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College, Oxon; but he quitted the University without taking any degree, and came to London, where he applied himself to the study of poetry, in which he lived to make a figure of some sort. Finding the nation divided between the opinions of Whig and Tory, and sensible that a man could not make any considerable figure unless he attached himself to one of these parties, Settle thought proper, on his first setting out in life, to join the Whigs, who were then, though the minor, yet a powerful party, and to support whose interest he employed his talents.

About the year 1680, when the debates ran high concerning the exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession, on account of his religious principles, our author wrote The Character of a Popish Successor, and what may be expected from such a one: humbly offered to the consideration of both the Houses of Parliament appointed to meet at Oxon on March 21st, 1681. This essay, it seems, was thought of consequence enough to merit answers, as at that time the Exclusion Bill employed the general conversation. The author of one of these, The Character of a Rebellion, and what England may expect from one, printed 1682, is very severe on the character of Settle, whom he represents as an arrant knave, a despicable coward, a profane atheist, and of mean birth. "Most of his relations (says he) are barbers; and of the baseness, falseness, and mutability of his nature, too many evidences may be brought. He closed with the Whigs, contrary to the principles he formerly professed, at a time when they took occasion to push their cause, upon the breaking out of Oates's plot; and was ready to fall off from, and return to them, for his own advantage."

Another answer was published by Sir Roger L'Estrange; and to his performance, entitled The Character of a Papist in Masquerade supported by Authority and Experience, Settle made a reply, entitled The Character of a Popish Successor compleat, which, in the opinion of the critics, is the smartest piece ever written upon the subject of the Exclusion Bill.

On the coronation of James II. the two parts of The Character of a Popish Successor were, with the Exclusion Bill, on the 23d of April, 1685, burnt by the sub-wardens and fellows of Merton College, Oxon, in a public bonfire made in the middle of their great quadrangle. During these contentions Mr. Settle also published a piece called The Medal reversed" (1681); an answer to a poem of Dryden's called The Medal, occasioned by the bill against the Earl of Shaftesbury being ignored.

Mr. Settle's zeal created for him a no less formidable antagonist than Dryden, who was obliged by his place of laureate to speak and write for the court. Dryden had formerly joined Settle, in order to reduce the growing reputation of Shadwell; but their interest being now so opposite, they became poetical enemies, in which Settle was, no doubt, over-matched. He wrote a poem, however, called Azaria and Hushai, designed as an answer to Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel.

Soon after this, if we may credit Wood, Settle changed sides and turned Tory, with as much violence as he had formerly espoused the interest of the Whigs. He published in 1683 a narrative, the first part of which is concerning himself, as being of the Tory side; the second to show the inconsistency and contradiction of Titus Oates's narrative of the plot of the Popish party against the life of King

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Charles II. at the time when that monarch intended to alter his ministry, to consent to the exclusion of his brother, and to take measures to support the Protestant interest.

Settle is also said by Wood to have been the author of Animadversions on the Last Speech and Confession of William Lord Russel, and of Remarks on Algernon Sidney's Paper delivered to the Sheriffs at his Execution, London, 1683.

He also wrote a poem on the Coronation of the high and mighty Monarch James II., London, 1685; and then commenced journalist for the court, published weekly an essay in behalf of the administration, and became poet laureate.

His dramatic works are:

1. The Empress of Morocco. Tragedy. 2. Love and Revenge. Tragedy. 1675. 3. Cambyses, King of Persia. Tragedy. 4. The Conquest of China by the Tartars

Tragedy. 1676.

5. Ibrahim, the illustrious Bassa. Tragedy in heroic verse. 1677. '

6. Pastor Fido; or the Faithful Shepherd.

7. Fatal Love; or the Forced Inconstancy. Tragedy. 1680.

8. The Female Prelate; being a history of the Life and Death of Pope Joan. Tragedy. 1680.

9. The Heir of Morocco; with the Death of Gyland. Tragedy. 1682.

10. Distressed Innocence; or the Princess of Persia. Tragedy.

11. The Ambitious Slave; or a generous Revenge. Tragedy. 1694.

12. The World in the Moon. Dramatic Comic Opera. 1698.

13. City Bambler; or the Playhouse Wedding. Comedy.

14. The Virgin Prophetess; or the Fate of Troy. Opera. 1701. 15. The Ladies' Triumph. Comic Opera. 1710.

Settle had a pension from the corporation of London for an annual panegyric to celebrate the festival of the lord mayor, and in consequence wrote various poems which he calls Triumphs for the Inauguration of the Lord Mayors, which are preserved in his works, and which it would be needless to enumerate. Besides his dramatic pieces, he published many occasional poems addressed to his patrons, and some funeral elegies on the deaths of his friends. Whatever the merits of his poetry, Settle was the best contriver of machinery in England; and for many years of the latter part of his life received a salary from Mrs. Minns and her daughter Mrs. Leigh, for writing drolls for Bartholomew and Southwark Fairs.

