the ancient course of feasting and hospitality, observed by former sheriffs, had given way for furious cabals in coffee-houses; and, by degrees, a large body of citizens, who had, according to North, good hearts, and good spirits, were formed for the purpose of restoring the ancient order and course of living in the city. By means of this party, Sir John Moor was elected Lord Mayor; for whose character and conduct, and that of Shute and Pilkington, the Whig sheriffs, whom Dryden here terms his "two gouty hands," see the two last notes on the Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel, pp. 401, 403. It was a great advantage to the court, that the military chiefs of the city, i. e. the officers of the trained bands, &c. were attached to the royal cause; and it was very much by their emphatic interference, that the election of sheriffs for 1683 was carried against the Whig party.

Note XI.

Perhaps not wholly to melt down the king

But clip his regal rights within the ring.-P. 437.

Until 1663, milled money was not struck in England; and the hammered coin, which continued to be in circulation long after that period, was liable to be clipped, which occasioned great frauds on the public, and loss to individuals. It is remarkable, that the verses which follow, describing the cypher-like state of royalty, to which the country party wished to reduce the king, agree accurately with what North believed to be Shaftesbury's real designs upon the authority and person of Charles. "If he was really a friend to any human kind, besides himself, I believe it was to King Charles the second; whose gaiety, breeding, wit, good-humour, familiarity, and disposition to enjoy the pleasures of society and greatness, engaged him very much, that had a great share of wit, agreeableness, and gallantry himself. But this same superiority spoiled all; his majesty would not always be influenced by him, but would take short turns on his toe, and so frustrate his projects; and finding by that he could not work under him, he strove, if possible, to reduce his authority, and get above him. It seems, by what was given out, that he would not have hurt the king personally, but kept him tame in a cage, with his ordinary pleasures about him. And if he was privy to the cruel stroke intended at the Rye, or any way concurring, it was the necessity of affairs, such as are laws to a politician, and superior to all human engagements, that obliged him. And of that sort, the chief was self-preservation; for, though he had found the king very easily.

reconciled, as not being in his nature vindicative, it was possible that humour, as age advanced, might spend; and he had launched so deep in treason, as it seemed necessary that either the king or he should fall." Examen. p. 119.

Note XII.

What else inspires the tongues, and swells the breasts,
Of all thy bellowing renegado priests.-P. 438.

The keen and violent attack made upon the dissenting and fanatical clergy, in these and the following lines, called forth the indignation of the famous Edmund Hickeringill, who had been originally one of Cromwell's fighting saints, was at this time rector of All-Saints, in Colchester, and was notorious for composing fanatical pamphlets, songs, and sermons. This reverend gentleman did not let the sun go down without venting his ire; for, the very next day after the publication of " The Medal,” he sent to the press an answer to it, entitled, "The Mushroom, or a Satire against libelling Tories and prelatical Tantivies; in answer to a Satire against Sedition, called the Medal, by the author of Absalom and Achitophel; and here answered by the author of the Black Nonconformist, the next day after the publication of the Medal, to keep the sale thereof." To this unintelligible titlepage succeeds a prefatory epistle, and a poem almost equally unintelligible, as will appear from a few extracts:

Epistle to the Tories and Tantivies :

Instead of an epistle to you Tories,

I'H only preface here with some old stories.

"About the year of our Lord 1218, at Paris, in a synod, or convocation of the clergy, one that was appointed to clerum, or preach the convocation sermon, was put to his trumps, and much troubled in his gizzard what to say, or what subject to insist upon. Whereupon the devil, who always catches men napping, and ob serving the preacher to be melancholy and perplexed in mind, appears to him, as he sat in a brown study, and asked him why he was so careful what to preach? Say thus, quoth the devil-The princes of hell salute you, O the princes and prelates of the church, and gladly give you thanks, that, through your default and negligence, all souls go to hell, &c. &c. &c."

† See Vol. VI. p. 148,

The

You call the Popes hard names, bears, wolves, and sherks:
For mischief what is then; the bishop and his clerks,

At the land's end of England? those dire stones
On which ships, men, are lost, body and bones.

