accession of James II. He then headed a rebellion, which resulted in his entire defeat and in his execution on the scaffold, July 15, 1685." [SCOTT.] 19. Inspir'd by. F reads inspir'd with. 34. The charming Annabel. See note on l. 18, and B. S. xvii. 39. Amnon's murther. v. 2 Samuel xiii. 28, 29. Scott and Christie think that this refers to an assault in December, 1670, by some of Monmouth's troopers, upon Sir John Coventry, a member of the House of Commons who had made a sarcastic allusion to the king's amours. Coventry was not murdered, though he was brutally disfigured, so that the parallel is not accurate. 42. Sion. London. 45. The Jews. The English. 51. Adam-wits. Probably only an allusion to the state of Adam in Paradise, free except that he was prohibited to eat of the tree of knowledge. Want in the next line means lack. 57. Saul. Oliver Cromwell. 58 Ishbosheth. Richard Cromwell: v. 2 Samuel iii, iv. 59. Hebron. Scotland, where Charles had been crowned on January 1, 1651; in England he was not crowned until April 23, 1661. So David reigned in Hebron before he reigned in Jerusalem: v. 2 Samuel v. 4, 5. 66. A State. The word, as in l. 24, means republic. 82. Good Old Cause. That is, of the Commonwealth; Dryden's aim is to identify the Whigs with the men who rebelled against Charles I. There is, possibly, a more specific reference to the intrigues between Charles I and the Presbyterians and the parliament in 1647-48, which led ultimately to the execution of the king and the establishment of the Commonwealth. 85. Jerusalem. London. 86. Jebusites. Roman Catholics: for the name, v. Judges i. 21; xix. 10. 87. And theirs the native right. As Professor Collins points out, this and other unfinished lines are probably in imitation of Virgil's hemistichs: cf. 5171, 55, n. 88. The chosen people. The Protestants. 90. And every loss, etc. The following lines do not exaggerate the treatment of the Catholics by the government and the people of England. 111, 104. The Jewish rabbins. "Doctors of the Church of England." CHRISTIE. 108. That Plot. The Popish Plot, of which Titus Oates gave the first information in August, 1678. According to Oates' story, Charles was to be murdered and James made king as the agent of the Jesuits. A French army was to support these schemes and aid in suppressing Protestantism. Oates may have had some slight foundation of truth for his structure of lies. 114. Some truth there was, etc. A recent investigator of the Popish Plot, Mr. John Pollock, gives Dryden the following high (perhaps excessive) praise: "Of all men whose reputation was made or raised by the Popish Plot, none have since maintained their fame at so even a height as John Dryden. His person but not his name suffered from the changes of fortune, and at a distance of more than two centuries the sum of continuous investigation has little to add to the judgments passed on his times by the greatest of satirists. The flashes of Dryden's insight illumine more than the light shed by many records. In politics, no less than in society, his genius had ample room. The Plot gave him a subject worthy of a master. [Lines 114-117, 134-141 quoted.] The lines are a witness against the two great parties whose intrigues were woven to menace the security of the English state. Oates' false oaths ruined the hopes of the Roman Catholics: the designs of the English Whigs were grounded on them." The Popish Plot, London, 1903, p. 222. 118. Egyptian. French: cf. 113, 281–286. At this time France was the leading Catholic power. The following lines are a sneer at the doctrine of transubstantiation, which Dryden later defends in The Hind and the Panther: v. 219, 220, 85-153. Dryden is indebted to the opening lines of Juvenal, xv, where, after describing the Egyptian worship of animals. the satirist exclaims: "It is impiety to violate and break with the teeth the leek and the onion. O holy races, to whom such deities as these are born in their gardens! Every table abstains from woolly animals; it is impiety there to cut the throat of a young kid; it is lawful to feed on human flesh." (J. D. Lewis's translation.) 121. As serv'd. F reads And serv'd. 128. Hebrew priests. Anglican clergymen. The fleece is of course the tithes paid by the parishioners; Dryden's sneers at priests are incessant. 150. Of these, etc. Professor Firth calls attention to the following passage in Coleridge's Table Talk, August 6, 1832: "You will find this a good gauge or criterion of genius-whether it progresses and evolves, or only spins upon itself. Take Dryden's Achitophel and Zimri: ... every line adds to or modifies the character, which is, as it were, a-building up to the very last verse; whereas in Pope's Timon, &c., the first two or three couplets contain all the pith of the character, and the twenty or thirty lines that follow are so much evidence or proof of overt acts of jealousy, or pride, or whatever it may be that is satirized." Achitophel. Anthony Ashley Cooper (162183), created Earl of Shaftesbury in 1672. He inherited a large fortune, and became a member of parliament in 1640. On the outbreak of the civil war he supported the king, and in 1643 raised troops in his aid. In 1644 be changed sides, and performed military service under the parliamentary commanders. He sat in the Barebone's Parliament in 1653. where he was a leader of the moderate party, and in later parliaments under Oliver Crom well and Richard Cromwell. He was also a member of Cromwell's Council of State in 1653-54, but did not receive the usual salary of £1000 for his services, and about the close of 1654 became estranged from Cromwell, from whom he afterwards held aloof, and whom he at times opposed. He actively promoted the Restoration, and after it became prominent in the government. In 1661 he was made Baron Ashley. In 1670-73 he was a member of the Cabal ministry and in 167273 Lord Chancellor. After the fall of the Cabal he became the most conspicuous leader of the Opposition. In 1678 and the following years he took advantage of the belief in the Popish Plot, and was the chief supporter of the Exclusion Bill, which was brought forward to deprive the Duke of York of the succession. In 1679 he was for a short time in office as Lord President of the Council. On July 2, 1681, he was arrested and confined to the Tower on a charge of high treason, but was released when the Middlesex grand jury refused to indict him. When set free, he remained in London, where he was safe so long as Whig sheriffs remained in power. In 1682, when the Tories had gained control of London, Shaftesbury, with Monmouth and others, formed fruitless plans for a rising against the king. In November, 1682, he fled to Holland, where he died on January 21 of the next year. He was a constant supporter, though sometimes by unscrupulous means, of parliamentary government and, except as regards Catholics, whom he dreaded for political reasons, of religious liberty. Dryden's wonderful satires have done permanent injury, it may be feared, to the reputation of a great man. 152. Counsels. F reads Counsell. 154. Principles. F reads principle. 156. A fiery soul, etc. A writer in Notes and Queries, series I. ii. 468, cites the following passages as possibly furnishing Dryden hints for these lines: "He was one of a lean body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting for anger at the clog of his body, desired to fret a passage through it." FULLER, The Holy State and the Profane State (in the life of Alva). The purest soul that e'er was sent CAREW, Epitaph on the Lady Mary The general idea of the contrast between Shaftesbury's body and his mind is found in Mulgrave's Essay on Satire: v. 907, 100-116. 157. Pigmy body. In reference to Shaftesbury's small stature. 163. Great Wits, etc. Seneca writes, quoting inaccurately from Aristotle (Problems, xxx. 1): "There has been no great genius without a mixture of madness." (De Trang. Animi, xvii.) But Dryden may have taken the idea from Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, i. 3. 3. 170. To that unfeather'd, etc. Shaftesbury's son was a man of no capacity. Dryden contempt uously applies to him the definition of man 112, 175. The triple bond he broke. -- 179. Usurp'd a patriot's. F reads Assum'd a Patron's. The next twelve lines do not appear at all in F. Their absence occasions an abrupt and awkward transition. We may at least conjecture-proof of course is impossible that they were present in Dryden's original draught of the poem, but omitted, in order to deepen the satire on Shaftesbury, when it was first published; and that line 179 was then altered in order partially to bridge the gap caused by their omission. So far as the editor can learn, Shaftesbury was not specially distinguished as a patron, nor can that name be called all-atoning. If this conjecture be correct, Dryden in the second edition simply reverted to his original text. Patriot was the name affected by the faction (the germ of the Whig party) that in 1680 sent up petitions to Charles asking him to allow Parliament to meet, that the Exclusion Bill might be passed: cf. 121, 122, 963-988. 