Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/200

186 that of his stately antagonist, Dryden, who, richly gifted as he was, was totally destitute of the dramatic faculty. Driven by pecuniary considerations to the exercise of a craft for which he had no aptitude, to cloak his own defects, he had extolled wit and sprightliness of expression, qualities in which he excelled, above the more laboured attempt of depicting character; and some slight sparring on this topic appears to have been the commencement of that fierce antagonism which the malevolence of satire has gibbeted to undying remembrance.

One misfortune of "hasty" Shadwell was his facility. His tragedy of "Psyche" was written in five weeks, and some of his plays in less than a month. We are involuntarily reminded of a bon-mot of Sheridan, "that easy writing is hard reading;" and tragedies dashed off at a heat are not likely to take any permanent hold on the public mind. He wrote altogether seventeen plays; and of his poetical works, the principal are a complimentary poem on the arrival of King William III., one on Queen Mary, and a translation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. Much time has been spent in the attempt to exhume these pieces from the public libraries of the metropolis, but without success; and if they yet slumber there, it would still be a thankless office to invade their dusty repose.

The following is a list of his plays:

"The Sullen Lovers, or the Impertinents." A comedy acted at the Duke's Theatre, and dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle. The plot taken from Molière's play, "Les Fâcheux."

"The Humorists." A comedy attacking the follies of the time. This play met with some opposition on its first appearance.

"The Royal Shepherdess." A tragi-comedy printed in 1669—an adaptation, by Shadwell, of a play written by a person of the name of Fountain, in the time of Charles II.,