Absalom and Achitophel. A Poem … The Second Edition; Augmented and
Revised. London, 1681. (ll. 142-227.)
The first edition was published on November 17, 1681, a few days before Shaftesbury's trial for high treason. In the second, which appeared within a month, the character of Shaftesbury was 'augmented' by twelve lines (p. 233, ll. 17-28).
Shaftesbury had been satirized by Butler in the Third Part of Hudibras, 1678, three years before the crisis in his remarkable career, and while his schemes still prospered. To Butler he is the unprincipled turn-coat who thinks only of his own interests:
So Politick, as if one eye
Upon the other were a Spye;…
H'had seen three Governments Run down,
And had a Hand in ev'ry one,
Was for 'em, and against 'em all.
But Barb'rous when they came to fall:…
By giving aim from side, to side,
He never fail'd to save his Tide,
But got the start of ev'ry State,
And at a Change, ne'r came too late….
Our State-Artificer foresaw,
Which way the World began to draw:…
He therefore wisely cast about,
All ways he could, t'insure his Throat;
And hither came t'observe, and smoke
What Courses other Riscers took:
And to the utmost do his Best
To Save himself, and Hang the Rest.
(Canto II, ll. 351-420).
Dryden's satire should be compared with Butler's. But a comparison with the prose character by Burnet, which had no immediate political purpose, will reveal even better Dryden's mastery in satirical portraiture. Another verse character is in The Review by Richard Duke, written shortly after Dryden's poem.
Absalom is Monmouth, David Charles II, Israel England, the Jews the
English, and a Jebusite a Romanist.
Page 232, l. 28. Compare Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, xvii. 10: 'nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiæ fuit.'
Page 233, l. 7. The humorous definition of man ascribed to Plato in Diogenes Laertius, Lib. vi. 40 (Life of Diogenes), [Greek: Platonos horisamenou, anthropos esti zoon dipoun apteron.]
The son was a handsomer man than the father, though he did not inherit his ability. His son, the third earl, was the critic and philosopher who wrote the Characteristicks.