A mighty flaw' is used by Dryden in his Threnodia Augustalis, with reference to the end of the world.

243. Dryden's account of the King's conduct on the occasion of the fire is free from flattery. Evelyn says, 'It is not indeed imaginable, how extraordinary the vigilance and activity of the King and the Duke was, even labouring in person, and being present to command, order, reward, or encourage workmen, by which he showed his affection to his people and gained them.' (Diary, September 6, 1666.)

247. 1. Part stays. So in the original edition. Broughton changed stays into stay, which is preserved in most following editions, including Scott's. 250. 3. ignoble crowd. Probably from Virgil, 'saevitque animis ignobile vulgus.' (Aen. i. 153.)

251. 4. tempest. So in the original edition. tempests in edition of 1688, and in subsequent editions.

256. 2. require, used in the strict sense of the Latin requirere, 'to seek again.'

257. 4. repeat, used exactly in the meaning of the Latin repetere, 'to reseek.' So in Dryden's play of Tyrannic Love, Act iii:

I'll lead you thence to melancholy groves

And there repeat the scenes of our past loves.'

The pious Trojan so,

Neglecting for Creusa's life his own,

Repeats the danger of the burning town.'

Waller, Battle of the Summer Islands, Cant. iii.

267. The Great Plague had destroyed a hundred thousand souls; it had begun in the summer of 1665, and was not quite extinct when the Great Fire desolated London in September 1666.

270. 1. threatnings is the word of the first edition, and the spelling of the time. In the edition of 1688 threatings is substituted, and this occurs in most editions. The modern spelling threatenings is substituted for threatnings in the text.

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273. 3. affect, seek,' 'desire.' So in Absalom and Achitophel, 178, 'affecting fame.'

The name of great let other kings affect.'

Epilogue to Albion and Albanius. Viamque affectat Olympo' (Virg. Georg. iv. 562) is probably imitated. 274. 2. in dust, changed in edition of 1688 into in the dust, a decided deterioration.

275. 3. The poet's song here referred to is Waller's poem Upon His Majesty's repairing of St. Paul's.' Denham, in Cooper's Hill, celebrated the same poem of Waller on the repairs made by Charles I:

'Paul's, the late theme of such a Muse, whose flight
Has bravely reached and soared above thy height,
Now shalt thou stand, though sword or time or fire,
Or zeal more fierce than they thy fall conspire;
Secure whilst thee the best of poets sings,
Preserved from ruin by the best of kings.'

280. 4. give on. The words of the original edition; changed to drive on in the edition of 1688, which has been followed by subsequent editors. But give on is much better, and is a phrase of Dryden's. The enemy gives on, by fury led,' occurs in the Indian Emperor, Act ii. Sc. 3. Waller uses the phrase in describing the Duke of York in the naval battle of June 3, 1665 : 'Where he gives on, disposing of their fates,

Terror and death on his loud cannon waits.' 281. 4. strove. Derrick changed this word to drove, and this corruption of Dryden's text has been adopted by following editors, including Scott.

284. 2. mild rain, the reading of the first two editions, was changed into cold rain in the republication of this poem in the Miscellany Poems, 1716, and it has been so printed always since. Mild is obviously the proper epithet; cold is inconsistent with 'kindly rain.' Scott's edition has cold, the wrong word.

290. See Ezra i.-iii. for the return of the Jewish tribes from Babylon after long captivity, and their setting to work to build the Temple of Jerusalem.

292. 1. frequent trines. A trine, or conjunction of planets in the form of a triangle, was considered fortunate by astrologers: and Dryden adds to frequent trines another good omen, the planet Jupiter in ascension. Dryden was learned in astrology and a firm believer. He introduces trine as part of a happy omen in his Öde to the Memory of Mrs. Ann Killegrew:

'For sure the milder planets did combine

On thy auspicious horoscope to shine,

And even the most malicious were in trine.'

Trine appears as a verb in Palamon and Arcite, Bk. iii. 1. 389, where there is a conjunction of the deities, Saturn, Venus, and Mars.

By fortune he was now to Venus trined,

And with stern Mars in Capricorn was joined.'

1. 4. work in original edition; works in that of 1688, followed by subsequent editors.

succeed. The verb has here an active meaning,

make to succeed.' So

in Dryden's State of Innocence, Act iii. Sc. 1: Heaven your design succeed.'

295. 2. New deified. New is the reading of both the early editions. Derrick changed new into now; and now has appeared in subsequent editions, including Scott's.

299. 3. And Seine, that would with Belgian rivers join. This is an allusion to the designs of Louis XIV on Spanish Flanders, which soon broke out in an invasion.

303. The boastful prophecy of this stanza was soon falsified by the events of 1667, when the Dutch fleet under De Ruyter entered the Thames, ascended to Chatham, and there burut some of our ships. The close of the war was humiliating to England: begun in hot fury in 1665, it ended amid general dissatisfaction in England. Peace was concluded at Breda, July 31, 1667.

Absalom and Achitophel.

Preface.

P. 85. 1. 5. Whig and Tory. These two names, so familiar to us, were new when Absalom and Achitophel was written. They were first applied in 1679 in the famous controversy about the Exclusion Bill. Whig is a word of Scotch origin, Tory of Irish. Whig is explained in two ways: Roger North says that it meant corrupt and sour whey (Examen. p. 321); Bishop Burnet derives it from whiggamor, a driver, from whiggam, an exclamation in use in driving horses (Hist. of Own Time, 1. 43). Anyhow, the name of Whigs came to be given to the Scotch Covenanters. It was first applied in 1648 in Scotland. Tories, according to Roger North, were 'the most despicable savages among the wild Irish.' Irishmen, as Roman Catholics, were generally favourable to the Duke of York; thus his friends were called Tories. The opponents of the Court were Whigs.

