one immortal song,' probably is this, that David would then have addressed a song to Achitophel instead of a lament to Heaven. I have otherwise interpreted the passage in a note in the Globe Edition, there representing the line, And Heaven had wanted one immortal song,' as meaning that Dryden's own poem would then have been lost to Heaven; which would be a very arrogant boast. But I believe now that this was a wrong interpre

tation.

6

1. 197. wanted. want is here used in a simple sense no longer current, except provincially, to be without.' It occurs in the same sense in Pope: Friend of my life, which did not you prolong,

The world had wanted many an idle song.'

Prologue to Satires, 27.

1. 198. Lord Macaulay, in his Essay on Sir William Temple, pointed out the probable origin of this couplet, in some verses in Knolles's History of the Turks:

'Greatness on goodness loves to slide, not stand,

And leaves for Fortune's ice Virtue's firm land.'

1. 204. manifest of crimes, an imitation of Sallust's Manifestus tanti sceleris (Jugurtha, 39). Dryden uses the same idiom in Palamon and Arcite, Bk. i. 623:

'Calisto there stood manifest of shame.'

1. 209. The charge against Shaftesbury of making circumstances' of the alleged Popish Plot is totally without proof, and against all probability. Shaftesbury entirely believed in the Plot, as did many others of calmer temperament and high character: one of these was the virtuous Lord Russell. Shaftesbury and Russell were entirely as one in the prosecution of the plot. Bishop Burnet, who disliked Shaftesbury, and blamed him for his vehemence, acquits him of invention. (Hist. of Own Time, ii. 168.)

1. 213. To prove the King a Jebusite' was no calumnious attempt of Shaftesbury. We now know very well that Charles was a Roman Catholic before the Restoration, and in indiscreet private talk he frequently betrayed the sentiments of his heart. Burnet and Lord Halifax (in his Character of Charles the Second') both assume that he was a Roman Catholic.

1. 219. The accent is on the second syllable of instinct, according to the pronunciation of the time. So again in line 535.

1. 227. This line is reproduced by Dryden in The Hind and the Panther, Part i. 211. In one of the poems in Lacrymae Musarum, occasioned by the death of Lord Hastings in 1649, to which collection Dryden contributed his first known poem, the following couplet occurs:

It is decreed we must be drained, I see,

Down to the dregs of a democracy.'

The phrase was probably early impressed on Dryden from this poem. 1. 235. Shuts up in first edition, instead of Divides.

1. 247. Like one of virtue's fools that feeds on praise. Scott and most editors wrongly print feed.

1. 280. Naked of is a Gallicism. Dryden uses dry in the same way. Dry of pleasure' (Love Triumphant, Act iii. Sc. 1), Dry of those embraces' (Amphitryon, Act iii. Sc. 1.)

1. 291. the general cry. Scott and most editors wrongly print their for the. 1. 314. loyal blood. Scott and most editors wrongly print royal for loyal. 1. 318. mankind's delight. 'Amor atque deliciae generis humani,' said by Suetonius of the Emperor Titus.

11. 353-360. This elaborate eulogy on Charles's brother, James Duke of York, may be compared with Dryden's characters of James in the play The Duke of Guise, produced in 1682, and in the Threnodia Augustalis, the elegy on Charles II's death. James's truthfulness is dwelt on in both characters; his merciful and forgiving disposition in the sketch of him in the Duke of Guise, where the King of France praises to the Archbishop of Lyons his brother of Navarre':

'I know my brother's nature; 'tis sincere,

Above deceit, no crookedness of thought;

Says what he means, and what he says performs;
Brave but not rash; successful but not proud;

So much acknowledging, that he's uneasy

Till every petty service be o'erpaid.

Archp. Some say revengeful.

King.

Some then libel him:

But that's what both of us have learnt to bear;
He can forgive, but you disdain forgiveness.'

Duke of Guise, Act v. Sc. I.

'For all the changes of his doubtful state
His truth, like Heaven's, was kept inviolate;
For him to promise is to make it fate.
His valour can triumph o'er land and main;
With broken oaths his fame he will not stain,

With conquest basely bought and with inglorious gain.'

Threnodia Augustalis, 485–490. Compare also Dryden's character of James in The Hind and the Panther, Part iii. beginning at line 906: A plain good man,' &c.

6

1. 416. million in first edition, instead of nation.

ll. 417, 418. Dryden here describes the government of the Commonwealth before Cromwell's Protectorate as a theocracy. In line 522 he speaks of an old beloved theocracy,'

1. 436. This line was changed by Derrick so as to make a question: 'Is't after God's own heart to cheat his heir?'

and Derrick's change has been adopted by succeeding editors, including

Scott. Dryden makes Achitophel assert it to be after God's own heart to cheat his heir,' i. e. to deprive the Duke of York of his succession. This is intended for the assertion of a wicked counsellor. Derrick's change spoils

the sense.

1. 447. This simile of the lion is again used by Dryden in Sigismunda and Guiscardo, 241:

For malice and revenge had put him on his guard,

So, like a lion that unheeded lay,

Dissembling sleep and watchful to betray

With inward rage he meditates his prey??

1. 461. Prevail yourself. Avail was substituted by Derrick for prevail, and the editors have followed Derrick, The same has happened where Dryden uses the same verb prevail reflectively, as in the Preface to Annus Mirabilis.

1. 519. Levites, priests; the Presbyterian ministers displaced by the Act of Uniformity.

1.525. Aaron's race, the clergy.

For in this line has been carelessly

changed into To in most editions, including Scott's.

1.544. Zimri, George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, a poet as well as a politician, who united great talents with extreme profligacy. There is a well-known brilliant sketch of this Buckingham in Pope's Moral Essays. He ran through a very large fortune.

