garret,
He means you no more mischief than a par-
rot;

The words for friend and foe alike were made,
To fetter them in verse is all his trade.
For almonds he'll cry whore to his own
mother

And call young Absalom King David's brother.

DRYDEN, JOHN, 1682, Absalom and Achitophel, pt. ii.

If Settle was capable of these mean compliances of writing for, or against a party, as he was hired, he must have possessed a very sordid mind, and been totally devoid of all the principles of honour; but as there is no other authority for it than Wood, who is enthusiastic in his temper, and often writes of things, not as they were, but as he would wish them to be, the reader may give what credit he pleases to the report.-CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. III, p. 350.

Elkanah Settle was so systematically visited with damnation, that he was at last compelled to bring out his plays. under fictitious names, and during the long vacation, lest when the town was full, some enemy should discover him. DORAN, JOHN, 1863, Annals of the English Stage, vol. II, p. 152.

GENERAL

An Author now living, whose Muse is chiefly addicted to Tragedy; and has been tragically dealt withal by a Tyranical Laureat; which has somewhat eclips'd the glory he at first appeared in: But Time has her vicissitudes; and he has lived to see his Enemy humbled, if not justly

punished; for this Reason, I shall not afresh animadvert upon his fault, but rather bury them in Oblivion; and without any Reflections on his Poetry, give a succinct Account of those Plays, which he has published, being Nine in Number. -LANGBAINE, GERARD, 1691, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, p. 439.

Settle, in his Anti-Achitophel, was assisted by Matthew Clifford, Sprat, and several of the best hands of those times. -LOCKIER, DR., DEAN OF PETERBOROUGH, 1730-32, Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 51.

"The Empress of Morocco, a Tragedy;" acted at the Duke of York's Theatre. This play was likewise acted at court, as appears by the two Prologues prefixed, which were both spoken by the Lady Elizabeth Howard; the first Prologue was written by the Earl of Mulgrave, the other by Lord Rochester, when it was performed at court, the Lords and Ladies of the Bedchamber played in it. Mr. Dryden, Mr. Shadwell, and Mr. Crowne, wrote against it, which began a famous controversy betwixt the wits of the town, wherein, says Jacob, Mr. Dryden was roughly handled, particularly by the lord Rochester, and the duke of Buckingham, and Settle got the laugh on his side.—CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. III, p 350.

Elkanah Settle, who had answered. "Absalom," appeared with equal courage in opposition to "The Medal," and published an answer called "The Medal reversed," with so much success in both encounters, that he left the palm doubtful, and divided the suffrages of the nation. Such are the revolutions of fame, or such is the prevalence of fashion, that the man whose works have not yet been thought to deserve the care of collecting them, who died forgotten in an hospital, and whose latter years were spent in contriving shews for fairs, and carrying an elegy or epithalamium, of which the beginning and end were occasionally varied, but the intermediate parts were always the same, to every house where there was a funeral or a wedding, might with truth have had inscribed upon his stone,

Here lies the Rival and Antagonist of Dryden. -JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779-81, Dryden, Lives of the English Poets.

This poor wight had acquired by practice, and perhaps from nature, more of a poetical ear than most of his contemporaries were gifted with.-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1808-21, The Life of John Dryden.

In 1676 was performed his "Ibrahim, the Illustrious Bassa," of which I can give an account at first hand, and which is interesting as founded on Madeleine de Scudéry's "Ibrahim, ou l'Illustre Bassa, which her brother Georges had reproduced as a play. It must in candour be allowed. that Settle's tragedy furnishes a fair example of a heroic play on a French lovestory of the accepted type, written in rime, devoid of any trace of poetic afflatus, but on the whole (though exceptions might no doubt be here and there noted) free from rant. In spite of the accumulation of deaths in the last act, and of the pathetically conceived character of the self-sacrificing Asteria, the whole, however, leaves but a tame and commonplace impression behind it. The result is due above all to the flooding of both action and characters by the resistless waters of "heroic love," which take every trace of distinctive colour or complexion out of Turk and Persian, Mussulman Roxana and Christian Isabella, alike.WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1875-99, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. III, p. 397.

