Anti-Achitophel (1682) / Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden

A few typographical errors have been corrected. They have been marked in the text with mouse-hover popups . The continuous page numbers in the left margin are from the facsimile edition. Those in the right margin are from the original works, with brackets or parentheses as in the original. Folio numbers, when used, are shown directly below the page number; they were originally printed at the bottom center of the page.
iii
We are here concerned with three representative replies to Absalom and Achitophel : their form, their authors, and details of their publication. Settle's poem was reprinted with one slight alteration a year after its first appearance; the Reflections has since been reprinted in part, Pordage's poem not at all. Absalom Senior has been chosen because, of the many verse pieces directed against Dryden's poem, it is of the greatest intrinsic merit and shows the reverse side of the medal, as it were, to that piece; the second is given, not for any literary merit it may possess--indeed, from its first appearance it has been dismissed as of small worth--but rather as a poem representative of much of the versifying that followed hard on the Popish Plot and as one that has inspired great speculation as to its author; the third, in addition to throwing light on the others, is a typical specimen of the lesser work produced in the Absalom dispute.
Evidence against Buckingham's authorship, on the other hand, is comparatively strong. The piece does not appear in his collected Works (1704-5). It surely would have been included even though he had at first wished to claim any credit from its publication and later have wished to disown it. Little connection, furthermore, will be found between the Reflections and the rest of his published verse or with the plays, including The Rehearsal , if the latter be his alone, which is doubtful.
For No Link ... night (p. 35, lines 19-24), the Second Edition substitutes, for an undetermined reason, the following: