was not out of countenance in owning his
unsteadiness and deceitfullness.'

69.

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 dementiae 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_.

l. 12. _the Triple Bond_, the alliance of England, Holland, and Sweden
against France in 1667, broken by the war with France against Holland
in 1672. But Shaftesbur