1. 8. When Dryden wrote Papist, his editors, from Broughton downward, have printed Popish.

1. 11. Anti-Bromingham. Bromingham' was a cant term of the time for a Whig. Birmingham was famous for base and counterfeit coinage; a 'Birmingham groat' was a current phrase for base coin. Roger North says that the Tories nicknamed their adversaries Birmingham Protestants, alluding to the false groats struck at that place.'

1. 13. a genius.. Most editors, including Scott, have omitted the a, thus spoiling the sentence.

1. 23. rebating the satire. Rebate, an obsolete word, means to blunt. "The keener edge of battle to rebate.'

Palamon and Arcite, Bk. ii. 1. 502.

'One who never feels

The wanton stings and motions of the sense,
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
With profits of the mind, steady and just.'

Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act i. Sc. 4.
'Let no defeat

Your sprightly courage and attempts rebate.'

Oldham, Satire iii.

P. 86. 1. 14. The fault on the right hand. Compare an error of the better hand,' in Cymon and Iphigenia, 237.

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1. 33. composure here means arrangement,' reconciliation.' Dryden uses composure for composition' in his poem to Sir Robert Howard:

'So in your verse a native sweetness dwells

Which shames composure and its art excels.'

P. 87.1. 9. Ense rescindendum. Ovid has 'ense recidendum' (Metam. i. 191).

The Poem.

It will be most convenient for the reader to preface the notes to the poem with an alphabetical key to the names in the allegory. This key is part of the one published by Tonson, Dryden's publisher, as key to this poem and to the Second Part, the most of which was written by Nahum Tate in the Miscellany Poems, vol. ii. ed. 1716.

Abbethdin, Lord Chancellor.
Absalom, Duke of Monmouth.
Achitophel, Earl of Shaftesbury.
Adriel, Earl of Mulgrave.

Agag, Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey.

Amiel, Mr. (afterwards Sir Edward) Seymour.

Annabel, Duchess of Monmouth.

Balaam, Earl of Huntingdon.

Barzillai, Duke of Ormond.

Bathsheba, Duchess of Portsmouth.

Caleb, Lord Grey of Werke.

Corah, Titus Oates.

David, King Charles II.

Egypt, France.

Ethnic Plot, Popish Plot.

Hebrew Priests, Church of England clergymen.

Hebron, Scotland.

Ishbosheth, Richard Cromwell.

Israel, England.

Issachar, Thomas Thynne of Longleat.

Jebusites, Papists.

Jerusalem, London.

Jewish Rabbins, Doctors of the Church of England.

1. 7. Charles II., who is David in this poem, is described as 'Israel's monarch after Heaven's own heart,' as David is in Scripture. 'The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart.' (1 Sam. xiii. 14.) 'I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will.' (Acts xiii. 22.)

1. 17. this, changed to the by Broughton, and the error copied by following editors, including Scott.

1. 18. Absalon. So spelt here and in line 221 for the rhyme, in the early editions; elsewhere always Absalom. The Duke of Monmouth, here called Absalom, was the son of Charles by Lucy Walters, and born at Rotterdam, April 9, 1649. Till lately it has been always believed that Monmouth was the eldest of Charles II.'s natural sons; but a recent publication at Rome from papers in the Jesuits' College there has made known, on the authority of Charles himself, that he had a son by a lady of the name of La Cloche, in Jersey, two or three years earlier, when he was sixteen or seventeen years old. This son entered the noviciate of the Jesuit Society at Rome in 1667, under the name of James La Cloche, and came secretly to England in 1668, calling himself Henri de Rohan. See Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1866.

1. 19. inspired by. In the first edition it was with. 1. 30. Compare with this line Pope's

'And Paradise was opened in the wild.'

Eloisa to Abelard, 133.

1. 34. Annabel, Duchess of Monmouth, was Countess of Buccleuch in her own right, and was married to Monmouth in 1665. The name of Scott was afterwards given to Monmouth, and he was created Duke of Buccleuch. The Duchess of Monmouth was an early patron and constant friend of Dryden. He dedicated to her the play of The Indian Emperor, published in 1667. In the Vindication of the Duke of Guise (1683) Dryden calls her 'the patroness of my unworthy poetry'; and in his Dedication of King Arthur to Lord Halifax, in 1691, he says that the Duchess of Monmouth had read the play in manuscript and recommended it to Queen Mary; and he calls the Duchess my first and best patroness.'

1. 39. Amnon's murder. This is probably a reference to an attack, which Monmouth was believed to have instigated, on Sir John Coventry in 1670, by some officers and men of Monmouth's troop of horseguards, in revenge for a sarcasm uttered in the House of Commons about the King's amours. Coventry's nose was slit with a penknife. The House of Commons took up the affair very warmly, and a new act was passed, making it a capital felony to wound with intention to maim or disfigure, which went by the name of the Coventry Act. There was indeed no murder in this case, but Dryden probably desired to avoid precise identification.

1. 43. sincerely blest. See note on Annus Mirabilis, stanza 209, on this use of sincerely, meaning 'without alloy.'

1. 59. Hebron. In the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, both in Dryden's own part and in Tate's, Hebron means Scotland; and the key to this poem represents Hebron as Scotland. But in this, the only passage of the poem where Hebron occurs, Flanders would be more appropriate.