United States or Germany ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The latter was Dryden's reply to the Rehearsal.. Absalom and Ahitophel was followed by the Medal, a continuation of the same subject, and Mac Flecknoe, a personal onslaught on the "true blue Protestant poet" Thomas Shadwell, a political and literary foe of Dryden.
He who learns from his companion a single chapter, a single rule, a single verse, a single expression, or even a single letter, ought to pay him honor, for so we find with David, King of Israel, who learned only two things from Ahitophel, and yet regarded him as his master, his guide, and familiar friend, as it is said, "But it was thou, a man, mine equal, my guide, and my familiar friend."
They were great artists, as we can see clearly enough in Absalom and Ahitophel, or in Candide, but their genius lay in other directions. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin' is a great judgement of life, one very wholesome and necessary for all time, but it was not the mood of Othello or of Hamlet.
He was at his best in satirical character-sketches, such as the brilliant portraits in this poem of Shaftesbury, as the false counselor Ahitophel, and of the Duke of Buckingham as Zimri.
If we turn to the great English satirists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, we find that they had this rough, but firm, grasp of the size and strength, the value and the best points of their adversary. Dryden, before hewing Ahitophel in pieces, gives a splendid and spirited account of the insane valour and inspired cunning of the "daring pilot in extremity,"
"It is quite true," says Peter of Vaulx-Cernay, "that they found there and, what is worse, amongst the prelates certain folk who opposed the cause of the faith, and labored for the restoration of the said counts; but the counsel of Ahitophel did not prevail, for the lord pope, in agreement with the greater and saner part of the council, decreed that the city of Toulouse and other territories conquered by the crusaders should be ceded to the Count of Montfort, who, more than any other, had borne himself right valiantly and loyally in the holy enterprise; and, as for the domains which Count Raymond possessed in Provence, the sovereign pontiff decided that they should be reserved to him, in order to make provision, either with part or even the whole, for the son of this count, provided always that, by sure signs of fealty and good behavior, he should show himself worthy of compassion."
The subject of Absalom and Ahitophel the first part of which appeared in 1681 was the alleged plot of the Whig leader, the Earl of Shaftesbury, to defeat the succession of the Duke of York, afterward James II., by securing the throne to Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II. The parallel afforded by the story of Absalom's revolt against David was wrought out by Dryden with admirable ingenuity and keeping.
An appointment as secretary to a special ambassador opened up to him a diplomatic career; but his sturdy commonsense showed him his unfitness for such labors. After his visit to Prussia he returned to Oxford, and there, in 1667, in the course of his medical work, he met Anthony Ashley, the later Lord Shaftesbury and the Ahitophel of Dryden's great satire.
If we turn to the great English satirists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, we find that they had this rough but firm grasp of the size and strength, the value and the best points of their adversary. Dryden, before hewing Ahitophel in pieces, gives a splendid and spirited account of the insane valour and inspired cunning of the 'daring pilot in extremity,
Now, is it not an argument from minor to major, that if David, the King of Israel, who learned only two things from Ahitophel, regarded him as his master, guide, and familiar friend, he who learns from his fellow a chapter, rule, verse, expression, or even a single letter, is bound to pay him honor.
Word Of The Day