are entirely composed by Dryden, and contain some of the most masterly strokes of his pen. The portraits of Doeg and Og, under which names he stigmatized his personal antagonists, Settle and Shadwell, are executed with a strength of satirical colouring, unmatched in the English language. When we consider that Dryden had already, and very lately, made Shadwell the subject of an entire independent satire, it seems wonderful, with what ease he has executed a separate, and even more striking, caricature of his adversary, without repeating an idea or expression which he had used in "Mac Flecnoe." This is, indeed, partly owing to the dexterous division of his subject, as well as to the rich fertility of his vein of satire. For, after apparently exhausting upon his enemy all the opprobrium and contempt with which a literary character could be loaded, he seized this second occasion to brand and blacken his political and moral principles, and to exaggerate his former charge of dulness, by combining it with those of sedition, profaneness, and immorality. The characters of Ben Jochanan, Judas, Phaleg, &c. are all drawn with the same spirit and vivacity; and, on the whole, these lines are equal to any of the kind which our author ever wrote.
Had Dryden limited his assistance to furnishing this fragment, he would rather have injured than served his coadjutor, since it would have shone like a lamp in a dungeon, only to show the dreary waste in which it was inclosed. To prevent Tate from suffering too much by comparison, Dryden has obviously contributed much to the poem at large. Still, though Tate's lines have doubtless been weeded of much that would at once have ascertained their origin, our author's own couplet might have been addressed to Nahum on the assistance lent him. Dryden's spirit is
————so transfused, as oil and waters flow;
His always floats above, thine sinks below.
Much of the character of Corah, for example, is unquestionably Dryden's; so probably is that of Arod, and the verses generally descriptive of the Green-ribbon Club, which precede it. Such pungent satire is easily distinguished from the smooth insipid flow of other parts in which Dryden's corrections probably left nothing for censure, and which fate was unable to qualify with any thing entitled to praise. The character of Michal, of Dryden as Asaph, and some of the encomiastic passages, seem to show the extent of Tate's powers, when unsupported by the vivifying assistance of his powerful auxiliary. They are just decently versified, but flat, common-place, and uninteresting.
The second part of "Absalom and Achitophel" shared the fate of most continuations, and did not attain the popularity of the original. This was not entirely owing to the general inferiority of the poetry; for there was enough of personal satire, and that immediately flowing from the keen pen of Dryden, to secure the attention both of friends and foes; but the parallel between the heroes of Scripture and the characters of the day, however striking at first, did not bear to be too long protracted. When the original comparison was made, its aptness at once pleased the imagination, and arrested the attention; but when prolonged in a second part, readers began to see there was little wit in continuing to draw out the allusion, till it consisted in nothing more than the invention of a Jewish name for a British author or statesman; the attempt at finding prototypes in Scripture for every modern character being necessarily abandoned. Besides, those who took it upon them to answer Dryden, had in general made use of the vehicle of satire which he had invented; and as, in the eyes of the public, the theme became stale and tarnished by repetition, his antagonists did him that injury by their stupidity, which their wit was unequal to accomplish. Add to all this, that whole lines, and even longer passages, not to mention images and sentiments, are by Tate, in his poverty of ideas, transferred from the first part of the satire to the second;[350] and we must allow, that the latter is deficient in the captivating grace of novelty.
The second part of "Absalom and Achitophel" appeared about November 10th, 1682, in folio. Tonson is the publisher.