188. Abbethdin. A rabbinical term for a certain officer of the high court of justice of the Jews: literally, father of the house of judgment. See the Jewish Encyclopedia under bet din. It is here applied to Shaftesbury as Lord Chancellor, the presiding judge in the Court of Chancery. 196, 197. David, etc. Two interpretations are possible for this couplet: David would have made a song in honor of Achitophel, so that (a) one of David's songs (perhaps Psalm iii, or the lament of David for Absalom in 2 Samuel xviii. 33) would have been lacking; or (b) so that Dryden would have had no need to write his immortal poem of Absalom and Achitophel. The former meaning seems the more likely to be true. The application to Charles II is by no means clear. 198, 199. But wild, etc. "In Knolles' History of the Turks, printed more than sixty years before the appearance of Absalom and Achitophel, are the following verses, under a portrait of the Sultan Mustapha I: Greatnesse on Goodnesse loves to slide, not stand, And leaves for Fortune's ice Vertue's firme land. The circumstance is the more remarkable, because Dryden has really no couplet more intensely Drydenian than this [lines 198, 199 of A. and A.], of which the whole thought, and almost the whole expression, are stolen." MACAULAY, Essay on Temple. The poem from which this couplet is taken is found on p. 1370 of the 1621 edition of Knolles' work; it is in a continuation not included in the earlier editions. The editor is here indebted to Professor W. A. Neilson of Harvard University. 204. Manifest of crimes. A Latinism, from Sallust's manifestus sceleris (Jugurtha, xxxv). [CHRISTIE.] Cf. 767, 623. 209. More he makes. Christie remarks that the charge against Shaftesbury of fabricating evidence for the Popish Plot is without foundation. Shaftesbury probably shared in the belief in it by which he profited. 213. Proves the king himself a Jebusite. This was, to quote Christie, "no calumnious invention of Shaftesbury." Charles II professed himself a Catholic on his deathbed, and was probably one in heart at the time of the Restoration. 227. Drawn, etc. This line is repeated in The Hind and the Panther, 220, 211. The hint for it he found in a couplet: It is decreed, we must be drain'd, I see, Down to the dregs of a democracy,— which begins one of the poems in Lachrymæ Musarum, 1649, the volume in which Dryden's poem Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings was first published. The poem is signed M. N., which is expanded into M. Needham in the copy of the book (in the issue of 1650) once owned by the Countess of Huntingdon, Hastings' mother, and now by Mr. Chew. 235. Divides. F reads Shuts up. 240. Thee, Savior, thee, etc. Dryden is indebted, as Professor Collins shows, to Lucretius, i. 6: Te, dea, te fugiunt venti (cf. 182, 7); or to Milton's imitation of that line in Lycidas, 39: Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, etc 113, 264. Gath. Explained in Tonson's Key, published in The Second Part of Miscellany Poems, 1716, as, "The Land of Exile, more particularly Brussels, where King Charles II long resided." 270-272. He . . . strand. Cf. 10, 276-279. Jordan's sand here means Dover, but in 120, 820 Jordan's flood is the Irish Channel. 281. Pharaoh. Louis XIV, with whom Charles II was in alliance. 299. And nobler, etc. These lines probably express Shaftesbury's real motive. In desiring a king who should hold power only by the will of the people he anticipated the policy of the Revolution. 310. Metal. Metal and mettle were at this time not distinguished in spelling. 314. Loyal. So F and Q. Eds. 4, 5, and 6 read Royal, probably by a misprint; the editor has not seen ed. 3. 318. Mankind's delight. Copied from a phrase used by Suetonius of the Emperor Titus: amor ac delicia generis humani. Cf. 2821, 11 f. 114, 353. His brother. James, Duke of York. For further tributes to him by Dryden, v. 204, 36-77; 247, 2200-2231. 381. Contemn. F reads condemn. 390. Sanhedrin. The high council of the Jews: here, the parliament. 