Page:The English humourists of the eighteenth century. A series of lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America (IA englishhumourist00thacrich).pdf/75

 that he was equal to Shakspeare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him, "Mr. Congreve has done me the favour to review the 'Æneis,' and compare my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has showed me many faults which I have endeavoured to correct."

The "excellent young man" was but three or four-and-twenty when the great Dryden thus spoke of him: the greatest literary chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, himself the marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a school of wits, who daily gathered round his chair and tobacco-pipe at Wills'. Pope dedicated his "Iliad" to him; Swift, Addison,