This excellent specimen of Dryden's prose satire was prefixed to
his satiric poem "The Medal", published in March, 1682. It was
inspired by the striking of a medal to commemorate the rejection by
the London Grand Jury, on November 24, 1681, of a Bill of High
Treason presented against Lord Shaftesbury. This event had been a
great victory for the Whigs and a discomfiture for the Court.
For to whom can I dedicate this poem, with so much justice, as to you?
'Tis the representation of your own hero: 'Tis the picture drawn at
length, which you admire and prize so much in little. None of your
ornaments are wanting; neither the landscape of the tower, nor the
rising sun; nor the Anno Domini of your new sovereign's coronation.
This must needs be a grateful undertaking to your whole party;
especially to those who have not been so happy as to purchase the
original. I hear the graver has made a good market of it: all his Kings
are bought up already; or the value of the remainder so enhanced, that
many a poor Polander, who would be glad to worship the image, is not
able to go to the cost of him; but must be content to see him here. I
must confess, I am no great artist; but sign-post-painting will serve
the turn to remember a friend by, especially when better is not to be
had. Yet, for your comfort, the lineaments are true: and though he sat
not five times to me, as he did to B. yet I have consulted history; as
the Italian painters do, when they would draw a Nero or a Caligula;
though they have not seen the man, they can help their imagination by a
statue of him, and find out the colouring from Suetonius and Tacitus.
Truth is, you might have spared one side of your medal: the head would
be seen to more advantage, if it were placed on a spike of the tower; a
little nearer to the sun; which would then break out to better purpose.
You tell us, in your preface to the _No-Protestant Plot_, that you
shall be forced hereafter to leave off your modesty. I suppose you mean
that little, which is left you: for it was worn to rags when you put
out this medal. Never was there practised such a piece of notorious
impudence in the face of an established Government. I believe, when he
is dead, you will wear him in thumb-rings, as the Turks did Scanderbeg;
as if there were virtue in his bones to preserve you against monarchy.
Yet all this while, you pretend not only zeal for the public good, but
a due veneration for the person of the king. But all men, who can see
an inch before them, may easily detect those gross fallacies. That it
is necessary for men in your circumstances to pretend both, is granted
you; for without them there could be no ground to raise a faction. But
I would ask you one civil question: What right has any man among you,
or any association of men (to come nearer to you) who, out of
Parliament cannot be consider'd in a public capacity, to meet, as you
daily do, in factious clubs, to vilify the Government in your
discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges
in Israel? Or how is it consistent with your zeal for the public
welfare, to promote sedition? Does your definition of _loyal_, which is
to serve the King according to the laws, allow you the licence of
traducing the executive power, with which you own he is invested? You
complain, that his Majesty has lost the love and confidence of his
people; and, by your very urging it, you endeavour, what in you lies,
to make him lose them. All good subjects abhor the thought of
arbitrary power, whether it be in one or many; if you were the patriots
you would seem, you would not at this rate incense the multitude to
assume it; for no sober man can fear it, either from the King's
disposition or his practice; or even, where you would odiously lay it,
from his ministers. Give us leave to enjoy the Government, and the
benefit of laws, under which we were born, and which we desire to
transmit to our posterity. You are not the trustees of the public
liberty; and if you have not right to petition in a crowd, much less
have you to intermeddle in the management of affairs, or to arraign
what you do not like; which in effect is everything that is done by the
King and Council. Can you imagine, that any reasonable man will believe
you respect the person of his Majesty, when 'tis apparent that your
seditious pamphlets are stuffed with particular reflections on him? If
you have the confidence to deny this, 'tis easy to be evinced from a
thousand passages, which I only forbear to quote because I desire they
should die and be forgotten. I have perused many of your papers; and to
show you that I have, the third part of your _No-Protestant Plot_ is
much of it stolen from your dead author's pamphlet called the _Growth
of Popery_; as manifestly as Milton's defence of the English people is
from Buchanan, _de jure regni apud Scotos_; or your first covenant, and
new association, from the holy league of the French Guisards. Anyone,
who reads Davila, may trace your practices all along. There were the
same pretences for reformation and loyalty, the same aspersions of the
King, and the same grounds of a rebellion. I know not whether you will
take the historian's word, who says, it was reported, that Poltrot a
Huguenot murder'd Francis Duke of Guise, by the instigations of
Theodore Beza; or that it was a Huguenot minister, otherwise called a
Presbyterian (for our Church abhors so devilish a tenet) who first
writ a treatise of the lawfulness of deposing and murdering Kings, of a
different persuasion in religion. But I am able to prove from the
doctrine of Calvin, and principles of Buchanan, that they set the
people above the magistrate; which, if I mistake not, is your own
fundamental; and which carries your loyalty no farther than your
liking. When a vote of the House of Commons goes on your side, you are
as ready to observe it, as if it were passed into a law: but when you
are pinch'd with any former, and yet unrepealed, Act of Parliament, you
declare that in some cases you will not be obliged by it. The passage
is in the same third part of the _No-Protestant Plot_; and is too plain
to be denied. The late copy of your intended association you neither
wholly justify nor condemn: but as the Papists, when they are
unoppos'd, fly out into all the pageantries of worship, but, in times
of war, when they are hard pressed by arguments, lie close intrenched
behind the Council of Trent; so, now, when your affairs are in a low
condition, you dare not pretend that to be a legal combination; but
whensover you are afloat, I doubt not but it will be maintained and
justified to purpose. For indeed there is nothing to defend it but the
sword: 'Tis the proper time to say anything, when men have all things
in their power.
