immortal.
Perhaps even more effective was the description of the Duke of
Buckingham, under the designation of Zimri. For attacking that
nobleman Dryden had both political and personal reasons. Buckingham
had now joined the opponents of the court. Ten years previously the
poet himself had been brought by him on the stage, with the aid of
others, in the play called "The Rehearsal." His usual actions had been
mimicked, his usual expressions had been put into the mouth of the
character created to represent him, who was styled Bayes. This title
had been given him because Dryden figuratively wore the bays, or
laurel, as poet laureate. The name henceforward stuck. Dryden's turn
had now come; and it was in these following lines that he drew the
unfaded and fadeless picture of this nobleman, whose reputation even
then was notorious rather than famous, and whose intellect was
motley-minded rather than versatile:--

"Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the front rank of these did Zimri stand,
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome.
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long,
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over-violent or over-civil
That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art:
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggared by fools whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate."

As an example of the loftier and more majestic style occasionally
found in this poem, is the powerful appeal of Achitophel to Absalom.
The latter, it is to be said, stands for the Duke of Monmouth, the
eldest of the illegitimate sons of Charles II. Him many of the
so-called country party, now beginning to be styled Whigs, were
endeavoring to have recognized as the next successor to the throne, in
place of the Roman Catholic brother of the king, James, Duke of York.
As a favorite son of the monarch, he, though then in opposition, is
treated tenderly by Dryden throughout; and this feeling is plainly
visible in the opening of the address t