[Editor’s Introduction]
[Allusions]
[References]
[Absalom Senior]
[Introduction]
[Text]
[Errata]
[Poetical Reflections]
[Introduction]
[Text]
[Azaria and Hushai]
[Introduction]
[Text]
iii
[INTRODUCTION]
English verse allegory, humorous or serious, political or moral, has deep roots; a reprint such as the present is clearly no place for a discussion of the subject at large:[1] it need only be recalled here that to the age that produced The Pilgrim's Progress the art form was not new. Throughout his life Dryden had his enemies, Prior and Montague in their satire of The Hind and the Panther, for example. The general circumstances under which Dryden wrote Absalom and Achitophel, familiar enough and easily accessible, are therefore recalled only briefly below. Information is likewise readily available on his use of Biblical allegory.[2]
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.