Note 480 — EPISTLE TO THE WHIGS.

One writer was so much incensed at this challenge, as to plead it for the apology of having degraded himself by a controversy with Dryden. "I have more honourable employ, than, like a schoolboy, to cap verses, or to blemish my larger name with that of Bayes or Laureat. Only, it moved my indignation, as well as scorn, when I read his challenge to the Whigs, p. 6. of his Epistle, and the bravado extorted from me this nimble check, but just rebuke, for such arrogance, opiniatry, and petulancy, to abate, if possible, his pride, and the contempt he seems to have of the Whigs, whom the hackney laureat does so magisterially despise at such a rate, that the Tory courtiers (poor hearts, they know no better) hug and admire the imbost rhodomontade."—Mushroom, p. 18. How far the author's talents were equal to the purpose of chastizing Dryden, and raising the renown of Whig poetry, may be seen by some curious specimens in Note XII. on the following poem.