In the meantime, you would fain be nibbling at a parallel betwixt this
association, and that in the time of Queen Elizabeth. But there is this
small difference betwixt them, that the ends of the one are directly
opposite to the other: one with the Queen's approbation and
conjunction, as head of it; the other, without either the consent or
knowledge of the King, against whose authority it is manifestly
design'd. Therefore you do well to have recourse to your last evasion,
that it was contriv'd by your enemies, and shuffled into the papers
that were seized; which yet you see the nation is not so easy to
believe, as your own jury. But the matter is not difficult, to find
twelve men in Newgate, who would acquit a malefactor.
I have one only favour to desire of you at parting; that, when you
think of answering this poem, you would employ the same pens against
it, who have combated with so much success against Absalom and
Achitophel: for then you may assure yourselves of a clear victory,
without the least reply. Rail at me abundantly; and, not to break a
custom, do it without wit. By this method you will gain a considerable
point, which is, wholly to waive the answer of my argument. Never own
the bottom of your principles, for fear they should be treason. Fall
severely on the miscarriages of Government; for if scandal be not
allowed, you are no free-born subjects. If GOD has not blessed you with
the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock and welcome; let your
verses run upon my feet: and for the utmost refuge of notorious
blockheads, reduced to the last extremity of sense, turn my own lines
upon me, and, in utter despair of your own satire, make me satirize
myself. Some of you have been driven to this bay already; but above all
the rest, commend me to the Non-conformist parson, who writ _The Whip
and Key_. I am afraid it is not read so much as the piece deserves,
because the bookseller is every week crying Help, at the end of his
Gazette, to get it off. You see I am charitable enough to do him a
kindness, that it may be published as well as printed; and that so much
skill in Hebrew derivations may not lie for waste-paper in the shop.
Yet I half suspect he went no farther for his learning, than the index
of Hebrew names and etymologies, which is printed at the end of some
English bibles. If Achitophel signify the brother of a fool, the author
of that poem will pass with his readers for the next of kin. And,
perhaps, 'tis the relation that makes the kindness. Whatever the verses
are, buy them up, I beseech you, out of pity; for I hear the
conventicle is shut up, and the brother of Achitophel out of service.
Now footmen, you know, have the generosity to make a purse, for a
member of their society, who has had his livery pulled over his ears:
and even Protestant flocks are brought up among you, out of veneration
to the name. A dissenter in poetry from sense and English, will make as
good a Protestant rhymer, as a dissenter from the Church of England a
Protestant parson. Besides, if you encourage a young beginner, who
knows but he may elevate his style a little, above the vulgar epithets
of profane and saucy Jack, and atheistic scribbler, with which he
treats me, when the fit of enthusiasm is strong upon him? By which
well-manner'd and charitable expressions, I was certain of his sect,
before I knew his name. What would you have more of a man? He has
damned me in your cause from Genesis to the Revelations; and has half
the texts of both the Testaments against me, if you will be so civil to
yourselves as to take him for your interpreter, and not to take them
for Irish witnesses. After all, perhaps, you will tell me, that you
retained him only for the opening of your cause, and that your main
lawyer is yet behind. Now, if it so happen he meet with no more reply
than his predecessors, you may either conclude, that I trust to the
goodness of my cause, or fear my adversary, or disdain him, or what you
please; for the short on it is, it is indifferent to your humble
servant, whatever your party says or thinks of him.