(1) It has never, we believe, been remarked, that two of the
most striking lines in the description of Ahithophel are
borrowed from a most obscure quarter. In Knolles’s History
of the Turks, printed more than sixty years before the
appearance of Absalom and Ahithophel, are the following
verses, under a portrait of the Sultan Mustapha the First:
“Greatnesse on goodnesse loves to slide, not stand,
And leaves for Fortune’s ice Vertue’s firme land.”