Part 1 (1/2)

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 authors.h.i.+p, 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 Friends.h.i.+p ... 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 apprentices.h.i.+p; 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 authors.h.i.+p 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 authors.h.i.+p 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.