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Shaftesbury Cursed: Dryden's Revision of the
Achitophel Lines
by
Edward L. Saslow
The first edition of Absalom and Achitophel (November 1681) lacks sixteen lines to be found in the third (1681) and all subsequent editions,[1] four concerning Absalom (957-960) and these twelve in the portrait of Achitophel:
With publick Zeal to cancel private Crimes:
How safe is Treason, and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the Peoples Will:
Since in anothers guilt they find their own.
Yet, Fame deserv'd, no Enemy can grudge;
The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge.
In Israels Courts ne'r sat an Abbethdin
With more discerning Eyes, or Hands more clean:
Unbrib'd, unsought, the Wretched to redress;
Swift of Dispatch, and easie of Access. (180-191)
Professor Dearing believes that the first edition had the last six lines of the twelve (186-191) at the bottom of p. 6 and that it lacked both the first six (180-185) and the seven lines (173-179) that now precede them. Dryden presented the "first copy from the press" to Charles who objected to the six lines. Dryden "tears out C1, writes the [seven] new lines," to take up the space occupied by the cancelled 186-191, "and hands it to the printer. The compositor starts with this page, and when he comes to the foot turns it over, uses the first word on the front of the leaf ('Not') as catchword and resets the front of the leaf."[8] However Dryden "refuses to be censored. He also writes an address to the reader in which the penultimate paragraph makes much the same points" as the six lines had, and in the second edition he restores them and adds six more lines (180-185) "to improve the transition" between the seven new lines and the original six. As evidence that the ll. 173-179 are a late addition Dearing remarks on changes made in l. 179 in the first and third editions. Since the California volumes will be the standard edition of Dryden's works for many years to come, Dearing's argument requires careful consideration.
The events that Dearing supposes are individually unlikely, and next to impossible collectively. Dryden presents this first copy to Charles without any contemporary recording the fact in a diary or letter.[9] Charles takes time from his other activities to read the thousand lines of the poem with sufficient care to single out ten (Dearing applies his argument to ll. 957-960 as well) that he finds objectionable. Although he commands that Dryden strike out:
The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge.
In Israels Courts ne'r sat an Abbethdin
With more discerning Eyes, or Hands more clean:
Unbrib'd, unsought, the Wretched to redress;
Swift of Dispatch, and easie of Access. (186-191)
With vertues only proper to the Gown;
From Cockle, that opprest the Noble seed:
David, for him his tuneful Harp had strung,
And Heaven had wanted one Immortal song. (192-197)
What Dearing has Dryden do next seems most unlikely of all. He adds an address to the reader in which he puts back into the work those ideas that he has just taken out at Charles's order and then restores the offending lines themselves at the very first opportunity. Dryden's loyalty to Charles, his diffidence, and his financial dependence on governmental favor in the early 1680's need no urging, and twice in his career he explicitly states that he has himself censored his writings in response to the disapproval (either actual or expected) of the great. In the dedication to Limberham Dryden writes that he has "taken a becoming care, that those things which offended on the stage, might be either altered, or omitted in the press; for their authority is, and shall be, ever sacred to me, as much absent as present, and in all alterations of their fortune, who for those reasons have stopped its further appearance on the theatre. And whatsoever hindrance it has been to me in point of profit, many of my friends can bear me witness, that I have not once murmured against that decree." His words in the dedication to King Arthur are even more interesting: "[N]ot to offend the present times, nor a government which has hitherto protected me, I have been obliged so much to alter the first design, and take away so many beauties from the writing, that it is now no more what it was formerly, than the present ship of the Royal Sovereign, after so often taking down and altering, is the vessel it was at the first building."[11] If Dryden would sacrifice the "beauties" of his opera to avoid offending William's government can we suppose that he would restore the six lines and offend Charles himself?
Dryden's last minute change, I suggest, was the addition of lines 152-158 and 167-172. The obvious explanation for the four misprints on p. 6 is
Sagacious, Bold, and Turbulent of wit:
Restless, unfixt in Principles and Place;
In Power unpleas'd, impatient of Disgrace.
A fiery Soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the Pigmy Body to decay:
And o'r inform'd the Tenement of Clay. (152-158)
Bankrupt of Life, yet Prodigal of Ease?
And all to leave, what with his Toyl he won,
To that unfeather'd, two Leg'd thing, a Son:
Got, while his Soul did hudled Notions try;
And born a shapeless Lump, like Anarchy. (167-172)
Only this hypothesis or one very much like it will fit the facts of the case. As Dearing says, C1 is a cancellans. It was decided to cancel C1 before the preliminaries had been printed and for some reason, perhaps ease of binding, it was further decided to print "To the Reader" on A1r-v and to use A2 for the cancellans C1, with B quired within the A1.C1 fold. The title page was then printed on π2r and π1 was left blank. The original plan for printing the preliminaries was presumably to print the title page
If I am correct, Dryden's description of Shaftesbury as first printed read:
A Name to all succeeding Ages Curst. 151
A daring Pilot in extremity; 159
Pleas'd 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 ally'd;
And thin Partitions do their Bounds divide:
Else, why should he, with Wealth and Honour blest,
Refuse his Age the needful hours of Rest? 166
In Friendship False, Implacable in Hate: 173
To Compass this the Triple Bond he broke;
The Pillars of the publick Safety shook:
And fitted Israel for a Foreign Yoke.