Time was, John Lawreat, when thy pretty muse,
Young, plump, and buxome, no man would refuse;
Though thou did'st poorly prostitute her store,
And, for vile pence, made her a hackney whore.
Against the rules of art, Phoebus is just ;
Her former lovers does her now disgust;
And I, that once in private loved her well,
Nay, sometimes smiled at her Achitophel,
I longed to kiss her kindly, and to greet
Her loving airs, so charming, and so sweet:
Nay, be not jealous, John, thou hast no cause,
This was whilst she within the modest laws
Of a true poet kept; she's nauseous grown,
Thou needs must blush to own her for thine own,
If thou has any grace; she's poor and spent,
So far from witty, that grows impudent.
O what a silly do, thou keep'st in vain,
About a medal thus to break thy brain;
The ancient Romans, so renowned for wars,
Kept medals of their friends and ancestors;
Art thou red-letter bred, of hopes from Rome
Yet against pictures speak'st, from whence they come?
A satyr once, satyrs could speak ere thine,

Why men did blow their nails, could not divine,

Nor why they did their porridge blow, was told,

One was to make them hot, the other cold:

At which news, satyr set up skut and run,

As if he had been frighted with a gun;

How would he run from thee, in naked truth,

Who blow'st both hot and cold from the same mouth!

"The Mushroom" concludes with the following awful threat; which, doubtless, must have greatly appalled Dryden:

I'll take thy laurells from thee, if I list,
An honour to my fairer brow when mist;
'Tis a day thrown away, (no more) think I,

No more it was, yet-diem perdidi,

Unless it be to make thy Satyre fell,

And Tonson begged this boon, which some think well.

Thy Satyre, three months old, a cripple ca ne

This day to hand, I now return it lame.

London, March 17. 1681..

The ingenious author tacks to his poem some rants of inimitable nonsense and scurrility in prose, in which he is pleased to inti

mate, that there is, from the wonderful celerity of its production, some ground for believing, that he himself, the author, had received miraculous aid.

"And if any man think or say, that it is a wonder if this book and verses were composed and writ in one day, and sent to the press, since it would employ the pen of a ready writer to copy this book in a day-it may be so.

"But it is a truth, as certain and stable as the sun in the firmament, and which, if need be, the bookseller, printer, and other worthy citizens that are privy to it, can avouch for an infallible truth-deo soli gloria-when a divine hand assists, one of despicable, dull, and inconsiderate parts, may do wonders, which God usually performs by most weak and unlikely instruments."

A single extract more may be added, to shew the high popularity of "Absalom and Achitophel" among the country gentlemen of England. "What sport it is to see an old country justice, with his eager chaplain at his elbow, putting his barnacles on his nose; bless us, how he gapes and admires Nat. Thomson, the addresses in the Gazette, Abhorrences, Heraclitus, or the Observator! But shew him but-" Absalom and Achitophel”—oh—then the man's horn mad, there's no holding him; then he hunts up, and though in his dining-room, how he spends, with double mouth, and whoops and hallows, just as he hunts his dogs when at full cry. "That-that-that-that-Rattle-Towzer-Bulldog-Thunderthat-that-" while the little trencher-chaplain echoes to him, and cries, "Amen."

Note XIII.

With which thou flatterest thy decrepid age.-P. 439. Shaftesbury was at this period little above sixty years old. But he was in a state of premature decrepitude; partly owing to natural feebleness of body, and partly to an injury which he received by an overturn in a Dutch carriage when he was in Holland, in 1660, as one of the parliamentary committee. He received on this occasion a wound, or bruise in his side, which came to an internal exulceration; so that in the year 1672 he was opened by Mr Knolls the surgeon, under the direction of Dr Willis, and an issue inserted for the regular discharge of the humour. This one of his biographers has called the "greatest cure that ever was done on the body of man." The royalists forgot the honour

+ Raleigh Redivivus, p. 48.

able cause in which this injury was received, nothing less than a journey undertaken to invite the king to repossession of his throne, when they made its consequences the subject of scurrilous jests. Dryden had already called Shaftesbury "the formidable cripple ;" and in the Essay of Satire, he sarcastically describes the contrast between the activity of his spirit, and the decrepitude of his person.

See Albion and Albanius, Vol. VII. p. 266.

THE END OF THE NINTH VOLUME.

EDINBURGH:
Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.