We leave the sentence to be pronounced on the first Earl of Shaftesbury to wiser heads than ours, but one remark we feel authorised to make,—that we are not called on to believe him as black as Dryden has painted him, since we cannot but question the justice of the pen that described Charles the Second as the God-like David, in the far-famed poem of ‘Absalom (the Duke of Monmouth) and Achitophel’ (Shaftesbury). He loads the latter with invective:—
‘A man to all succeeding nations curst,
For close designs and crooked councils fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit.
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace,
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay.
Great wits are sure to madness close allied;
Oh, had he been content to serve the Crown