Then, seiz'd with Fear, yet still affecting Fame,
Assum'd a Patriott's All-attoning Name.
So easie still it proves in Factious Times,
With publick Zeal to cancel private Crimes:
How safe is Treason, and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the Peoples Will:
Where Crouds can wink; and no offence be known,
Since in anothers guilt they find their own.
Yet, Fame deserv'd, no Enemy can grudge;
The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge.
In Israels Courts ne'r sat an Abbethdin
With more discerning Eyes, or Hands more clean:
Unbrib'd, unsought, the Wretched to redress;
Swift of Dispatch, and easie of Access.
Oh, had he been content to serve the Crown,
With vertues only proper to the Gown;
Or, had the rankness of the Soyl been freed
From Cockle, that opprest the Noble seed:
David, for him his tunefull Harp had strung,
And Heaven had wanted one Immortal song.
(150-151, 159-166, 173-197)
The additional thirteen lines are a lengthening at both ends of the original character of Shaftesbury. Unlike the earlier lines they are unambiguously and personally derogatory. They obscure the wit of the original character and destroy the function of Dryden's praise of Shaftesbury as Lord Chancellor. "The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge," Dryden had written, and it is as statesman that Shaftesbury is to be attacked throughout the rest of the poem. By praising him as judge and emphasizing the antithesis Dryden creates an appearance of fairness and hence gains a more ready belief for his attack. But the abuse of Shaftesbury's infirmities and of his son are of a different order than condemnation of his excessive wit and Machiavellian statesmanship, and in the final text praise and blame exist together but uncombined, like oil and water.[18] However, we should be sorry to lose the additional lines, and not simply for their intrinsic worth. The poem as a whole shows Achitophel to be guilty of such wickedness that we would wonder at a character of him which alleged no more than folly. Whether Dryden added the thirteen lines for this reason or for some other is a matter of speculation; that he did add the lines as the poem was going through the press is the most probable inference from the bibliographical and critical evidence before us.[19]
Notes
A Key (With the Whip), bound and continuously paged with A Whip for the Fools Back ([London], 1682), pp. 25-26. The identification of the author as "a Non-conformist Parson" is Dryden's in "An Epistle to the Whig" before The Medal. Samuel Halkett and John Laing, A Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature, II (1883), attribute the Key to Christopher Nesse.
Biographia Britannica, 2nd ed., IV (1789), 264*. See Edmond Malone, The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden (1800), I, i, 145-150; William Dougal Christie, A Life of Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury, 1621-1683 (1871), II, 177-178.
The volume collates π2A2 (A2 signed (C1) B2 (quired within A2) [C]2 (—C1) D-I2. The contents are π1 blank; π2r title page; A1r-v "To the Reader"; B1r-I2v text.
The Works of John Dryden, II (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1972), 411-412.
Professor Dearing does not explain why the compositor did this. Unless we are to assume simple inadvertence, may it not be that the catchword "Not" was used so that the cancellans leaf would be sure to find its correct place, before the cancellandum (which would later be removed), when the gatherings were put together?
One place we might expect to have such a presentation mentioned is Richard Mulys' letter of November 19, 1681 to a member of the Duke of Ormond's household (Historical Manuscripts Commission [of Great Britain], Ormonde, n.s., 6 [1911], 233). On Mulys' possession of "inside information" see Wallace Maurer, "Who Prompted Dryden to Write Absalom and Achitophel?", PQ, 40 (1961), 131-132.
The Works of John Dryden, ed. Sir Walter Scott, rev. George Saintsbury, VI (1883), 9-10; VIII (1884), 135.
James Kinsley, in fact, denies that any such awkwardness exists, The Poems of John Dryden (1958), IV, 1884.
See Macdonald, p. 23; Kinsley, IV, 1878; Calif. Works, II, 412. That C1v (with the changes in the first line indicated in Calif. Works, II, 412, 416) was printed from the standing type of the first edition is my own observation based on a comparison of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library copies of the first (first and third state) and second editions.
One explanation for why the type of only the outer forme of A1.C1 was left standing is that A1.C1 was printed, inner forme first, after E, and the decision to leave type standing was made after the type of the inner forme had been distributed.
"Almost irrelevant," because, presumably, a cut that destroyed the sense of its context would not have been made.
A. L. French, "Dryden, Marvell and Political Poetry," SEL, 8 (1968), 403-404, makes a similar point.
The reader may wonder at the shift in tone between l. 166 and l. 173, which follows it in my reconstruction. Perhaps the character of Shaftesbury (ll. 159-166) was itself absent from the earliest draft of the poem. Monmouth has no formal character, and in The Medal Dryden was content to delineate Shaftesbury by recounting his career, as he does in ll. 173-197 here. If Dryden had not originally given a character of Shaftesbury it would be logical for him to decide to add one after writing those of the leading Whigs, French's challenge to the unity of the Achitophel lines (loc. cit.), if accepted, would offer some support to this hypothesis of double revision.
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