| Noblemen of Rochester’s stamp, and others of a more sober sort, took pride in displaying their more or less arbitrary patronage of men of letters. This condition of things may almost be said to have culminated in the “Rose-alley ambuscade,” one of the most shameless episodes in English literary history. On the suspicion of his having assisted John Sheffield, earl of Mulgrave (afterwards duke of Bucking-hamshire), in a passage in his Essay on Satire reflecting on Rochester’s “want of wit,” Dryden was brutally assaulted by hirelings of that patron of letters, who had recently transferred his favours, such as they were, to other writers (1679). 77 |
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