Loyalty Triumphant, 1st July, 1681.
[430] Elkanah had forfeited reputation for valour, by his conduct in a quarrel with Otway; as may be interred from the line,
Settle's a coward, because fool Otway fought him.
In an answer to "The Character of a Popish Successor," called, "A Character of the true-blue Protestant Poet," Settle is termed, "a fool, an arrant knave, a despicable coward, and a prophane atheist."
[431] The full title is, "Absalom Senior, or Achitophel Transprosed, a Poem. Si populus vult decipi, &c. Printed for S. E., and sold by Langley Curtis, at the sign of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, near Fleetbridge, 1682."
[432] This pithy objection would prove the impossibility of two persons bearing the same name, and existing at different periods of history. Elkanah did not observe, that, as there might have been an hundred, so there actually were at least two Zimris in scripture story; the second of whom rebelled against his master, Elah, king of Israel, and usurped the kingdom. If Dryden meant to apply either of these characters distinctly to the factious Duke of Buckingham, it was probably the last, whose treason had become proverbial: "Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?"
[433] Jefferies once, when recorder of London, called himself the Mouth of the city; and the name became attached to him, from the natural expansion of that feature. The scandalous circumstance, alluded to by Settle, is the subject of a libel in the "State Poems." But Settle lived to write, "A Panegyric on the Loyal and Honourable Sir George Jefferies, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1683."
[434] The Duke of Buckingham. See note on Zimri, p. 353.
[435] Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, p. 1076. et sequen.
[436] North's Examen, p. 96.—It does not appear, that the Tories welcomed the return of their lost sheep. It is talked lightly of in their ballads and libels. For instance, we have these two lines in "The Poet's Address to King James II., surnamed the Just:"