News at Eleven: It is Dryden's attack on the Duke of Buckingham,

who with Shaftesbury engineered the attempted usurpation of the throne by one of the bastard sons of Charles II, that sets the standard for poetic vituperation. In Dryden's caricature, Buckingham

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong
Was everything by starts and nothing long,
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon . . .

Swift, Pope, Fielding and Johnson all attacked Robert Walpole, the first British prime minister; Hogarth caricatured him and Gay put him on stage in The Beggar's Opera as the criminal Jonathan Wild.

from The Guardian: Painters and poets have always mocked politicians. It's practically a public service

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