For instance, in 1681 Dryden's political opponents published a reprint of his 'Heroique Stanzas on the late Lord Protector,' under the title of 'An Elegy on the Death of the late Usurper O. Cromwell,' the object of which publication was to injure Dryden with his new political allies and at court. This was printed in the form of a folio broadside; it was 'published to show the loyalty and integrity of the poet,' and it has the following lines as a 'postscript,'
'The printing of these lines afflicts me more
Than all the drubs I in Rose Alley bore;
This shows my nauseous mercenary pen
Would praise the vilest and the worst of men.'
So also in the Protestant Satire (1687) we read :
'Thus needy Bayes, his Rose Street aches past,
By Fate enlightened, Tory turns at last;
Though bred a saint he was not born to fast';
where Bayes is a nickname for Dryden, derived from the farce of the Rehearsal, 1671. Cf. note on the Rehearsal, p. 7, 1. 4. For 'Rose Street aches' see the account of the assault on Dryden, given in the Introduction to his works, Clarendon Press Series, p. xxx.