Settle

Settle, ELKANAH, was born at Dunstable, 1st February 1648. He entered Trinity College, Oxford, at eighteen, but soon betook himself to London, to make a living by his pen. In 1671 he made something of a hit by his tragedy of Cambydes, and the Earl of Rochester and others, to annoy Dryden, loudly hailed him as the superior genius of the two. Rochester got his next tragedy, The Empress of Morocco, played at Whitehall by the lords and ladies of the court, and in this way a great run was secured for it when it came before the public. In the insolence of success the author printed along with it a Preface, in which Dryden was severely assailed. In his great satire, Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden scorned him with his scorn, and so gave him immortality, if only as a shrieking ghost. Having no real strength of talent, Settle speedily relapsed into obscurity. By writing as poet for the city verses for pageants and festivities, and producing pieces to be acted in the booths of Bartholomew Fair, the some-time rival of Dryden was fain to eke out a wretched subsistence. In his destitute age he was admitted to the Charterhouse, where in 1723 he died, and his works followed, if indeed they did not predecease him.