Volume 9 / Part 2 — ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. PART SECOND.

The sensation produced in London, and indeed throughout the nation, by the first part of "Absalom and Achitophel," was so deep and extended, as never had been before occasioned by a similar performance. Neither was Dryden backward in pursuing the literary victory which he had obtained over the Whigs. He published "The Medal" upon the acquittal of the Earl of Shaftesbury, and the rejoicings with which his party had celebrated that memorable event. He even stooped to inferior game, and avenged himself of Shadwell's repeated attacks upon his literary reputation, his political principles, and his moral character, by the publication of "Mac Flecnoe," one of the most severe satires in the English language. Yet, according to the opinion of the royal party, more still remained to be done. The heads of Shaftesbury's faction had been held up to hatred, or ridicule, in "Absalom and Achitophel;" his own life had been more closely scrutinized, and his failings and crimes exposed more specifically in "The Medal;" but something, they conceived, was wanting, to silence and crush the underling writers and agitators of the party, and Dryden's assistance was again invoked for this purpose, as well as to celebrate some of the king's supporters and favourites, who were necessarily omitted in the original poem. But Dryden, being unwilling again to undertake a task upon which he had repeatedly laboured, deputed Nahum Tate to be his assistant in a second part of "Absalom and Achitophel;" reserving for himself only the execution of certain particular characters, and the general plan and revisal of the poem.

Of Tate, honoured with so high a trust by our great poet, biographers have preserved but a very imperfect memorial. He was the son of Dr Faithful Tate or Teat, was born in Ireland, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He wrote, or rather new modelled and translated, nine plays, of which, his alteration of King Lear still keeps the stage, in defiance of its gross departure from Shakespeare's plot and moral. During the reign of Charles and his successor, Tate was a keen Tory, as may be easily guessed from Dryden's employing him in the honourable task of writing a second part to his admirable satire; yet, upon Shadwell's death, he was made poet laureat to King William, and retained that office till his own decease. His talent for poetry amounted to cold mediocrity; had he been a man of fortune, it would have raised him to the rank of an easy sonnet writer, or a person of wit and honour about town. As he was very poor, it is no disgrace to his muse, that she left him in that indigence from which far more distinguished poetical merit has been unable to raise those who possessed it. Tate died in the Mint, where he had taken refuge from his creditors, on the 12th of August, 1715. He had long been in extreme want, having owed almost his sole subsistence to the patronage or charity of the Earl of Dorset. His poetry is multifarious; but consists chiefly of pieces upon occasional subjects, written to supply the immediate wants of the author. The Psalms, of which he executed a translation, in conjunction with Dr Brady, are still used in the church of England, although, in the opinion of many persons, they are inferior to the old version.[349]

The following continuation of "Absalom and Achitophel," owes all its spirit to the touches and additions of the author of the first part. Those lines, to the number of two hundred, beginning,

Next these a troop of busy spirits press;

and concluding,

To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee,

are entirely composed by Dryden, and contain some of the most masterly strokes of his pen. The portraits of Doeg and Og, under which names he stigmatized his personal antagonists, Settle and Shadwell, are executed with a strength of satirical colouring, unmatched in the English language. When we consider that Dryden had already, and very lately, made Shadwell the subject of an entire independent satire, it seems wonderful, with what ease he has executed a separate, and even more striking, caricature of his adversary, without repeating an idea or expression which he had used in "Mac Flecnoe." This is, indeed, partly owing to the dexterous division of his subject, as well as to the rich fertility of his vein of satire. For, after apparently exhausting upon his enemy all the opprobrium and contempt with which a literary character could be loaded, he seized this second occasion to brand and blacken his political and moral principles, and to exaggerate his former charge of dulness, by combining it with those of sedition, profaneness, and immorality. The characters of Ben Jochanan, Judas, Phaleg, &c. are all drawn with the same spirit and vivacity; and, on the whole, these lines are equal to any of the kind which our author ever wrote.

Had Dryden limited his assistance to furnishing this fragment, he would rather have injured than served his coadjutor, since it would have shone like a lamp in a dungeon, only to show the dreary waste in which it was inclosed. To prevent Tate from suffering too much by comparison, Dryden has obviously contributed much to the poem at large. Still, though Tate's lines have doubtless been weeded of much that would at once have ascertained their origin, our author's own couplet might have been addressed to Nahum on the assistance lent him. Dryden's spirit is

Much of the character of Corah, for example, is unquestionably Dryden's; so probably is that of Arod, and the verses generally descriptive of the Green-ribbon Club, which precede it. Such pungent satire is easily distinguished from the smooth insipid flow of other parts in which Dryden's corrections probably left nothing for censure, and which fate was unable to qualify with any thing entitled to praise. The character of Michal, of Dryden as Asaph, and some of the encomiastic passages, seem to show the extent of Tate's powers, when unsupported by the vivifying assistance of his powerful auxiliary. They are just decently versified, but flat, common-place, and uninteresting.

The second part of "Absalom and Achitophel" shared the fate of most continuations, and did not attain the popularity of the original. This was not entirely owing to the general inferiority of the poetry; for there was enough of personal satire, and that immediately flowing from the keen pen of Dryden, to secure the attention both of friends and foes; but the parallel between the heroes of Scripture and the characters of the day, however striking at first, did not bear to be too long protracted. When the original comparison was made, its aptness at once pleased the imagination, and arrested the attention; but when prolonged in a second part, readers began to see there was little wit in continuing to draw out the allusion, till it consisted in nothing more than the invention of a Jewish name for a British author or statesman; the attempt at finding prototypes in Scripture for every modern character being necessarily abandoned. Besides, those who took it upon them to answer Dryden, had in general made use of the vehicle of satire which he had invented; and as, in the eyes of the public, the theme became stale and tarnished by repetition, his antagonists did him that injury by their stupidity, which their wit was unequal to accomplish. Add to all this, that whole lines, and even longer passages, not to mention images and sentiments, are by Tate, in his poverty of ideas, transferred from the first part of the satire to the second;[350] and we must allow, that the latter is deficient in the captivating grace of novelty.

The second part of "Absalom and Achitophel" appeared about November 10th, 1682, in folio. Tonson is the publisher.