402. My arts, etc. "In 1679, when the antipathy to Popery had taken the deepest root in men's minds, the House of Commons passed a vote: 'That the Duke of York's being a Papist, and the hopes of his coming to the crown, had given the highest countenance to the present conspiracies and designs of the Papists against the king and the Protestant religion.' Charles endeavored to parry the obvious consequences of this vote by proposing to the Council a set of limitations which deprived his successor, if a Catholic, of the chief branches of royalty. Shaftesbury, then President of the Council, argued against this plan as totally ineffectual; urging that when the future king should find a parliament to his mind the limitations might be as effectually taken off as they could be imposed. When the bill was brought in, for the total exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession, Shaftesbury favored it with all his influence. It passed the Lower House by a very large majority, but was rejected by the House of Lords, where Halifax opposed it with very great ability. Shaftesbury, who had taken so decided a part against the Duke of York in his dearest interests, now could only look for safety in his ruin." [SCOTT.] 416. A nation. F reads a Million. 418. God was their king. Alluding to the Commonwealth "without a king," established in 1649, which is compared to the condition of Israel under the Judges. It was brought to an end by the creation of the Protectorate under Cromwell (Saul) in 1653. 115, 447. And, like a lion, etc. Cf. 795, 242-244. 455. Your case, etc. Shaftesbury's party were justly believed willing and anxious to raise an armed rebellion against the king if they could gain their ends in no other way. 116, 513. Solymaan rout. The London rabble: Solyma is another name for Jerusalem. The following lines refer to the submission of the City to Cromwell, and its later turbulency under Charles II. 517. Ethnic plot. The Popish Plot, made by the Gentiles (rà com); that is, here, the Jebusites, or Catholics. 519. Hot Levites. The Presbyterian clergymen, who in 1662 had been forced to leave the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity. which required unfeigned consent to everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer as a condition of holding a benefice. Their followers were mainly among the tradesmen and merchants of the towns. 525. Aaron's race. The priesthood: v. 1 Chronicles vi. 49. 539. Born to be sav'd, etc. A sneer at the Calvinistic doctrine of election. 544. Zimri. George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. On his relations with Dryden, v. B. S. xxi, xxviii. Dryden was fully aware of the genius shown in this portrait: v. 313, 314. The portrait is not only brilliant but just. As Scott writes: "The Restoration put into the hands of the most lively, mercurial, ambitious, and licentious genius who ever lived, an estate of £20,000 a year, to be squandered in every wild scheme which the lust of power, of pleasure, of license, or of whim could dictate to an unrestrained imagination." Buckingham was a member of the Cabal ministry, but was dismissed from office in 1674. Changing sides, he strove to become a leader of the Opposition, and "made a most active figure in all proceedings which had relation to the Popish Plot." "-"As Dryden owed the duke no favor, he has shown him none. Yet, even here, the ridiculous rather than the infamous part of his character is touched upon, and the unprincipled libertine, who slew the Earl of Shrewsbury while his adulterous countess held her lover's horse in the disguise of a page, is not exposed to hatred." Yet Dryden glances at this intrigue in the name Zimri: v. Numbers xxv. 6-15. A pamphlet, replying to Dryden, Poetical Reflections on a late Poem entitled Absalom and Achitophel, by a Person of Honour, is ascribed to Buckingham by Wood in Athena Oxonienses. Malone (I, 1; 36, 37) reprints the opening lines of it. It has none of the sparkle shown in The Rehearsal. Professor Collins points out that Dryden drew hints for his portrait from Horace, 1 Satires, iii. 1-20, and Juvenal, iii. 73-77: cf. 329, 133-141. Pope, in Moral Essays, iii. 297-314 (Cambridge edition, p. 169) gives a brilliant, though inaccurate, description of the death of Buckingham. 