to imitate nothing but the faults of the classick authors, mistake them for their excellencies. I speak with all due reverence to the ancients, for no man esteems their perfections more than myself, though I confess I have not that blind implicit faith in them which some ignorant schoolmasters would impose upon us, to believe in all their errours, and own all their crimes to some pedants every thing in them is of that authority, that they will create a new figure of rhetorick out of the fault of an old poet. I am apt to believe the same faults were found in them, when they wrote, which men of sense find now; but not the excellencies which schoolmasters would persuade us: yet I must say now,

Ι

PREFACE

TO THE FIRST PART OF

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.:

Ir is not my intention to make an apology

for my poem; some will think it needs no excuse, and others will receive none. The design, I am

3 The first part of this poem was published in folio, without the author's name, in November, 1681; as appears from Mr. Bindley's copy. It was undertaken, as we learn from Tate's Preface to the Second Part, at the desire of King Charles the Second, with a view to defeat the projects of the Earl of Shaftesbury and his adherents, who at this time were engaged in a conspiracy, the principal object of which was to exclude the Duke of York from the throne, and to secure the succession to the Duke of Monmouth, on the death of the King.

"Of this poem," (says Dr. Johnson,)" in which personal satire was applied to the support of publick principles, and in which therefore every mind was interested, the reception was eager, and the sale so large, that my father, an old bookseller, told me he had not known it equalled but by Sacheverell's trial.-The reason of this general perusal Addison has attempted to derive from the delight which the mind feels in the investigation of secrets; and thinks that curiosity to decypher the names procured readers to the poem. There is no need to enquire why

sure, is honest; but he who draws his pen for one party must expect to make enemies of the other. For wit, and fool, are consequents of

those verses were read, which, to all the attractions of wit, elegance, and harmony, added the co-operation of all the factious passions, and filled every mind with triumph or resentment."

In the course of the year 1682, this poem went through several editions. The fourth (in quarto) is now before

me.

of

Addison has no where, that I can find, expressly mentioned the poem of ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL; I suppose therefore Dr. Johnson alluded to the 567th paper the SPECTATOR, on the art of rendering party-writings "more taking than ordinary," by printing initial letters instead of proper names, or omitting all the vowels in a great man's name, which last method is said to have been first introduced by Tom Brown "of facetious memory.' —Our modern libellers, however, reject these artifices as stale and vulgar; and now recommend their productions to publick notice by asserting the most atrocious calumnies of the most respectable persons, whose names they print at full length, and generally usher their trash to the world by an alphabetical list of those whom they have libelled.

The Second Part of ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL did not appear till 1682, and our author only wrote about two hundred verses of it, which contain highly finished characters of Settle and Shadwell.

Derrick asserts, that the application of the story of Absalom to this part of King Charles the Second's reign, was first made by a clergyman in the pulpit, and that “ his sermon was printed with the title of ABSALOM and 'ACHITOPHEL :" but in this statement I believe he is

4

Whig and Tory; and every man is a knave or an ass to the contrary side. There is a treasury of merits in the fanatick church, as well as in the

inaccurate. After our author's poem indeed had appeared, this allusion became very common, and the parallel between King Charles and David was a frequent theme in the pulpit. Thus we find-" ACHITOPHEL'S Policy defeated, a sermon preached on the 9th of September, 1683, being the day appointed by his Majesty, &c. for a publick thanksgiving for his and the kingdom's great deliverance from the late treasonable conspiracy [the Ryehouse Plot] against his sacred person and government." The preacher, who is not named, chose this apposite text from 2 Sam. c. xv. V. 12. "And Absalom sent for АHITHOPHEL the Gilonite, David's counsellor, from his city, even from Giloh, while he offered sacrifices; and the conspiracy was strong, for the people increased continually with ABSALOM." Another sermon, preached on the same day, appeared with this title: "King David's danger and deliverance, or the conspiracy of ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL defeated." By Thomas Long, B. D. one of the Prebendaries of Exeter; where this sermon was preached. My friend, Mr. Bindley, has in his very curious collection several other sermons in which this parallel is pursued. All these, however, were delivered and published after Dryden's poem had appeared. The original adaptation, therefore, certainly belongs to him, and the clergy only took it at second hand.

4 These well-known party-designations were first used about this time. The party who were attached to the crown, branded their antagonists with the name of WHIGS, as the lineal descendants of the sour Scotch Covenanters, whose principal sustenance was oatmeal and whey, or sour milk, called in Scotland (as it formerly was

papist, and a pennyworth to be had of saintship, honesty, and poetry, for the lewd,' the factious, and the blockheads; but the longest chapter in Deuteronomy has not curses enough for an AntiBirmingham."

in England also) whig: while the opposite faction deno. minated the courtiers, TORIES, Covertly insinuating by this term that the partizans of monarchy were not only base and servile in their principles, but attached to popery; the lower classes in Ireland being papists, and an Irish robber being then called a Tory, from the word toree, which Dr. Goldsmith says, in the Irish language signifies—give me ; or in other words, deliver your money. Tories, robbers, and rapories, are frequently coupled together in old Irish statutes. The latter were low Irish free-booters, who were armed with a half-pike called a raperee, or rapory; and hence to this day a base or counterfeit halfpenny is universally called in Ireland, a rap.

5 This word, beside its present signification, was also formerly used in the sense of vitious, licentious; in which sense it often occurs in our ancient statutes.-So Bolingbroke, in RICHARD II.

"That Mowbray hath received eight thousand nobles, “The which he hath detain'd for lewd employments.' Such is its signification in p. 277, where our author says that Settle's rhymes are incorrigibly lewd.

Lewd, however, may have been used in its ordinary sense here, with an allusion to Lord Shaftesbury. See the character of Antonio, in Otway's VENICE PRESERVED, 1682, which was intended to represent this nobleman.

6 The allusion here is not very clear. Birmingham, even at this early period, was noted for base and counterfeit money: "I coined heroes, (says Thomas Brown, in 1688,) as fast as Brumingham groats." I suppose,