poet laureate. In 1681 appeared Absalom and Achitophel, a brilliant satire on the Popish Plot, followed in 1682 by The Medal. In the same year appeared Mac Flecknoe, an answer to Shadwell's attacks on Dryden, and the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, of which the greater part was written by Tate. In November, 1682, the Religio Laici, a poetical defence of the Church of England, was published. In 1684-5 he published two volumes of miscellaneous poems. After the accession of James, Dryden became a Roman Catholic, and in 1687 he printed The Hind and the Panther, a defence of the Roman Church. Among his minor poems the best known is Alexander's Feast, written in 1697. He also translated works of Virgil and Ovid. His famous essays were written as prefaces to his various plays and poems.

Dryden is said to have been the first English man of letters to make a livelihood by his pen without being dependent on patrons.

ALL FOR LOVE

ACT I. SCENE 1.

Antony has sacrificed fame and honour in order to live in luxury in Egypt. Ventidius has come to try and rouse him. Enter ANTONY, walking with a disturbed motion before he speaks.

Ant. THEY tell me 'tis my birthday, and I'll keep it With double pomp of sadness.

'Tis what the day deserves which gave me breath. Why was I raised the meteor of the world

Hung in the skies, and blazing as I travelled

Till all my fires were spent; and then cast downward To be trod out by Caesar?

Vent. (aside).

Ant.

On my soul

Count thy gains.

"Tis mournful, wondrous mournful!

Now, Antony, wouldst thou be born for this?

Glutton of fortune, thy devouring youth
Has starved thy wanting age.

Vent. (aside). How sorrow shakes him!

So now the tempest tears him up by the roots
And on the ground extends the noble ruin.

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(ANT. having thrown himself down.)

Lie there, thou shadow of an emperor ;
The place thou pressest on thy mother earth

Is all thy empire now now it contains thee;

Some few days hence, and then 'twill be too large
When thou'rt contracted in thy narrow urn,
Shrunk to a few cold ashes; then Octavia 1
(For Cleopatra will not live to see it)—

Octavia then will have thee all her own,

And bear thee in her widowed hand to Caesar;
Caesar will weep, the crocodile will weep,

To see his rival of the universe

Lie still and peaceful there. I'll think no more on 't.
Ant. Give me some music; look that it be sad;
I'll sooth my melancholy, till I swell

And burst myself with sighing.

"Tis somewhat to my humour: stay, I fancy

I'm now turned wild, a commoner of nature;
Of all forsaken and forsaking all;

Live in a shady forest's sylvan scene;

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[Soft music.

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Stretched at my length beneath some blasted oak,

I lean my head upon the mossy bark

And look just of a piece as I grew from it;
My uncombed locks, matted like mistletoe
Hang o'er my hoary face; a murm'ring brook
Runs at my foot.

Vent. (aside).

Myself there too.

Methinks, I fancy

1 Caesar's sister and Antony's wife.

Ant.

The herd come jumping by me And fearless quench their thirst, while I look on, And take me for their fellow-citizen.

More of this image, more; it lulls my thoughts.

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[Soft music again.

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL

PART I, LINES 146-302

Charles II wished to restore the Roman Catholic religion in
England. Shaftesbury came forward as champion of the
Protestant cause, and supported Titus Oates, who professed to
have discovered a 'Popish Plot'. Dryden, in this poem, attacks
Shaftesbury and the Protestant party. Achitophel represents
Shaftesbury himself, and Absalom, the Duke of Monmouth.
The poem opens with an account of the King's opponents.
SOME by their Monarch's fatal mercy grown
From pardoned rebels kinsmen to the throne
Were raised in power and public office high;
Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men could tie.
Of these the false Achitophel was first,
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
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 the pigmy body to decay

And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity,

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Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high, 160 He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied

And thin partitions do their bounds divide;

Else, why should he, with wealth and honour 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,
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state;
To compass this the triple bond he broke,
The pillars of the public safety shook,
And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke;

Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.
So easy still it proves in factious times
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.
How safe is treason and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the people's will,
Where crowds can wink and no offence be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own!
Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abbethdin
With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress,
Swift of despatch and easy of access.
Oh! had he been content to serve the crown
With virtues only proper to the gown,
Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle that oppressed the noble seed,
David for him his tuneful harp had strung
And Heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land.

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Achitophel, grown weary to possess

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A lawful fame and lazy happiness,
Disdained the golden fruit to gather free

And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.
Now, manifest of crimes contrived long since,
He stood at bold defiance with his Prince,
Held up the buckler of the people's cause
Against the crown, and skulked behind the laws.
The wished occasion of the Plot he takes;
Some circumstances finds, but more he makes;
By buzzing emissaries fills the ears

Of listening crowds with jealousies and fears

Of arbitrary counsels brought to light,
And proves the King himself a Jebusite.
Weak arguments! which yet he knew full well
Were strong with people easy to rebel.

For governed by the moon, the giddy Jews
Tread the same track when she the prime renews:
And once in twenty years their scribes record,
By natural instinct they change their lord.
Achitophel still wants a chief, and none
Was found so fit as warlike Absalon.
Not that he wished his greatness to create,
For politicians neither love nor hate;
But, for he knew his title not allowed

Would keep him still depending on the crowd,
That kingly power, thus ebbing out, might be
Drawn to the dregs of a democracy.

Him he attempts with studied arts to please
And sheds his venom in such words as these:

'Auspicious prince, at whose nativity Some royal planet ruled the southern sky, Thy longing country's darling and desire,

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