Anti-Achitophel | Page 2

Alliance of
England, Holland, and Sweden against France (1677/8, as in _Absalom
and Achitophel_, line 175) but either to a treatise which had occasioned
some stir in the scientific world some twenty years previously: "the
Delphic problem" proposed by Hobbes to the Royal Society on the
duplication of the cube, which might have come to the ears of
Buckingham as well as to those of the court,[3] or perhaps to the triple
confederacy of Essex, Halifax, and Sunderland.[4] But to the
Restoration reader the phrase "Three-fold Might" would rather have
suggested the Triple Alliance, to which Dryden reverts in _The Medal_
(lines 65-68) when he claims that Shaftesbury, "thus fram'd for ill, ...
loos'd our Triple Hold" on Europe.[5]
[Transcriber's Footnote (A):
This Introduction was written in 1959.
Volume II of the California Edition (_The Works of John Dryden_)
was published in 1972.]
[Footnote 3: Hobbes, _English Works_ (1845), ed. by Molesworth, VII,
59-68.]
[Footnote 4: H. C. Foxcroft, _A Character of the Trimmer_ (Cambridge,
England, 1946), p. 70. This book is an abridged version of the same
author's _Life and Works of Halifax_ (1897).]
[Footnote 5: Cf. the phrase "Twofold might" in _Absalom and
Achitophel_, I, 175.]
Evidence against Buckingham's authorship, on the other hand, is
comparatively strong. The piece does not appear in his collected
_Works_ (1704-5). It surely would have been included even though he
had at first wished to claim any credit from its publication and later
have wished to disown it. Little connection, furthermore, will be found
between the _Reflections_ and the rest of his published verse or with
the plays, including _The Rehearsal_, if the latter be his alone, which is
doubtful.
_Poetical Reflections_ has been ascribed to Edward Howard. W.

Thomas Lowndes in his _Bibliographer's Manual_ (1864; II, 126)
assigned to this minor writer, on the authority of an auction note, the
little collection _Poems and Essays, with a Paraphrase on Cicero's
Laelius, or, Of Friendship ... By a Gentleman_ (1674), and G.
Thorn-Drury, on the equally debatable evidence of an anonymous
manuscript ascription on the title page of his own copy, ascribed the
_Poetical Reflections_ to Howard.[6] An examination of the _Poems
and Essays_, however, reveals no point of resemblance with our poem.
How, then, does Howard fit into the picture? He was in the rival camp
to Dryden and was a friend of Martin Clifford[7] and of Thomas Sprat,
then Buckingham's chaplain: these three have been thought to be jointly
responsible for _The Rehearsal_. Sprat had published a poem of
congratulation to Howard on Howard's _The British Princes_ (1669),
the latter a long pseudo-epic of the Blackmore style in dreary couplets
which, again, provides no parallel with the _Reflections_. And what of
Howard's plays? Many of these were written in the 1660's during his
poetic apprenticeship; none seems akin to our poem. Whereas, as
shown in the Table of Allusions below, two independent readers often
agreed over the identities of many characters in Settle's poem,
Restoration readers at large were reticent over the authorship of the
_Reflections_. Hugh Macdonald, in his useful _John Dryden: a
Bibliography_ (1939), was wise to follow their example, and it seems
rash, therefore, to propose any new candidate in the face of such
negative evidence. The poem exists in two states, apparently differing
only in the title page.
[Footnote 6: _Review of English Studies_, I (1925) 82-83.]
[Footnote 7: In his _Notes upon Mr. Dryden's Poems in Four Letters_
(1687) Clifford, in 16 pages, accuses Dryden of plagiarism, especially
in _Almanzor_.]
Evidence of Settle's authorship of _Absalom Senior_, on the other hand,
is neither wanting nor disputed. We have had to wait until our own
century for the pioneer work on this writer, since he cannot have been
considered a sufficiently major poet by Samuel Johnson's sponsors, and
Langbaine's account is sketchy. In a periodical paper[8] Macdonald

summarized supplementary evidence on the dates of composition of
Settle's poem; he was working on it in January 1681/2, and it was
published on the following April 6. Lockyer, Dean of Peterborough,
asserted to Joseph Spence, who includes the rumor in _Anecdotes_,
that Settle was assisted by Clifford and Sprat and by "several best
hands of those times";[9] but Spence is notoriously unreliable. In the
lack of other evidence, then, it seems best to take the poem as wholly
Settle's. It needs only to add a few words on its textual states. The First
Edition, here reproduced, seems to exist in a single impression, and
likewise the Second Edition of the Settle (1682, in quarto) seems to
have been struck off in a single textual state. Of its individual variants
from the First Edition only the following seem of any significance and,
since there is no reason to suppose that it was printed from any copy
other than the First, they may