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He was made poet laureat to King William, upon the death of Shadwell, and held that place 'till the accession of King George I, on whom he lived to write the first Birth-Day Ode, which is executed with unusual spirit. Mr.
Shadwell in his Comedies imitated Ben Johnson, and proposed him as his model of excellence, with what degree of success we shall not take upon us to determine, but proceed to give an account of his plays. The Sullen Lovers, or the Impertinent, a Comedy; acted at the duke's theatre, dedicated to William duke of Newcastle: the dedication is dated September 1st, 1668.
The throne of the dunces, which Dryden had conferred upon Shadwell, Pope, in his Dunciad, passed on to two of his own literary foes, Theobald and Colley Cibber. There is a great waste of strength in this elaborate squib, and most of the petty writers, whose names it has preserved, as has been said, like flies in amber, are now quite unknown.
And possibly the parrots don't know, possibly they do, that the noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever he is, and has five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no reason, to answer for. Shadwell church! Pleasant whispers of there being a fresher air down the river than down by the Docks, go pursuing one another, playfully, in and out of the openings in its spire.
When it was described, it proved to be as Watt said, "no less than our double-cylinder engine, worked upon our principle of expansion. It is fourteen years since I mentioned it to Mr. Smeaton." Watt had explained to Dr. Small his method of working steam expansively as early as May, 1769, and had adopted it in the Soho engine and also in the Shadwell engine erected in that year.
It was parodied by C. Montague and Prior in the Town and Country Mouse. At the Revolution D. was deprived of all his pensions and appointments, including the Laureateship, in which he was succeeded by his old enemy Shadwell. His latter years were passed in comparative poverty, although the Earl of Dorset and other old friends contributed by their liberality to lighten his cares.
The day will come, perhaps, long after we are dust, when the women in Epsom Wells will be thought pictures from life. 'Such an one, people will say, as they stand to read your epitaph, 'was this Lady Sarah, whose virtues are recorded here in Latin superlatives. We know her better in the pages of Shadwell."
Mac Flecknoe is another satire of almost as great merit, directed against a certain Whig poet by the name of Shadwell. He would have been seldom mentioned in later times, had it not been for two of Dryden's lines: "The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense."
The poets Shadwell and Crowne, believing themselves ignored and neglected, whilst their rival was enriched and exalted, joined Dryden in writing a merciless criticism upon Settle's tragedy.
Don Carlos, however, claims his mistress by reason of his former contract, which is perforce allowed. Guiliom, masquerading as a Count, is of course directly derived from Les Precieuses Ridicules, first performed 18 November, 1659, and Isabella is a close copy of Cathos and Magdelon. Behn, Shadwell, in his fine comedy, Bury Fair , drew largely from the same source.
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