It is recorded that he was once waylaid by the hired ruffians of the Earl of Rochester, and beaten almost to death: these broils generally had a political as well as a social significance.
In his quarrels with the literary men, he used the shafts of satire.

His contest with Thomas Shadwell has been preserved in his satire called McFlecknoe.

Flecknoe was an Irish priest who wrote dull plays; and in this poem Dryden proposes Shadwell as his successor on the throne of dulness.
It was the model or suggester of Pope's _Dunciad_; but the model is by no means equal to the copy.
ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL .-- Nothing which he had yet written is so true an index to the political history as his "Absalom and Achitophel," which he published in 1681.

The history may be given in few words.

Charles II.