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THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



public mind. The anti-Popish feeling of the country was very 

 strong. It had shown itself especially in the horrible cruelties, 

 the murders of innocent men in the name of justice, which 

 arose out of the so-called Popish Plot a plot which was mainly, 

 at all events, the creation of popular alarm and excitement 

 deliberately stimulated by the party of Shaftesbury for their 

 own selfish end. And the friends of genuine liberty, alarmed at 

 the violence of the king, were to a great extent driven to support 

 Shaftesbury. But the tide had somewhat begun to turn ; and 

 Shaftesbury himself was in the Tower under a charge of treason. 

 At this juncture Dryden produced his satire in the hope of 

 exciting popular ill will against him, and so securing his ruin. 

 Under the guise of the Scriptural story of David and his rebel- 

 lious son, Absalom, he presents to us the history of the moment. 

 The too indulgent David is the king himself. Absalom stands 

 for the beautiful, weak, and ungrateful Monmouth ; Achitophel, 

 the crafty and faithless counsellor, for Shaftesbury ; while the 

 minor characters of the Scripture story have all their counter- 

 parts in the modern history. The satire is one of the finest in 

 the language ; its peculiar merit consists in the extraordinarily 

 powerful portraits it contains of the chief characters. The 

 picture of Shaftesbury himself is an admirable example : 



" The false Achitophel was first, 

 A name to all succeeding ages cursed ; 

 For close designs and crooked counsels fit ; 

 Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit ; 

 Restless, unfixed in principles and place ; 

 In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace ; 

 A fiery soul which, working out its way, 

 Fretted his piginy body to decay, 

 And o'er-inftrmed the tenement of clay. 

 A daring pilot in extremity ; 



Pleased with the danger when the waves went high, 

 He sought the storm ; but, for a calm unfit, 

 Would steer too near the sands to show his wit. 

 Great wits are sure to madness near allied, 

 And thin partitions do their bounds divide ; 

 Else why should he, with wealth and honours blest, 

 Refuse his age the needful hours of rest ? 

 Punish a body which he could not please ; 

 Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ? 

 And all to leave what with his toil he won 

 To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son." 



Finer still is the portrait of the Duke of Buckingham, so 

 celebrated for his varied and brilliant abilities, his vice and 

 extravagance, and his miserable end : 



" In the first rank of these did Ziuiri 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, aud nothing long ; 

 But in the course of one revolving moon 

 Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; 

 Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 

 Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thiuking. 

 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. 

 He laughed himself from court, then sought relief 

 By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief ; 

 For, spite of him, the weight of business fell 

 On Absalom and wise Achitophel. 

 Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft, 

 He left no faction, but of that was left." 



In the following lines Dryden gives us a life-like picture of 

 the notorious Titus Gates, the professional false-witness who, 

 alter a long course of perjury, first on one side and then on 

 the other, at last ended his career of infamy in imprisonment 

 and the pillory : 



" Sunk were his eyes, his voice was harsh and loud, 

 Sure signs he neither choleric was nor proud ; 

 His long chin proved his wit ; his saint-like grace 

 A church vermilion and a Moses' face." 



This satire was a great success, and its fame immediate. 



But Shaftesbury, nevertheless, escaped, for the grand jury of 

 London rejected the indictment against him ; and his admirers 

 struck and distributed a medal in honour of the event. This 

 gave occasion to another satire from the pen of the Court poet. 

 "The Medal" is scarcely less powerful than its predecessor, but 

 it is very different in tone and manner. The cool dissection of 

 character which we find in "Absalom and Achitophel" is rs- 

 placed by violent, even savage attack. It is an onslaught upon 

 Shaftesbury alone. The following is a specimen of its spirit : 

 "A martial hero first, with early care 



Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war. 



A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man ; 



So young his hatred to his prince began. 



Next this how wildly will ambition steer 



A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear ; 



Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, 



He cast himself into the saintlike mould ; 



Groaned, sighed, and prayed while godliness was gain, 



The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train. 



But, as 'tis hard to cheat a juggler's eyes, 



His open lewdness he could ne'er disguise. 



There split the saint, for hypocritic zeal 



Allows no sins but those it can conceal." 



A second part of " Absalom and Achitophel " was published 

 the next year ; it is not, however, for the most part the work of 

 Dryden but of a very inferior hand, and has little of the power 

 of the first part. 



" McFlecknoe " is a satire of a very different class. Dryden, 

 like most of the wits of his day, as well as of the periods which 

 preceded and immediately followed hia time, was always in the 

 heat of controversy, and always at war with rival writers and 

 literary men. In "McFlecknoe" he intended to inflict summary 

 vengeance upon Shadwell, a second-rate poet, with whom Dry- 

 den was constantly at war. The satire is very brilliant, very 

 severe, and very unjust. 



The next class of Dryden's writings of which we have to 

 speak consists of his poems on controversial subjects. Of these 

 the most important two are the " Eeligio Laici," written by Dry- 

 den while still a Protestant, in defence of the Anglican Church ; 

 and the " Hind and the Panther," written after his conversion 

 to the Roman Catholic religion," in defence of the Church of 

 Rome. The first of these poems, in the form of an epistle, con- 

 tains an elaborate argument in favour of the author's then 

 position. In point of expression, and the admirable adaptation 

 of style and versification to the subject-matter, it is almost 

 without a rival among poems of its class. The effect of the 

 " Hind and the Panther " is rather spoiled, notwithstanding its 

 many beauties, by its half-allegorical form. 



A very high place among Dryden's poems must be awarded 

 to his odes. Of all the lyrics in our language of the more 

 ambitious, the heroic or Pindaric kind, Dryden's great ode on 

 " Alexander's Feast " is the finest. It was written in the year 

 1697, and, like his ode for St. Cecilia's Day and some other 

 well-known ode? by other authors, was written for the musical 

 festival then annually held on St. Cecilia's Day. Dryden's 

 extraordinary energy and vigour of style was precisely suited 

 for such poetry, while his deficiency in pathos was not felt, for 

 in the Pindaric ode there is little space for pathos. 



Dryden's "Fables," many of which are from Chaucer, are 

 either adaptations in modern language of some of the " Canter- 

 bury Tales," or original tales in imitation of Chaucer. As 

 poems they are pleasing ; but they are cot Chaucer either in 

 spirit or in style. 



Dryden's translations consist of the whole of Virgil, several 

 of the Satires of Juvenal, and some of Ovid's Epistles. His 

 prose works are entirely critical ; the most important being an 

 " Essay on Dramatic Poetry." They are distinguished, for the 

 most part, by admirable good sense and judgment in their 

 criticism, and always by a style manly and vigorous, the couu 

 terpart in prose of Dryden's manner iu verse. 



Of poets other than dramatic, there is none but Dryden, in 

 the age of the Restoration, worthy of any prolonged notice. 

 Poetry was the fashion ; and dilettanti noblemen in numbers 

 wrote poetry, to which their rank gave a momentary prominence. 

 To this class belonged Roscommon, Rochester, Buckingham, 

 and also Dorset. Some, like Sir Charles Sedley, wrote graceful 

 and lively songs. Perhaps the poem best worthy of mention is 

 the " Splendid Shilling," by John Phillips, a mock-heroic poem 

 not destitute of humour. 