117, 574. Balaam. Theophilus Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, younger brother of the Lord Hastings whom Dryden lamented in his first poem. At first an adherent of Monmouth, he later changed sides and joined the party of James II. Well-hung may mean fluent, voluble, as in the following couplet, cited by Professor Firth: Flippant of talk and voluble of tongue, OLDHAM, Satire in Imitation of the Third It has also, however, a coarser meaning, which would make a truly Drydenian antithesis to cold: v. N. E. D. and E. D. D. Caleb. Lord Grey, called cold because of the report that he consented to an intrigue between his wife and Monmouth. 575. Nadab. "William, Lord Howard of Escrick, although an abandoned debauchee, made occasional pretensions to piety. He had served under Cromwell and been a preacher of the Anabaptists. Being accused of inspiring a treasonable libel on the court party, he was sent to the Tower, where he uttered and published a canting declaration, asserting his innocence, upon the truth of which he received the sacrament. He is said, however, to have taken the communion in lamb's wool - ale poured on roasted apples and sugar." [SCOTT.] There is a certain propriety in the name, since Nadab "offered strange fire before the Lord:" v. Leviticus x. 1. 581. Jonas. Sir William Jones, the attorney general who conducted the prosecution of those implicated in the Popish Plot. In November, 1679, he resigned his office, disgusted, it is said, with his work, and became an opponent of the court party. He drew up the Habeas Corpus Act, passed in 1679, which was a most important check on the arbitrary power of the government. Christie conjectures that he also draughted the Exclusion Bill. 585. Shimei. Slingsby Bethel, one of the two Whig sheriffs of London. He was a consistent republican, who had written both against royalty and against Cromwell. In lines 614, 615 Dryden probably refers to his recent tract, The Interest of Princes and States. Bethel's stinginess, in contrast to the hospitality expected of a sheriff, became proverbial. By packing juries with Whigs, the sheriffs, protected persons prosecuted by the court party, thus securing an ignoramus verdict on Shaftesbury himself shortly after this poem was published. Dryden applies to him the name of the 'man of the family of the house of Saul" who cursed David: v. 2 Samuel xvi. 5; 1 Kings ii. 36-46. Youth did early. F reads, early Youth did. 598. Sons of Belial. For the phrase, cf. Deuteronomy xiii. 13; 1 Samuel x. 27. 617. Rechabite. v. Jeremiah xxxv. 14. 624. Towns once burnt. Referring to the great fire of London: cf. 44, 833 f. 628. Moses'. Here and in 1. 649 the early editions print Moses's. 632. Corah. Titus Oates (1649-1705), the contriver of the Popish Plot. Except that Korah was a rebellious Levite (v. Numbers xvi) there is no special appropriateness in the name. Oates was the son of an Anabaptist, of a family of ribbon-weavers, who later became a Church of England clergyman. He himself first took orders in the Church of England; then, being disgraced for misconduct, became ostensibly a Catholic. During his subsequent residence in Spain and France he professed to have received a degree from the University of Salamanca (1.658), and to have gained a knowledge of Jesuit plots against the English government. In his testimony, he continually pieced out his original deposition by additional information, which he stated he had at first forgotten. During the reign of James II he was fined, whipped, and pilloried for his perjuries; under William III he received a pension. 633. Erect thyself, etc. Dryden sarcastically compares Oates to the brazen serpent made by Moses, which brought salvation to the children of Israel: v. Numbers xxi. 6-9. 118, 649. A church vermilion, etc. Jovial churchmen are proverbially of a ruddy complexion: Molière speaks of Tartuffe's teint frais and bouche vermeille in a line (v. Tartuffe, i. 4) that may have been in Dryden's mind. And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai after his talk with the Lord, "the skin of his face shone:" v. Exodus xxxiv. 29-35; cf. 889, 103. 665. Writ. F reads Wit. 676. Agag's murther. Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the magistrate before whom Oates had made his deposition, was soon after found dead in a field, with his sword run through his body. Oates hastened to assert that he had been murdered by Catholics, and by his complete success gained credence for his other stories. Dryden here represents Oates as instigating Godfrey's murder in order to profit by it, and, though the mystery will probably never be solved, his explanation has important arguments in its favor. (Of the most recent writers, John Pollock, in The Popish Plot (1903) maintains that Godfrey was killed by Jesuits, as Oates asserted; Alfred Marks, in Who killed Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey? (1905), argues that he committed suicide.) For the scriptural comparison, v. 1 Samuel xv: Samuel reproached Saul for not killing Agag, king of the Amalekites. 