Page 230, l. 14. He was chosen for Tewkesbury in March 1640, but he
did not sit in the Long Parliament.
l. 18, _a town_, Weymouth: see p. 70, l. 21 note. He had been
appointed governor of it in August 1643 after some dispute, but was
shortly afterwards removed (Clarendon, vol. iii, pp. 163-5, 362).
Page 231, l. 2. Shaftesbury writes about the prediction of 'Doctor
Olivian, a German, a very learned physician', in his autobiographical
fragment: see No. 14 note.
ll. 14, 15. Compare Burnet's first sketch of Shaftesbury, ed.
Foxcroft, p. 59: 'he told some that Cromwell offered once to make him
king, but he never offered to impose so gross a thing on me.'
ll. 17, 18. See the Newsletter of December 28, 1654, in _The Clarke
Papers_, ed. C.H. Firth, Camden Society, 1899, p. 16: 'a few daies
since when the House was in a Grand Committee of the whole House upon
the Government, Mr. Garland mooved to have my Lord Protectour crowned,
which mocion was seconded by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Mr. Hen.
Cromwell, and others, but waved.'
l. 26. After 'party' Burnet wrote (autograph, fol. 49) 'He had no sort
of virtue: for he was both a leud and corrupt man: and had no regard
either to trueth or Justice.' But he struck out 'no sort ... and had'.
The sentence thus read in the transcript (p. 76) 'He had no regard
either to Truth or Justice'. This in turn was struck out, either by
Burnet himself or by the editor.
The following words are likewise struck out in the transcript, after
'manner' (l. 28): 'and was not out of countenance in owning his
unsteadiness and deceitfullness.'
69.
Absalom and Achitophel. A Poem ... The Second Edition; Augmented and
Revised. London, 1681. (ll. 142-227.)
The first edition was published on November 17, 1681, a few days
before Shaftesbury's trial for high treason. In the second, which
appeared within a month, the character of Shaftesbury was 'augmented'
by twelve lines (p. 233, ll. 17-28).
Shaftesbury had been satirized by Butler in the Third Part of
_Hudibras_, 1678, three years before the crisis in his remarkable
career, and while his schemes still prospered. To Butler he is the
unprincipled turn-coat who thinks only of his own interests:
So Politick, as if one eye
Upon the other were a Spye;...
H'had seen three Governments Run down,
And had a Hand in ev'ry one,
Was for 'em, and against 'em all.
But Barb'rous when they came to fall:...
By giving aim from side, to side,
He never fail'd to save his Tide,
But got the start of ev'ry State,
And at a Change, ne'r came too late....
Our _State-Artificer_ foresaw,
Which way the World began to draw:...
He therefore wisely cast about,
All ways he could, t'_insure his Throat_;
And hither came t'observe, and smoke
What Courses other Riscers took:
And to the utmost do his Best
To Save himself, and Hang the Rest.
(Canto II, ll. 351-420).
Dryden's satire should be compared with Butler's. But a comparison
with the prose character by Burnet, which had no immediate political
purpose, will reveal even better Dryden's mastery in satirical
portraiture. Another verse character is in _The Review_ by Richard
Duke, written shortly after Dryden's poem.
Absalom is Monmouth, David Charles II, Israel England, the Jews the
English, and a Jebusite a Romanist.
Page 232, l. 28. Compare Seneca, _De Tranquillitate Animi_, xvii. 10:
'nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiæ fuit.'
Page 233, l. 7. The humorous definition of man ascribed to Plato in
Diogenes Laertius, Lib. vi. 40 (Life of Diogenes), [Greek: Platonos
horisamenou, anthropos esti zoon dipoun apteron.]
The son was a handsomer man than the father, though he did not inherit
his ability. His son, the third earl, was the critic and philosopher
who wrote the _Characteristicks_.
l. 12. _the Triple Bond_, the alliance of England, Holland, and Sweden
against France in 1667, broken by the war with France against Holland
in 1672. But Shaftesbury then knew nothing of the secret Treaty of
Dover, 1670.
l. 16. _Usurp'd_, in ed. 1 'Assum'd'.
l. 25. _Abbethdin_ 'the president of the Jewish judicature', 'the
father of the house of judgement'. Shaftesbury was Lord Chancellor,
1672-3.
Page 234, l. 4. David would have sung his praises instead of writing a
psalm, and so Heaven would have had one psalm the less.
ll. 5, 6. Macaulay pointed out in his essay on Sir William Temple
that these lines are a reminiscence of a couplet under the portrait of
Sultan Mustapha the First in Knolles's _Historie of the Turkes_ (ed.
1638, p. 1370):
Greatnesse, on Goodnesse loues to slide, not stand,
and leaues for Fortunes ice, Vertues firm land.
l. 15. The alleged Popish Plot, invented by Titus Oates, to murder the
king and put the government in the hands of the Jesuits. Shaftesbury
had no share in the invention, but he believed it, and made political
use of it.
Page 235, l. 4. This line reappears in _The Hind and the Panther_,
Part I, l. 211. As W.D. Christie pointed out, it is a reminiscence
of a couplet in _Lachrymæ Musarum_, 1649, the volume to which
Dryden contributed his school-boy verses 'Upon the Death of the Lord
Hastings':
It is decreed, we must be drain'd (I see)
Down to the dregs of a _Democracie_.
This is the opening couplet of the English poem preceding Dryden's,
and signed 'M.N.' i.e. Marchamont Needham (p. 81).
70.