Settle's character was beneath contempt, and his works are of a piece with his character; the first was a compound of flighty imbecility and grotesque presumption, and the second are a compound of sordid scurrility and soaring nonsense. -COLLINS, JOHN CHURTON, 1878-95, Dryden, Quarterly Review; Essays and Studies, p. 46.

Elkanah Settle was one of Rochester's innumerable led-poets, and was too utterly beneath contempt to deserve even Rochester's spite. The character of Doeg, ten years later, did Settle complete justice. He had a "blundering kind of melody" about him but absolutely nothing else. However, a heroic play of his, the "Empress of Morocco," had considerable vogue for some incomprehensible reason.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1881, Dryden (English Men of Letters), p. 53.

Settle was a smaller foe than Shadwell, although as a dramatist he had gained fame enough to make Dryden envious.

The quarrel between them was pitiful enough, and Dryden lowered himself to Settle's level. He could not well have sunk lower; but the marvel is, that when these poets were living the gulf that separates them was by no means so evident as it is to us. Settle, in some of his writings, divided with Dryden, as Johnson observes, the suffrages of the nation; yet he was both a mean poet and a mean man. DENNIS, JOHN, 1883, Heroes of Literature, p. 176.

This absurd creature lives embalmed in the anger of Dryden, but he had a moment of not illegitimate success. . For a moment Settle was at the top of the fashion, but he had neither talent nor principle, and he soon sank into contempt.— GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 59.

Miserable as his lampoons are, a line here and there is not destitute of piquancy; and if his "Empress of Morocco" (1673) has no literary pretensions, it is important in literary history for having so moved the wrath of Dryden, and in the history of the drama for having been issued with plates which contribute greatly to our knowledge of the internal arrangements of the Restoration Theatre. By a singular irony of fortune, his fate bears some analogy to that of his mighty antagonist. Settle lost caste by changing his politics at the wrong time, as Dryden his religion; but while Dryden bore up against the storm of adversity, Settle sunk into obscurity, and ultimately into the Charter House. Of his twenty plays none but "The Empress of Morocco" is now ever mentioned, unless an exception be made in favour of "Ibrahim, the Illustrious Bassa."-GARNETT, RICHARD, 1895, The Age of Dryden, p. 118.

Settle was not deficient in promise as scholar, rhymester, and wit; but he wrecked his career by his tergiversation and by his inept efforts to measure his mediocre capacity against the genius of Dryden. He soon became a butt for caricature as a voluminous and reckless dunce. "Recanting Settle," wrote a critic, when his tragedies and libels could no more yield him penny loaves and ale, "bids our youth by his example fly, the Love of Politics and Poetry."-SECCOMBE, THOMAS, 1897, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LI, p. 274.

PERSONAL

I am heartily sorry for her; she has very generous principles for one of her sort, and a great deal of good sense and invention; she is about forty, very homely and very fat.-SWIFT, JONATHAN, 171112, Letter to Stella, Jan. 28.

Being advanced to the autumn of her charms, she conversed with the opposite sex, in a manner very delicate, sensible, and agreeable, and when she felt that time had left his impression upon her brow, she did not court praise and flattery. The greatest genius's of the times conversed freely with her, and gave her daily proofs of esteem, and friendship, except Sir Richard Steele, with whom it seems she was at variance; and indeed Sir Richard sufficiently exposed himself by his manner of taking revenge; for he published to the world that it was his own fault he was not happy with Mrs. Manley, for which omission he publickly, and gravely asked her pardon. These are the most material incidents in the life of our poetess; a lady, who was born with high powers from nature, which were afterwards cultivated by enjoying the brightest conversation; the early part of her life was unfortunate, she fell a sacrifice to a seducer, who laid the foundation for those errors she afterwards committed, and of those sufferings she underwent; she had a high relish for the pleasures of life; she was extremely susceptible of the passion of love, and treated it with a peculiar vivacity.-CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. IV, p. 18.

