" But these attempts to hurl back the
satire at him by whom it was first launched, succeeded but
indifferently, and might have convinced the authors that the charm of
"Absalom and Achitophel" lay not in the plan, but in the power of
execution. It was easy to give Jewish titles to their heroes, but the
difficulty lay in drawing their characters with the force and precision
of their prototype. Buckingham himself was rash enough to engage in this
conflict; but, whether his anger blunted his wit, or that his share in
the "Rehearsal" was less even than what is generally supposed, he loses,
by his "Reflections on Absalom and Achitophel," the credit we are
disposed to allow him for talent on the score of that lively piece.[10]
A nonconformist clergyman published two pieces, which I have never seen,
one entitled, "A Whip for the Fool's Back, who styles honourable
Marriage a cursed confinement, in his profane Poem of Absalom and
Achitophel;" the other, "A Key, with the Whip, to open the Mystery and
Iniquity of the Poem called Absalom and Achitophel." Little was to be
hoped or feared from poems bearing such absurd titles: I throw, however,
into the note, the specimen which Mr. Malone has given of their
contents.[11] The reverend gentleman having announced, that Achitophel,
in Hebrew, means "the brother of a fool," Dryden retorted, with infinite
coolness, that in that case the author of the discovery might pass with
his readers for next akin, and that it was probably the relation which
made the kindness.
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