Anti-Achitophel (1682) Part 1

Anti-Achitophel (1682).

by Elkanah Settle et al.

INTRODUCTION

English verse allegory, humorous or serious, political or moral, has deep roots; a reprint such as the present is clearly no place for a discussion of the subject at large:[1] it need only be recalled here that to the age that produced _The Pilgrim's Progress_ the art form was not new. Throughout his life Dryden had his enemies, Prior and Montague in their satire of _The Hind and the Panther_, for example. The general circ.u.mstances under which Dryden wrote _Absalom and Achitophel_, familiar enough and easily accessible, are therefore recalled only briefly below. Information is likewise readily available on his use of Biblical allegory.[2]

[Footnote 1: Cf. E. D. Leyburn, _Satiric Allegory, Mirror of Man_ (New Haven, 1956).]

[Footnote 2: e.g., _Absalom's Conspiracy_, a tract tracing how the Bible story came to be used for allegorical purposes. See _The Harleian Miscellany_ (1811), VIII, 478-479; and R. F. Jones, "The Originality of 'Absalom and Achitophel,'" _Modern Language Notes_, XLVI (April, 1931) 211-218.]

We are here concerned with three representative replies to _Absalom and Achitophel_: their form, their authors, and details of their publication. Settle's poem was reprinted with one slight alteration a year after its first appearance; the _Reflections_ has since been reprinted in part, Pordage's poem not at all. _Absalom Senior_ has been chosen because, of the many verse pieces directed against Dryden's poem, it is of the greatest intrinsic merit and shows the reverse side of the medal, as it were, to that piece; the second is given, not for any literary merit it may possess--indeed, from its first appearance it has been dismissed as of small worth--but rather as a poem representative of much of the versifying that followed hard on the Popish Plot and as one that has inspired great speculation as to its author; the third, in addition to throwing light on the others, is a typical specimen of the lesser work produced in the Absalom dispute.

The author and precise publication date of the _Reflections_ remain unidentified. Ascription of the poem to Buckingham rests ultimately on the authority of Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses_ and on Wood alone, and we do not know on what evidence he thought it to be Buckingham's; we do know, however, that Wood was often mistaken over such matters. Sir Walter Scott in his collected edition of Dryden (1808; IX, 272-5) also accepted Buckingham as the author, but cited no authority; he printed extracts, yet the shortcomings of his edition, whatever its convenience, are well known. The poem has not appeared in any subsequent edition of Dryden's poems, the latest being the four volume set (Oxford, 1958); the volume of the California Dryden[A] relevant to _Absalom_ is still awaited. Internal evidence is even more scanty. Only one pa.s.sage of the _Reflections_ (sig. D2) may bear on the matter. Perhaps the "Three-fold Might" (p. 7, line 11) refers, not to the poet's "tripart.i.te design"

(p. 7, line 10) or to the Triple Alliance of England, Holland, and Sweden against France (1677/8, as in _Absalom and Achitophel_, line 175) but either to a treatise which had occasioned some stir in the scientific world some twenty years previously: "the Delphic problem"

proposed by Hobbes to the Royal Society on the duplication of the cube, which might have come to the ears of Buckingham as well as to those of the court,[3] or perhaps to the triple confederacy of Ess.e.x, Halifax, and Sunderland.[4] But to the Restoration reader the phrase "Three-fold Might" would rather have suggested the Triple Alliance, to which Dryden reverts in _The Medal_ (lines 65-68) when he claims that Shaftesbury, "thus fram'd for ill, ... loos'd our Triple Hold" on Europe.[5]

[Transcriber's Footnote (A): This Introduction was written in 1959. Volume II of the California Edition (_The Works of John Dryden_) was published in 1972.]

[Footnote 3: Hobbes, _English Works_ (1845), ed. by Molesworth, VII, 59-68.]

[Footnote 4: H. C. Foxcroft, _A Character of the Trimmer_ (Cambridge, England, 1946), p. 70. This book is an abridged version of the same author's _Life and Works of Halifax_ (1897).]

[Footnote 5: Cf. the phrase "Twofold might" in _Absalom and Achitophel_, I, 175.]

Evidence against Buckingham's authorship, on the other hand, is comparatively strong. The piece does not appear in his collected _Works_ (1704-5). It surely would have been included even though he had at first wished to claim any credit from its publication and later have wished to disown it. Little connection, furthermore, will be found between the _Reflections_ and the rest of his published verse or with the plays, including _The Rehearsal_, if the latter be his alone, which is doubtful.

