English verse allegory, humorous or serious, political or moral, has
deep roots; a reprint such as the present is clearly no place for a
discussion of the subject at large:[1] it need only be recalled here
that to the age that produced _The Pilgrim's Progress_ the art form was
not new. Throughout his life Dryden had his enemies, Prior and Montague
in their satire of _The Hind and the Panther_, for example. The general
circumstances under which Dryden wrote _Absalom and Achitophel_,
familiar enough and easily accessible, are therefore recalled only
briefly below. Information is likewise readily available on his use of
Biblical allegory.[2]

[Footnote 1: Cf. E. D. Leyburn, _Satiric Allegory, Mirror of Man_
(New Haven, 1956).]

[Footnote 2: e.g., _Absalom's Conspiracy_, a tract tracing how the
Bible story came to be used for allegorical purposes. See _The
Harleian Miscellany_ (1811), VIII, 478-479; and R. F. Jones, "The
Originality of 'Absalom and Achitophel,'" _Modern Language Notes_,
XLVI (April, 1931) 211-218.]

We are here concerned with three representative replies to _Absalom
and Achitophel_: their form, their authors, and details of their
publication. Settle's poem was reprinted with one slight alteration
a year after its first appearance; the _Reflections_ has since been
reprinted in part, Pordage's poem not at all. _Absalom Senior_ has been
chosen because, of the many verse pieces directed against Dryden's poem,
it is of the greatest intrinsic merit and shows the reverse side of the
medal, as it were, to that piece; the second is given, not for any
literary merit it may possess--indeed, from its first appearance it has