with France and war against Holland, and this was signed by Buckingham, Shaftesbury (then Lord Ashley), and Lauderdale, together with Arlington and Clifford. But Charles's engagement about the Roman Catholic religion in the treaty of June remained binding; and that treaty was a secret from Buckingham, Shaftesbury, and Lauderdale. Shaftesbury has his share of responsibility for a treaty of alliance with France for a war against Holland. But no one was louder at the time for this war and for the French alliance than Dryden, who wrote in 1673 a bad play, Amboyna, for the express purpose of inflaming the English public against the Dutch. He there proclaimed the alliance of the two kings of England and France to be necessary to destroy the pride of Holland:

'Yet is their empire no true growth, but humour,

And only two kings' touch can cure the tumour.' These two lines are from Dryden's Epilogue to Amboyna, and the Epilogue concludes with a reference to Cato's Delenda est Carthago,' quoted by Shaftesbury in his speech for the King as Chancellor to Parliament in February 1673. Dryden perhaps derived the idea from Shaftesbury's famous speech,

'All loyal English will like him conclude,

Let Cæsar live, and Carthage be subdued.'

The play of Amboyna was dedicated to Lord Clifford, a friend and patron of Dryden, with fulsome praises of Clifford as a statesman. Yet Dryden in 1681 could revile Shaftesbury for 'breaking the triple bond' and 'fitting Israel for a foreign yoke.' He repeats the accusation a few months after in The Medal:

Thus framed for ill, he loosed our triple hold

Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold.

From hence those tears, that Ilium of our woe:

Who helps a powerful friend forearms a foe.

What wonder if the waves prevail so far,

When he cut down the banks that made the bar?

Seas follow but their nature to invade,

But he by art our native strength betrayed.'

This is a flagrant example of Dryden's reckless inconsistency and unscrupulousness in attack.

1. 179. Assumed in first edition instead of Usurped.

all-atoning, all-reconciling. The verb atone was used differently in Dryden's time from its present use. It meant to harmonize,'' unite,' and was used transitively. Thus in Dryden's Poem on the Coronation, 57: 'He that brought peace and discord could atone,

His name is music of itself alone.'

To atone her anger' (Love Triumphant, Act iv. Sc. 1), 'To atone the people' (Vindication of Duke of Guise). Atone was also spelt attone, the two

t's coming from the old spelling of at with two t's; the origin of the word being at one, to make at one.' Atone is used similarly in Shakespeare: 'I would do much to atone them for the love I bear to Cassio' (Othello Act iv. Sc. 1).

Since we cannot atone you, we shall see
Justice design the victor's chivalry.'

King Richard II, Act i. Sc. 1. Elsewhere in Shakespeare atone is used intransitively, meaning to agree,' as in Coriolanus:

'He and Aufidius can no more atone

Than violentest contrariety.'

11. 180-191. These twelve lines were added in the second edition of the poem. A very absurd story has been told, that these lines, containing high praise of Shaftesbury as a Judge, were added by Dryden in gratitude for the gift of a nomination to the Charterhouse School for his third son, Erasmus, by Shaftesbury, after the publication of Absalom and Achitophel. The story was first published in Kippis's edition of the Biographia Britannica, published in 1779. Malone took great pains to refute this very improbable story. Dryden's son Erasmus was admitted to the Charterhouse in February 1683, on a nomination from the King. The first edition of this poem appeared in November, and the second in December, 1681. The story is simply impossible. Immediately after the publication of Absalom and Achitophel, Shaftesbury could not have abased himself by offering a favour to Dryden, even if Dryden were likely to accept it; and then in a few months, in March 1682, Dryden published The Medal, a yet more savage attack on his supposed forgiving benefactor. After all, the idea of praising Shaftesbury as a Judge is in the lines 192-7, which were in the first edition. Why so much praise was added in the second edition may be variously explained. Dryden may have thought that further explanation was necessary for connecting the passage beginning in line 192,

Oh! had he been content to serve the crown,'

with the preceding denunciation of Shaftesbury as a politician. Or he may have thought that higher praise of him as a Judge might increase by contrast the effect of his abuse of the statesman. Or, as Shaftesbury had in the interval been acquitted of the charge of high treason and had triumphed over his enemies, Dryden may have wished to say something conciliatory for one whom he had so fiercely attacked, and who might now again become formidable.

1. 188. Abbethdin, the president of the Jewish judicature. The word is compounded of ab, ' father,' and beth-din, 'house of judgment,' and means literally father of the house of judgment.'

1. 196. What is meant by David's tuning his harp for Achitophel if he had been other than he was, and its then resulting that Heaven had wanted

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 interpretation.

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. 1.

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.

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:

6

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.

For in this line has been carelessly

1. 525. Aaron's race, the clergy. changed into To in most editions, including Scott's.

1. 524. 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