Note 481 — EPISTLE TO THE WHIGS.
Reading edition
As I have not as yet been able to meet with the "Whip and Key," I subjoin the account which Mr Malone has given of it: "A Whip for the Fool's Back, who styles honourable marriage a cursed confinement, in his profane poem of Absalom and Achitophel;" and this was followed, on the 18th of January, by "A Key (with the Whip) to open the mystery and iniquity of the poem called Absalom and Achitophel, shewing its scurrilous reflections on both king and kingdom." In the latter piece, which was written by the same hand as the former, the author's principal object is to show, that Dryden's Jewish names were not well chosen. As probably very few of my readers have ever seen this poem, I will add a short extract:
"How well this Hebrew name with sense doth sound, A fool's my brother,[483] though in wit profound! Most wicked wits are the devil's chiefest tools, Which, ever in the issue, God befools. Can thy compare, vile varlet, once hold true, Of the loyal Lord, and this disloyal Jew? Was e'er our English Earl under disgrace, And, as unconscionable, put out of place? Hath he laid lurking in his country-house, To plot rebellions, as one factious? Thy bog-trot bloodhounds hunted have this stag, Yet cannot fasten their foul fangs,—they flag. Why did'st not thou bring in thy evidence, With them, to rectify the brave jury's sense, And so prevent the Ignoramus?—nay, Thou wast cock-sure he would be damn'd for aye, Without thy presence;—thou wast then employ'd To brand him 'gainst he came to be destroy'd: 'Forehand preparing for the hangman's axe, Had not the witnesses been found so lax." Malone's Life of Dryden, Vol. I. p. 159.
It must also be noticed, that the author of the "Whip and Key" opens his poem with the ten first lines of "Absalom and Achitophel."