This demirep-to give her a name exactly as much above her deserts as it is below those of an honest woman.-DE MORGAN, AUGUSTUS, 1856, The New Atalantis, Notes and Queries, Second Series, vol. 2, p. 265.

Except that he was a scoundrel, there is, I believe, little known of the individual

who was the (pretended) husband of Mrs. Manley. If it had not been for his villany, Mrs. De la Rivière Manley might have borne a name among the most virtuous, as she was one of the wittiest, of women. She never recovered the downfall which she owed to that heartless ruffian her cousin. Men were afraid of

her wit, and ladies talked of, at, and against her, behind their fans, as a dreadfully intriguing hussey, who ruined the men out of revenge for the outrage by which one man had embittered her whole life. All the miseries and vices of that

life (which terminated in 1734, [?] at the house of Alderman Barber, when she was about threescore and a few odd years), were owing to her wretched betrayer. She was betrayed, not seduced; and she who had qualities which, properly developed, might have rendered her name an honoured name on the roll of virtuous and accomplished women, is remembered with a sort of scorn, because our memories more easily hold on to her faults than to the wrongs by which she was led into

error.

I once met, in an old paper, with the name of Manley among some convicts sent to execution: I hope, with all my heart, that CL. HOPPER, in his farther inquiries, may discover that the atrocious miscreant who ruined Miss Manley, body and soul, who abandoned her to misery, drove her into vice, and made of her name a by-word of scorn, was, as he deserved to be, hanged like a dog.-DORAN, JOHN, 1857, The Husband of Mrs. Manley, Notes and Queries, Second Series, vol. 3, pp. 350, 351.

NEW ATALANTIS 1709

As long as "Atalantis" shall be read. -POPE, ALEXANDER, 1712-14, The Rape of the Lock, v, 165.

The testimony of Mrs. Manley is of course wholly valueless except as an indication that scandal was current.

694

ASPLAND, R. BROOK, 1856, Lord Halifax and Mrs. Barton, Notes and Queries, Second Series, vol. 2, p. 390.

Thus does the same conjectural fact, or figment, afford either a field for the cultivation of the choicest fruits, or a waste place for the reception of the vilest refuse. WILLIAMS, JANE, 1861, The Literary Women of England, p. 155.

One of the worst books I know-the worst in style and worst in morals, and fully deserves the oblivion into which it has fallen. It is impossible to read it through; and that it should ever have been popular-the edition I have before me is the seventh-notwithstanding Pope's line,

"As long as Atalantis shall be read,” is almost incredible, and denotes a taste utterly depraved. To a certain extent, however, this may be accounted for by the fact that it is a scandalous chronicle of

persons in high life under thinly disguised names, and reveals or invents their amours and intrigues.-FORSYTH, WILLIAM, 1871, Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century, p. 197.

That "cornucopia of scandal" "The New Atalantis," in which almost every public. character of the day had his or her niche. This scurrilous book passed through a great number of editions; it amused Swift, who determined to make use of the author.

We would willingly give a page from "The New Atalantis," but unfortunately it is precisely where Mrs. Manley is most picturesque that it is least possible to quote from her.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 206.

GENERAL

It appears from the preface ["Lost Lover"] that it was unsuccessful-Mrs. Manley was very imprudent in allowing a play to be acted, which she says she wrote in 7 days.-GENEST, P., 1832, Some Account of the English Stage, vol. II, p. 75. The great society novelist of an age to which she should not be too severely condemned for having held up a mirror. her cleverness there can be no doubt, and if she had little consideration for the good fame of others, she had at least the courage of her intentions, and held her own not only by the fear she inspired. WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1875-99, A

Of

History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. III, p. 432.

