He is
probably the only author, who ever chose for his heroes a set of
riotous bloods, or _scowerers_, as they were then termed, and
expected the public should sympathise in their brutal orgies. True
it is, that the heroes are _whig_ scowerers; and, whilst breaking
windows, stabbing watchmen, and beating passengers, do not fail to
express a due zeal for the Protestant religion, and the liberty of
the subject. Much of the interest also turns, it must be allowed,
upon the Protestant scowerers aforesaid baffling and beating,
without the least provocation, a set of inferior scowerers, who
were Jacobites at least, if not Papists. Shadwell is thus described
in the "Sessions of the Poets:"
Next into the crowd Tom Shadwell does wallow,
And swears by his guts, his paunch, and his tallow,
'Tis he that alone best pleases the age,
Himself and his wife have supported the stage.
Apollo, well pleased with so bonny a lad,
To oblige him, he told him he should be huge glad,
Had he half so much wit as he fancied he had.
However, to please so jovial a wit,
And to keep him in humour, Apollo thought fit
To bid him drink on, and keep his old trick
Of railing at poets--
Those, who consult the full passage, will see good reason to think
Dryden's censure on Shadwell's brutality by no means too severe.
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