_Poetical Reflections_ has been ascribed to Edward Howard. W. Thomas Lowndes in his _Bibliographer's Manual_ (1864; II, 126) a.s.signed to this minor writer, on the authority of an auction note, the little collection _Poems and Essays, with a Paraphrase on Cicero's Laelius, or, Of Friendship ... By a Gentleman_ (1674), and G. Thorn-Drury, on the equally debatable evidence of an anonymous ma.n.u.script ascription on the t.i.tle page of his own copy, ascribed the _Poetical Reflections_ to Howard.[6] An examination of the _Poems and Essays_, however, reveals no point of resemblance with our poem. How, then, does Howard fit into the picture? He was in the rival camp to Dryden and was a friend of Martin Clifford[7] and of Thomas Sprat, then Buckingham's chaplain: these three have been thought to be jointly responsible for _The Rehearsal_. Sprat had published a poem of congratulation to Howard on Howard's _The British Princes_ (1669), the latter a long pseudo-epic of the Blackmore style in dreary couplets which, again, provides no parallel with the _Reflections_. And what of Howard's plays? Many of these were written in the 1660's during his poetic apprenticeship; none seems akin to our poem. Whereas, as shown in the Table of Allusions below, two independent readers often agreed over the ident.i.ties of many characters in Settle's poem, Restoration readers at large were reticent over the authorship of the _Reflections_. Hugh Macdonald, in his useful _John Dryden: a Bibliography_ (1939), was wise to follow their example, and it seems rash, therefore, to propose any new candidate in the face of such negative evidence. The poem exists in two states, apparently differing only in the t.i.tle page.

[Footnote 6: _Review of English Studies_, I (1925) 82-83.]

[Footnote 7: In his _Notes upon Mr. Dryden's Poems in Four Letters_ (1687) Clifford, in 16 pages, accuses Dryden of plagiarism, especially in _Almanzor_.]

Evidence of Settle's authorship of _Absalom Senior_, on the other hand, is neither wanting nor disputed. We have had to wait until our own century for the pioneer work on this writer, since he cannot have been considered a sufficiently major poet by Samuel Johnson's sponsors, and Langbaine's account is sketchy. In a periodical paper[8] Macdonald summarized supplementary evidence on the dates of composition of Settle's poem; he was working on it in January 1681/2, and it was published on the following April 6. Lockyer, Dean of Peterborough, a.s.serted to Joseph Spence, who includes the rumor in _Anecdotes_, that Settle was a.s.sisted by Clifford and Sprat and by "several best hands of those times";[9] but Spence is notoriously unreliable. In the lack of other evidence, then, it seems best to take the poem as wholly Settle's.

It needs only to add a few words on its textual states. The First Edition, here reproduced, seems to exist in a single impression, and likewise the Second Edition of the Settle (1682, in quarto) seems to have been struck off in a single textual state. Of its individual variants from the First Edition only the following seem of any significance and, since there is no reason to suppose that it was printed from any copy other than the First, they may be merely the result of carelessness.

FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION

p. 3, line 4, enthron'd, with inthron'd with 3 8, Arts ... steps Art's ... step's 11 10, Rods; Rods?

13 26, to Descend do Descend 14 17, couch, couch 29 9, Cedar Cedars 31 21, Temples Temple

[Footnote 8: "The Attacks on John Dryden," _Essays and Studies by Members of the English a.s.sociation_, XXI, 41-74.]

[Footnote 9: Joseph Spence, _Anecdotes ... of Books and Men_ (1858), p. 51.]

For "No Link ... night" (p. 35, lines 19-24), the Second Edition subst.i.tutes, for an undetermined reason, the following:

No less the Lordly Zelecks Glory sound For courage and for Constancy renoun'd: Though once in naught but borrow'd plumes adorn'd, So much all servile Flattery he scorn'd; That though he held his Being and Support, By that weak Thread the Favour of a Court, In Sanhedrims unbrib'd, he firmly bold Durst Truth and Israels Right unmov'd uphold; In spight of Fortune, still to Honour wed, By Justice steer'd, though by Dependence fed.

