them over to the tender mercies of his brother, who had all his faults,
and some, in addition, of his own, without any of his merits. There was
but one hope, and that turned out a mere aurora borealis, connected with
the Duke of Monmouth, who, through his extraction by a bend sinister
from Charles, as well as through his popular manners, Protestant
principles, and gracious exterior, had become such a favourite with the
people, that strong efforts were made to exclude the Duke of York, and
to exalt him to the succession. These, however, were unsuccessful; and
Shaftesbury, their leading spirit, was accused of treason, and confined
to the Tower. It was at this crisis, when the nobility of the land were
divided, when its clergy were divided, when its literary men were
divided,--not in a silent feud, but in a raging rupture, that Dryden,
partly at the instigation of the Court, partly from his own impulse,
lifted up his powerful pen,--the sceptre of the press,--and, with
wonderful facility and felicity, wrote, and on the 17th November 1681,
published, the satire of "Absalom and Achitophel." Its poetical
merits--the choice of the names and period, although this is borrowed
from a previous writer--the appearance of the poem at the most critical
hour of the crisis--and, above all, the portraitures of character, so
easy and so graphic, so free and so fearless, distinguished equally by
their animus and their animation, and with dashes of generous painting
relieving and diversifying the general caricature of the
style,--rendered it instantly and irresistibly popular. It excited one
universal cry--from its friends, of admiration, and from its enemies, of
rage. Imitations and replies multiplies around it, and sounded like
assenting or like angry echoes. It did not, indeed, move the grand jury
to condemn Shaftesbury; but when, on his acquittal, a medal was struck
by his friends, bearing on one side the head and name of Shaftesbury,
and on the other, the sun obscured by a cloud rising over the Tower and
City of London, Dryden's aid was again solicited by the Court and the