While young she was basely tricked out of her character; but the prurience of her compositions must suggest to her readers that her virtue hung rather loosely about her, and would, even under favourable circumstances, have been a possession difficult to retain. She earned her living partly by a profession which the refinement of the present age forbids naming, and partly by writing romances and plays which, being among the most licentious works in the English language, had of course a considerable sale. In 1709 appeared her "Memoirs from the New Atlantis," a long series of anecdotes, in which lawless desire is depicted with a warmth of colouring which only female. genius can give, but which to a reader not utterly depraved in taste, becomes monotonous from the apparent inability of the authoress to treat of any other theme. It was principally designed as a satire upon the Whigs all round, and excited no little indignation in a number of grave statesmen, who found themselves to their astonishment figuring, under thinly-disguised names, as heroes in all sorts of amorous tales.-WYON, FREDERICK WILLIAM, 1876, The History of Great Britain During the Reign of Queen Anne, vol. II, p. 325.

The one fact that she was the first woman of her country to support herself entirely by the pen, itself establishes her right to a certain place in the long line of female writers who have since her day done so much for literature. -HUDSON, WILLIAM HENRY, 1897, Two Novelists of the English Restoration, Idle Hours in a Library, p. 155.

Nobody can peruse the pages of Mrs. Manley herself, despite their coarseness and violence, without recognising a literary gift. She was a political caricaturist, but she had a talent for her trade. "She seemed to laugh and squall in rhymes, And all her gestures were lampoons." And the frailties of her life were imposed by her surroundings. It is hard that such a woman should have been forced into Lintot's protection, and have ended an unaided struggle in want and illness.-SICHEL, WALTER, 1901, Bolingbroke and His Times, p. 86.

An ignorant and impudent incendiary, the scorn of those who made him their tool.

MARLBOROUGH, SARAH DUTCHESS, 1724, Account of her Conduct, p. 247.

On Friday, June 5, in the evening, Dr. Henry Sacheverell, rector of St. Andrews, Holburn, (worth about 700 libs. per an.) departed this life at Highgate.

He was a bold man, and of a good presence, and delivered a thing better than a much more modest man, however preferable in learning, could do. He was but an indifferent scholar, but pretended to a great deal of honesty, which I could never see in him, since he was the forwardest to take the oaths, notwithstanding he would formerly be so forward in speaking for, and drinking the health of, king James III. He hath printed several things; but that which is really good, viz. his speech at his tryal, was none of his own, but was penned by Dr. Francis Atterbury, the deprived bishop of Rochester. He died very rich. He had a complication of disorders. HEARNE, THOMAS, 1724, Reliquia Hearniana, ed. Bliss, June 14, vol. II, p. 202.

Was bred at the public school at Marlborough, at the charge of one Edward Hearst, an apothecary, whose wife surviving him, continued his charity to Sacheverell, and sent him to Oxford.

He had not been long at Oxford before she discovered his turbulent, violent, and

imperious temper, -the more ill-becoming in him, because he subsisted by charity. He was remarkable for his disrespectful behaviour to his superiors and his insolence to his equals. The very make and look of him were an index to his character. Having a small benefice given him in Staffordshire, he gave great scandal to the sober and religious people in his neighbourhood by his immoralities, which are set forth in a treatise entitled "Peril of being zealously, but not well-affected," written by a minister of the Church of England, one of the brotherhood of St. Katharine's. While he was at his parish, or Oxford, he fell in with the most furious of the Jacobite party, made scurrilous reflections on the death of King William and the Hanover succession; and when the queen appeared against the High-Church memorial, he had the impudence to call her a "waxen queen," "whereby," says the annalist, "he alluded to or gave the hint of the tacit jest that was put upon her at Oxford, by those who put her motto of semper eadem on the vane of a weathercock."--OLDMIXON, JOHN, 1730-39, History of England, vol. II, p. 429.

Dr. Henry Sacheverell was a man of a. large and strong make, with a good symmetry of parts, of a livid rather than a ruddy complexion, and an insolent overbearing front, with large staring eyes, but no life in them, -a manifest indication of an envious, ill-natured, proud, sullen, and ambitious temper.-CHAMBERLEN, PAUL, 1738, History of the Life and Reign of Queen Anne, p. 331.

It is difficult to say which is most worthy of ridicule the ministry, in arming all the powers of government in their attack upon an obscure individual, or the public. in supporting a culprit whose doctrine. was more odious than his insolence, and his principles yet more contemptible than