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Dryden is often quite violent. Take the preface "To the Whigs" to The Medal. But his sense of advantage in speaking for government means that he could afford to luxuriate in shafts of poised satire rather than the coarse bludgeon of rage that marks the disempowered. When he lost government favour himself, his satire went quiet. He's still one of my favourite poets. And one of the most important, from the point of view of understanding British class and politics. Incidentally, does anyone know if the incisive preafce to the cheap Wordsworth Dryden, by David Marriott, is the work of the poet better known to us as D.S. Marriott ?