My comfort is, their manifest prejudice to my cause will render their judgment of less authority against me. Yet if a poem have a genius, it will force its own reception in the world; for there is a sweetness in good verse, which tickles even while it hurts, and no man can be heartily angry with him who pleases him against his will. The commendation of adversaries is the greatest triumph of a writer, because it never comes unless extorted. But I can be satisfied on more easy terms. If I happen to please the more moderate sort, I shall be sure of an honest party, and in all probability, of the best judges; for the least concerned are commonly the least corrupt: and I confess I have laid in for those, by rebating the satire (where justice would allow it,) from carrying too sharp an edge. They who can criticize so weakly as to imagine I have done my worst, may be convinced, at their own cost, that I can write severely with more ease than I can gently. I have but laughed at some men's follies, when I could have declaimed against their vices; and other men's virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes.

And now, if you are a malicious reader, I expect you should return upon me, that I affect

therefore, our author means, that the longest chapter of Deuteronomy could not furnish the fanaticks with curses sufficient to express their hatred of him who exposed and satirized spurious pretenders to patriotism.

to be thought more impartial than I am. But if men are not to be judged by their professions, GOD forgive you Commonwealths-men for professing so plausibly for the government. You cannot be so unconscionable as to charge me for not subscribing of my name; for that would reflect too grossly upon your own party, who never dare, though they have the advantage of a jury to secure them. If you like not my poem, the fault may possibly be in my writing (though it is hard for an author to judge against himself); but more probably it is in your morals, which cannot bear the truth of it.

8

The violent on both sides will condemn the character of Absalom, as either too favourable or too hardly drawn ; but they are not the violent whom I desire to please. The fault on the right hand is to extenuate, palliate, and indulge; and to confess freely, I have endeavoured to commit it. Besides the respect which I owe his birth, I have a greater for his heroick virtues; and David' him

7 Alluding to the juries returned by the popular Sheriffs, Bethell, Cornish, &c. consisting of their own partizans.-On the 15th of October, 1681, an indictment for High Treason was preferred at the Old Baily against John Rouse, and supported by eight witnesses; but the Grand Jury would not find the bill: and eight days after this poem was published, the Grand Jury of Middlesex returned Ignoramus on a bill of indictment for High Treason preferred against the Earl of Shaftesbury.

8 The Duke of Monmouth.

9 King Charles II.

self could not be more tender of the

young man's

life, than I would be of his reputation. But since the most excellent natures are always the most casy, and as being such, are the soonest perverted by ill counsels, especially when baited with fame and glory, it is no more a wonder that he with stood not the temptations of Achitophel,' than it was for Adam not to have resisted the two devils, the serpent, and the woman. The conclusion of the story I purposely forbore to prosecute, because I could not obtain from myself to shew Absalom unfortunate. The frame of it was cut out but for a picture to the waist; and if the draught be so far true, it is as much as I designed.

Were I the inventor, who am only the historian, I should certainly conclude the piece with the reconcilement of Absalom to David; and who knows but this may come to pass? Things were not brought to an extremity where I left the story; there seems yet to be room left for a composure; hereafter, there may only be for pity. I have not so much as an uncharitable wish against Achitophel, but am content to be accused of a goodnatured errour, and to hope with Origen,* that the devil himself may at last be saved: for which

I

Antony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury.

* This learned father, who lived in the third century, and who very early was styled a schismatick, (almost all his books being ordered to be burnt by Pope Gelasius in 494,) did not experience from the catholick church so much charity as he is said to have had even for the spiritual enemy of mankind; for the famous John Picus, of Mirandula,

reason, in this poem, he is neither brought to set his house in order, nor to dispose of his person afterwards, as he in wisdom shall think fit.* GOD is infinitely merciful; and his vicegerent is only not so, because he is not infinite.

The true end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction; and he who writes honestly is no more an enemy to the offender, than the physician to the patient, when he prescribes harsh remedies to an inveterate disease: for those are only in order to prevent the chirurgeon's work of an ense rescindendum, which I wish not to my very énemies. To conclude all: if the body politick have any analogy to the natural, in my weak judgment an act of oblivion were as necessary in a hot distempered state, as an opiate would be in a raging fever.

having asserted and published at Rome in 1487, among his nine hundred propositions, that it is more reasonable to believe Origen saved, than to think him damned, the masters in divinity censured him for it, asserting, that his proposition was rash, blameable, savouring of heresy, and contrary to the determination of the catholick church.

Among other opinions which the church considered as heretical, Origen denied the eternity of hell-torments, being of opinion, that after having been punished for some ages, even damned spirits will be translated into a place of infinite bliss.

* "And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father." 2 Sam. c. xvii. v. 23.

EPISTLE TO THE WHIGS,

PREFIXED TO

THE MEDAL,

A SATIRE AGAINST SEDITION.

FOR to whom can I dedicate this poem with so much justice as to you? It is the representation of your own hero; it is the picture drawn at length, which you admire and prize so much in little. None of your ornaments are wanting; neither the landscape of the Tower, nor the rising sun, nor the Anno Domini of your new Sovereign's coronation. This must needs be a grateful under

2 Of the bill preferred against Lord Shaftesbury for High Treason in November, 1681, an account has already been given. See p. 81. 81. On the Jury's refusing to find the bill, the acclamations by the people in the court lasted an hour, as appears from a letter of Sir Leoline Jenkins to the Prince of Orange, quoted by Dalrymple. To perpetuate the memory of this event, a medal was struck with Shaftesbury's head on one side; on the reverse, a view of the city of London, with a rising sun; and in the exergue, the word Latamur at the top, and at the bottom, 24 Nov. 1681. This gave occasion to our author's poem with the same title, which was first published in quarto in 1682.