Very little can be said of Pordage's poem, beyond its date of publication (January 17, 1681/2)[10] and the fact that no parallel has been found with his earlier work. As no detailed study on him, published or unpublished, has been traced, we can only have recourse to the standard works on the period; data thus easily accessible are not therefore reproduced here. A so-called second edition (MacDonald 205b) is identical with the first.

[Footnote 10: _Modern Philology_, XXV (1928) 409-416.]

In conclusion a few comments may be made on the general situation into which the poems fit. It will be remembered that _Absalom and Achitophel_ appeared after the Exclusion Bill, the purpose of which was to debar James Duke of York from the Protestant succession, had been rejected by the House of Lords, mainly through the efforts of Halifax. Dryden's poem was advertised on November 17, 1681, and we may safely a.s.sume that it was published only a short time before Settle and our other authors were hired by the Whigs to answer it. Full details have not survived; one suspects Shaftesbury's Green Ribbon Club. That such replies were considered necessary testifies both to the popularity of _Absalom and Achitophel_ with the layman in politics and to the Whigs' fear of its harming their cause. Settle's was of course a mercenary pen, and it is amusing to note that after ridiculing Halifax here he was quite prepared to publish, fourteen years later, _Sacellum Apollinare: a Funeral Poem to the Memory of that Great Statesman, George Late Marquiss of Halifax_, and on this count his place among Pope's Dunces seems merited. In tracing his quarrel with Dryden up to the publication of _Absalom Senior_, critics have tended to overlook the fact that by 1680 there was already hostility between the two;[11] less has been said about the effect on Dryden of the poets themselves. The spleen of his contributions to the Second Part of _Absalom and Achitophel_ is essentially a manufactured one and for the public entertainment; personally he was comparatively unmoved--the Og portrait, for example, is less representative than his words in "The Epistle to the Whigs"

prefixed to _The Medal_. Here, as in _Mac Flecknoe_, he appears to have been able to write vituperation to order. "I have only one favor to desire of you at parting," he says, and it is "that when you think of answering this poem, you would employ the same pens against it, who have combated with so much success against _Absalom and Achitophel_; for then you may a.s.sure yourselves of a clear victory, without the least reply."

Is it for the best that this forecast proved the right one?

[Footnote 11: e.g., over _The Empress of Morocco_; see Scott's _Dryden_, XV, 397-413.]

For permission to reproduce their copies of texts comprising the present reprint thanks are expressed to the University of Florida Library (_Absalom Senior_) and to the Trustees of the British Museum (the other two poems). The University of Leeds and the City of Manchester Public Library are also thanked for leave to use contemporary marginalia in each's copy of Settle's poem. The provenance of the latter two copies of this piece is unknown; the first, now in the Brotherton Collection, bears the name William Crisp on its last blank leaf and, in abbreviated form, identifies some characters; the second, of unidentified ownership, is fuller.

HAROLD WHITMORE JONES

_Liverpool, England

November_, 1959

To the TORIES.

_Gentlemen_, for so you all write your selves; and indeed you are your own Heralds, and Blazon all your Coats with _Honour_ and _Loyalty_ for your _Supporters_; nay, and you are so unconscionable too in that point, that you will allow neither of them in any other _Scutcheons_ but your own. But who has 'em, or has 'em not, is not my present business; onely as you profess your selves Gentlemen, to conjure you to give an Adversary fair play; and that if any person whatsoever shall pretend to be aggrieved by this POEM, or any part of it, that he would bear it patiently; since the Licentiousness of the first _Absolom_ and _Achitophel_ has been the sole occasion of the Liberty of This, I having only taken the Measure of My Weapon, from the Length of his; which by the Rules of Honour ought not to offend you; especially, since the boldness of that Ingenious Piece, was wholly taken from the Encouragement you gave the Author; and 'tis from that Boldness only that this POEM takes its Birth: for had not his daring Pen brought that Piece into the World, I had been so far from troubling my self in any Subject on this kind, that I may justly say in one sence, the Writer of that _Absolom_, is the Author of this. This favour, as in Justice due, obtain'd from you, I shall not trouble you with a long Preface, like a tedious Compliment at the Door, but desire you to look in for your Entertainment. Onely I cannot forbear telling you, that one thing I am a little concern'd for you, _Tories_, that your _Absoloms_ and _Achitophels_, and the rest of your Grinning Satyres against the _Whiggs_, have this one unpardonable Fault, That the Lash is more against a _David_, than an _Achitophel_; whilst the running down of the PLOT at so extravagant a rate, savours of very little less (pardon the Expression) than ridiculing of Majesty it self, and turning all those several Royal Speeches to the Parliament on that Subject, onely into those double-tongu'd Oracles that sounded one thing, and meant another.