682. Surrounded, etc. v. n. 110, 18. 688. His joy conceal'd. Freads Dissembling Joy. 697. Hybla-drops. The honey of Hybla in Sicily was famous: cf. 152, 1123, n. 705. Egypt and Tyrus. France and Holland. 710. Bathsheba. Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, the reigning mistress of Charles II. The preceding line refers to the subsidies which Charles received from France. 727. Believe. F reads believes. 119, 738. Wise Issachar. Thomas Thynne, of Longleat in Wiltshire, who entertained Monmouth on his progress through the kingdom in 1680. Wise is sarcastic: compare the description (Genesis xlix. 14) of Issachar as "a strong ass couching down between two burdens." 742. Depths. F reads depth. 750. A brother and a wife. Oates attempted to involve both the Duke of York and Queen Catherine in the Popish Plot. The queen's failure to bear children, by opening the way for the Duke of York's succession, was in a sense the cause of the party strife in England. 759. What shall we think ? etc. In the remarkable passage that follows, Dryden sets forth his views on political philosophy. Unlike most Tories, he grounds the royal power not on divine right, but on a covenant made by the governed, to avoid the anarchy of a state of nature where all have right to all (1. 794). He thus shows his sceptical turn of mind by accepting a fundamental tenet of Hobbes. He will not, however, agree with Hobbes that this covenant once made is irrevocable, since such a conclusion leaves the people defenseless. Yet he sees, as well as Hobbes himself, that to admit that the governed can revoke their covenant, opens the door to anarchy. Unable to extricate himself from this logical dilemma, he subsides into a kind of opportunistic conservatism: innovation is justified in extreme cases, to preserve the falling State; otherwise, it is to be condemned. In Religio Laici (165, 166, 276-355) Dryden adopts a similarly shuffling attitude when discussing the relative authority of Scripture and tradition. 777. Add, that the pow'r. F reads, That Pow'r, which is. The pow'r for property allow'd. The recognized possession of power. 785, 786. What standard, etc. The couplet is, for Dryden, singularly obscure. The fickle crowd is apparently compared to water, which, after rising to the mark or boundary it was intended to reach, overflows all the faster. (The editor is here somewhat indebted to a note by Professor Collins.) 804. To touch our ark. To commit sacrilege: for touching the ark of the covenant Uzzah was struck dead: v. 2 Samuel vi. 6, 7. 120, 817. Barzillai. James Butler, Duke of Ormond (1610-88). As Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (cf. 1. 820) he had fought bravely on the side of Charles I. He was a companion in exile, and later a most loyal and honorable servant, of Charles II. To him Dryden dedicated in 1683 the translation of Plutarch's Lives for which he wrote the Life of Plutarch. Here he appropriately gives him the name of the aged benefactor of David, “a very great man: v. 2 Samuel xix. 31-39. " 829. His bed, etc. "The Duke of Ormond had eight sons and two daughters. Six of those sons were dead in 1681, when this poem was published." [SCOTT.] 831. His eldest hope, etc. Thomas, Earl of Ossory (1634-80). He had distinguished himself on sea in the Dutch wars of 1665-67 and 1672-74; and on land in 1677 and 1678, fighting with the Dutch under the Prince of Orange against the French. At the battle of Mons (v. n. 841, 25) he had commanded the English auxiliaries. He died of a fever in 1680. In ll. 832, 833 Dryden is indebted to Virgil, Eneid, v. 49, 50. 834. Unequal fates. Virgil's fata iniqua (unjust fates), Eneid, ii. 257; x. 380. 838. O narrow circle, etc. Cf. 4, 18, n; 274, 270-273. 844. O ancient honor, etc. Dryden is again indebted to Virgil; Eneid, vi. 878-880. 846. Thy name. F reads, thy Birth; eds. 4, 5, 6 read, his Name. 847. Fame. F reads Worth. 858. And left this verse, etc. The hearse was. according to N. E. D.: "A temple-shaped structure of wood used in royal and noble |