[REFERENCES]
Biblical parallels and parallels with Absalom and Achitophel are omitted. The Dedications of the poems can be compared with Dryden's in Absalom and Achitophel.
ABSALOM SENIOR
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3: Barak. The only borrowing in the poem from a popular seventeenth century jest book, Wits Recreations (1640), "Epigrams," no. 46, "On Sir Fr. Drake": "The sun itself cannot forget/His fellow traveller."
11: a Jewish Renegade. Cardinal Philip Thomas Howard (B).
13: a Breaden God. Either a reference to transubstantiation (see also II Kings 2-3 and II Chron. 34) or an allusion to the Meal Tub Plot (1679).
16: a Cake of Shew-bread. In addition to the Biblical allusion, perhaps a reference to the poisoning of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII by the communion wafer.
17: in Possession. As this legal term is opposed to "reversion" emendation is unnecessary.
19: to bear. There was a belief that Jeffreys was connected with the Duchess of Portsmouth (B). The "Golden Prize" was perhaps protestantism, to be suppressed under a secret provision of the Treaty of Dover (1670).