Besides, after this unmannerly Boldness, of not onely branding the publick Justice of the Nation, but affronting even the Throne it self, to push the humour a little farther, you run into ten times a greater Vice, (and in the same strain too) than what you so severely inveigh against: and whilst a POPISH PLOT through want of sufficient Circ.u.mstances, and credible Witnesses, miscarries with you, a PROTESTANT PLOT without either Witness or Circ.u.mstance at all, goes currant. Nay you are so far now from your former niceties and scruples, and disparing about raising of Armies, and not one Commission found, that you can swallow the raising of a whole Protestant ARMY, without either Commission, or Commission-Officer; Nay, the very When, Where, and How, are no part of your Consideration. 'Tis true, the great Cry amongst you, is, The Nations Eyes are open'd; but I am afraid, in most of you, 'tis onely to look where you like best: and to help your lewd Eye-sight, you have got a d.a.m.nable trick of turning the Perspective upon occasion, and magnifying or diminishing at pleasure. But alas, all talking to you is but impertinent, and fending and proving signifie just nothing; for after all Arguments, both Parties are so irreconcileable, that as the Author of _Absolom_ wisely observed, they'll be Fools or Knaves to each other to the end of the Chapter. And therefore I am so reasonable in this point, that should be very glad to divide 'em between 'em, and give the Fool to the _Tory_, and the Knave to the _Whigg_. For the _Tories_ that will believe no POPISH PLOT, may as justly come under that denomination, as They, that _David_ tells us, _said in their Hearts there was no G.o.d_. And then let the _Whiggs_ that do believe a _Popish Plot_ be the Knaves, for daring to endeavour to hinder the Effects of a _Popish Plot_, when the _Tories_ are resolved to the contrary. But to draw near a conclusion, I have one favour more to beg of you, that you'll give me the freedom of clapping but about a score of years extraordinary on the back of my _Absolom_. Neither is it altogether so unpardonable a Poetical License, since we find as great slips from the Author of your own _Absolom_, where we see him bring in a _Zimri_ into the Court of _David_, who in the Scripture-story dyed by the Hand of _Phineas_ in the days of _Moses_. Nay, in the other extream, we find him in another place talking of the Martyrdome of _Stephen_, so many Ages after. And if so famous an Author can forget his own Rules of Unity, Time, and Place, I hope you'll give a Minor Poet some grains of Allowance, and he shall ever acknowledge himself

Your Humble Servant.

Absalom Senior:

or,

ACHITOPHEL TRANSPROS'D.

In Gloomy Times, when Priestcraft bore the sway, And made Heav'ns Gate a Lock to their own Key: When ignorant Devotes did blindly bow, And groaping to be sav'd they knew not now: Whilst this _Egyptian_ darkness did orewhelm, The Priest sate Pilot even at Empires Helm.

Then Royal Necks were yok'd, and Monarchs still Hold but their Crowns at his Almighty Will.

And to defend this high Prerogative, Falsely from Heaven he did that powr derive: By a Commission forg'd i'th' hand of G.o.d, Turn'd _Aarons_ blooming wand, to _Moses_ snaky Rod.

Whilst Princes little Scepters overpowr'd, Made but that prey his wider Gorge devour'd.

Now to find Wealth might his vast pomp supply, (For costly Roofs befit a Lord so high) No Arts were spar'd his l.u.s.ter to support, But all Mines searcht t'enrich his shining Court.

Then Heav'n was bought, Religion but a Trade; And Temples Murder's Sanctuary made.

By _Phineas_ Spear no bleeding _Cozbies_ groan'd, If _Cozbies_ Gold for _Cozbies_ Crimes aton'd.

With these wise Arts, (for Humane Policy As well as Heav'nly Truth, mounts Priests so high) 'Twixt gentle Penance, lazy Penitence, A Faith that gratifies both Soul and Sense; With easie steps to everlasting Bliss, He paves the rugged way to Paradice.

Thus almost all the Proselyte-World he drives, Whilst th'universal Drones buz to his Hives.

Implicite Faith Religion thus convey'd Through little pipes to his great Channel laid, Till Piety through such dark Conduits led, Was poyson'd by the Spring on which it fed.