'Alas! how changed for him

That life of pleasure and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay in Cleveden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
Or just as gay at council in a ring

Of mimicked statesmen and their merry king.
No wit to flatter left of all his store!
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
There victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'

Moral Essays, iii. 309.

Buckingham, in The Rehearsal, had unsparingly ridiculed Dryden's plays, and given Dryden the nickname of Bayes. The Rehearsal was first acted in 1671. Dryden took his revenge on Buckingham now. Buckingham wrote a reply to this poem, under the title, Poetic Reflections on a late Poem, entitled Absalom and Achitophel, by a Person of Honour.' This reply was a very poor production, unworthy of the author of The Rehearsal.

1. 574. Balaam, the Earl of Huntingdon, younger brother of the Lord Hastings, whose premature death in youth was lamented by Dryden in his first known poem. Lord Huntingdon was now a very zealous member of Shaftesbury's party, bent on the exclusion of James Duke of York from

succession to the throne; but he afterwards changed his politics and became a warm adherent of James.

1. 574. Caleb, Frederick Lord Grey of Werke, who had no children.

1. 575. Nadab, Lord Howard of Escrick, the third peer of that title. He had been lately a prisoner in the Tower on account of accusations made by Fitzharris, and he is accused of having taken the Sacrament when in prison, to assert his innocence, in a mixture of ale and apples called lamb's wool.' Lord Howard afterwards became infamous by betraying Lord Russell and Algernon Sydney.

1. 581. Jonas, Sir William Jones, the Attorney-General who conducted the prosecutions of the Popish Plot. Mr. Luttrell, in a manuscript note on this poem, says that Sir William Jones drew the Habeas Corpus Act. 1. 585. This line stood in the first edition,

'Shimei, whose early youth did promise bring.'

Shimei is Slingsby Bethel, who had been elected one of the sheriffs of London in 1680. He had been conspicuous as a republican before the Restoration, and was a member of Richard Cromwell's parliament. His stinginess was a by-word:

And though you more than Buckingham has spent

Or Cuddon got, like stingy Bethel save,

And grudge yourself the charges of a grave.'

Oldham, Imitation of Eighth Satire of Boileau. 1. 595. vare, a wand, from the Spanish vara. The word occurs in Howel's Letters (p. 161, ed. 1728): The proudest don of Spain, when he is prancing upon his ginet in the street, if an alguazil show him his vare, that is, a little white staff he carrieth as a badge of his office, my don will presently off his horse and yield himself his prisoner.' The word vase has been substituted for vare in some editions, including Scott's.

1.634. An allusion to the serpent of brass made by Moses, and set upon a pole' by God's command, to save the Israelites from the fiery serpents which God had sent for punishment. And it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass he lived.' (Numbers xxi. 6, 9.)

1.637. earthy incorrectly printed earthly in some editions.

1.644. Ours was a Levite. Titus Oates had taken orders in the Church of England, and his father was a Church of England clergyman, having been before an Anabaptist minister.

1. 649. A church vermillion and a Moses' face. The rubicund look of a jolly churchman, and a shining face supposed to be like that of Moses, when he came down from the Mount (Exod. xxxiv. 29-35).

1.658. Rabbinical degree. Oates represented that he had received the degree of Doctor of Divinity at Salamanca.

1.665. wit in first edition, instead of writ.

1.676. Agag's murder. The murder of Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, the magistrate before whom Oates had deposed on oath his story of the Popish Plot, and who was soon after found dead near Primrose Hill. The believers in the Popish Plot charged the Roman Catholics with having murdered Godfrey in revenge. It was urged on the opposite side that Oates and his witnesses instigated the murder in order to impute it to the Roman Catholics. Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey was reputed friendly to the Roman Catholics, and was said to be unwilling to take the depositions. Dryden's meaning seems to be that Godfrey was murdered at the call of Oates, for being friendly to the Roman Catholics. See 1 Samuel xv. for Samuel's reproaches to Saul for disobeying the Lord's command and sparing Agag.

1.688. Dissembling joy in first edition, instead of His joy concealed.

1. 700. Behold a banished man. Monmouth had been sent out of England by the King in September 1679, and in November he returned without permission. The King then ordered him again to quit England, and he disobeyed, whereupon he was deprived of all his offices and banished from court.

1.738. Wise Issachar, his wealthy western friend. Thomas Thynne of Longleat, who on account of his wealth went by the name of Tom of Ten Thousand. Thynne was murdered in February 1682, a few months after the publication of this poem, by assassins employed by Count Konigsmark, who desired to marry Lady Ogle, a young heiress to whom Thynne was betrothed.

1. 742. depth in first edition, instead of depths.

1. 777. In the first edition this line stood,

That power which is for property allowed.'

1. 802. This line has been generally printed after Derrick,

To patch their flaws and buttress up the wall.' But the change of the to their before flaws is not necessary, nor is it an improvement.

1. 804. Broughton changed our ark into the ark, and has been generally followed by succeeding editors. But there is no reason for the change.

1.817. Barzillai, the Duke of Ormond, an old Cavalier, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for Charles I at the beginning of the Civil War, and was re-appointed by Charles II to the same post after the Restoration. He was removed in 1669, but re-appointed a few years after; and he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at the time of the publication of this poem. The duke was one of Dryden's patrons: Carte, in his life of Ormond, mentions Dryden as one of his periodical dinner-guests. Dryden dedicated, in 1683, to the Duke of Ormond the translation of Plutarch's Lives, to which was prefixed a Life of Plutarch, by Dryden. Ormond died in 1688, before the Revolution. Dryden dedicated his Fables, published in 1699, to the duke's grandson and successor, son of the Earl of Ossory, who had died in July 1680, and who is eulogised in the lines which soon follow.