Another backward to the Tower would go,
And slowly eats his way against the wind;
But the main body of the marching foe
Against the imperial palace is designed.

Now day appears; and with the day the King,
Whose early care had robbed him of his rest;
Far off the cracks of falling houses ring,

And shrieks of subjects pierce his tender breast.

Near as he draws, thick harbingers of smoke
With gloomy pillars cover all the place;
Whose little intervals of night are broke

By sparks that drive against his sacred face.

More than his guards his sorrows made him known, And pious tears which down his cheeks did shower ; The wretched in his grief forgot their own ;

So much the pity of a king has power.

He wept the flames of what he loved so well,
And what so well had merited his love;
For never prince in grace did more excel,
Or royal city more in duty strove.

ACHITOPHEL.

[From Absalom and Achitophel, Part 1; 1681.]

Of these the false Achitophel1 was first,
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;
A fiery soul which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.

A daring pilot in extremity,

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please,
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son,
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state;
To compass this the triple bond he broke1,
The pillars of the public safety shook,
And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke;

Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.

So easy still it proves in factious times 2
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.

How safe is treason and how sacred ill,

Where none can sin against the people's will,
Where crowds can wink and no offence be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own!
Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.

In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abbethdin

With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress,

Swift of despatch and easy of access.

1 The triple bond is the Triple Alliance of 1667, undone by the alliance concluded with France in 1670, when Shaftesbury was a member of the Cabal.

2 This and the following lines, referring to Shaftesbury's conduct as Lord Chancellor, were inserted in the second edition. The Abbethdin was the Jewish Chief Justice.

Oh! had he been content to serve the crown
With virtues only proper to the gown,

Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle that oppressed the noble seed,
David for him his tuneful harp had strung
And Heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.
Achitophel, grown weary to possess
A lawful fame and lazy happiness,

Disdained the golden fruit to gather free,
And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.
Now, manifest of crimes contrived long since,
He stood at bold defiance with his Prince,
Held up the buckler of the people's cause
Against the crown, and skulked behind the laws.
The wished occasion of the Plot he takes 1;
Some circumstances finds, but more he makes ;
By buzzing emissaries fills the ears

Of listening crowds with jealousies and fears
Of arbitrary counsels brought to light,
And proves the King himself a Jebusite.2

Weak arguments! which yet he knew full well
Were strong with people easy to rebel.

For, governed by the moon, the giddy Jews

Tread the same track when she the prime renews:
And once in twenty years their scribes record,
By natural instínct they change their lord.

To further this, Achitophel unites

The malcontents of all the Israelites,

Whose differing parties he could wisely join
For several ends to serve the same design;

1 The Plot is the Popish Plot. 2 Jebusites

=

Roman Catholics.

The best, (and of the princes some were such,)
Who thought the power of monarchy too much ;
Mistaken men and patriots in their hearts,
Not wicked, but seduced by impious arts;
By these the springs of property were bent
And wound so high they cracked the government.
The next for interest sought to embroil the state
To sell their duty at a dearer rate,

And make their Jewish markets of the throne,
Pretending public good to serve their own.
Others thought kings an useless heavy load,
Who cost too much and did too little good.
These were for laying honest David by
On principles of pure good husbandry.

With them joined all the haranguers of the throng
That thought to get preferment by the tongue.
Who follow next a double danger bring,
Not only hating David, but the King;
The Solymaean rout1, well versed of old
In godly faction and in treason bold,
Cowering and quaking at a conqueror's sword,
But lofty to a lawful prince restored,
Saw with disdain an Ethnic plot begun

And scorned by Jebusites to be outdone.

2

Hot Levites headed these; who, pulled before
From the ark which in the Judges' days they bore,
Resumed their cant, and with a zealous cry
Pursued their old beloved theocracy,

Where Sanhedrin and priest enslaved the nation,
And justified their spoils by inspiration;

For who so fit for reign as Aaron's race,

If once dominion they could found in grace?
These led the pack; though not of surest scent,
Yet deepest mouthed against the government.

1 The Solymaean rout is the rabble of the City. (Hierosolyma, or Jerusalem = London.)

A numerous host of dreaming saints succeed
Of the true old enthusiastic breed:

'Gainst form and order they their power employ,
Nothing to build and all things to destroy.
But far more numerous was the herd of such
Who think too little and who talk too much.
These out of mere instinct, they knew not why,
Adored their fathers' God and property,
And by the same blind benefit of Fate
The Devil and the Jebusite did hate :
Born to be saved even in their own despite,
Because they could not help believing right.
Such were the tools; but a whole Hydra more
Remains of sprouting heads too long to score.
Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri1 stand,
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over violent or over civil

That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;

Nothing went unrewarded but desert.

Beggared by fools whom still he found too late,

He had his jest, and they had his estate.

He laughed himself from Court; then sought relief

By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief:

1 Zimri is George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, a member of the Cabal, but after his dismissal a member of the Opposition. He had ridiculed Dryden as Bayes in The Rehearsal.