He died in the Charterhouse, 1724. Some months before his decease he offered a play to the managers of Drury Lane, but lived not to introduce it on the stage: it was called The Expulsion of the Danes from Britain.

"If poor Elkanah," observes Mr. Southey, "had been baptised by any name in the common propria quæ maribus of England, his ignominy might have slept with him in the grave; but his godfathers enabled his enemies to hand him down to everlasting remembrance.

"It was Elkanah's misfortune, that he should have been instigated to rival Dryden : and it is a true specimen of the effect faction will produce upon taste; for there were many who believed and asserted that he excelled his antagonist. There remains a heavier charge against him than his natural dulness and his pardonable vanity:-he was a scoundrel. The principles which he honestly espoused in the

outset, he abandoned for interest; and he was employed to animadvert upon the dying declarations of Russel and Sidney. After this, despised as well as despicable, we find him subsisting by writing drolls for Bartholomew Fair, playing the dragon in St. George for England, in a green leather case of his own invention, and dying in an almshouse."

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John Wilmot, afterwards Earl of Rochester, the son of Henry Earl of Rochester, better known by the title of Lord Wilmot, so often mentioned in Clarendon's History,† was (observes Cibber) born April 10th, 1648, at Ditchley in Oxfordshire. After a grammatical education at the school of Burford, he entered a nobleman into Wadham College in 1659, only twelve years old; and in 1661, at fourteen, was, with some other persons of high rank, made master of arts by Lord Clarendon in person.

He travelled afterwards into France and Italy, and at his return devoted himself to the court. In 1665 he went to sea with Sandwich,

* Johnson.

He was greatly instrumental in the preservation of Charles II. after the battle of Worcester.

and distinguished himself at Bergen by uncommon intrepidity; and the next summer served again on board a vessel commanded by Sir Edward Spragge, who, in the heat of the engagement, having a message of reproof to send to one of his captains, could find no man ready to carry it but Wilmot, who in an open boat went and returned amidst the storm of shot.

But his reputation for bravery was not lasting he was reproached with slinking away in street quarrels, and leaving his companions to shift as they could without him; and Sheffield Duke of Buckingham has left a story of his refusal to fight him.

He had very early an inclination to intemperance, which he totally subdued in his travels; but when he became a courtier, he unhappily addicted himself to dissolute and vicious company, by which his principles were corrupted and his manners depraved. He lost all sense of religious restraint; and finding it not convenient to admit the authority of laws which he was resolved not to obey, sheltered his wickedness behind infidelity.

As he excelled in that noisy and licentious merriment which wine excites, his companions eagerly encouraged him in excess, and he willingly indulged it; till, as he confessed to Dr. Burnet, he was for five years together continually drunk, or so much inflamed by frequent ebriety as in no interval to be master of himself.

In this state he played many frolics, which it is not for his honour that we should remember, and which are not now distinctly known. He often pursued low amours in mean disguises, and always acted with great exactness and dexterity the characters which he assumed.

He once erected a stage on Tower-hill, and harangued the populace as a mountebank; and having made physic part of his study, is said to have practised it successfully.

He was so much in favour with King Charles, that he was made one of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber, and comptroller of Woodstock Park.

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Having an active and inquisitive mind, he never, except in his paroxysms of intemperance, was wholly negligent of study; he read what is considered as polite learning so much, that he is mentioned by Wood as the greatest scholar of all the nobility. Sometimes he retired into the country and amused himself with writing libels, in which he did not pretend to confine himself to truth.

His favourite author in French was Boileau, and in English Cowley.

Thus in a course of drunken gaiety and gross sensuality, with intervals of study perhaps yet more criminal, with an avowed contempt of all decency and order, a total disregard of every moral, and a resolute denial of every religious obligation, he lived worthless and useless; and blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness, till, at the age of one-and-thirty, he had exhausted the fund of life, and reduced himself to a state of weakness and decay.

At this time he was led to an acquaintance with Dr. Burnet, to whom he laid open with great freedom the tenour of his opinions and the course of his life; and from whom he received such conviction of the reasonableness of moral duty and the truth of Christianity,

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