self could not be more tender of the young man's life, than I would be of his reputation. But since the most excellent natures are always the most easy, and as being such, are the soonest perverted by ill counsels, especially when baited with fame and glory, it is no more a wonder that he withstood not the temptations of Achitophel,' than it was for Adam not to have resisted the two devils, the serpent, and the woman. The conclusion of the story I purposely forbore to prosecute, because I could not obtain from myself to shew Absalom unfortunate. The frame of it was cut out but for a picture to the waist; and if the draught be so far true, it is as much as I designed.

Were I the inventor, who am only the historian, I should certainly conclude the piece with the reconcilement of Absalom to David; and who knows but this may come to pass? Things were not brought to an extremity where I left the story; there seems yet to be room left for a composure; hereafter, there may only be for pity. I have not so much as an uncharitable wish against Achitophel, but am content to be accused of a goodnatured errour, and to hope with Origen,* that the devil himself may at last be saved: for which

I

Antony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury.

* This learned father, who lived in the third century,

and who very early was styled a schismatick, (almost all his

books being ordered to be burnt by Pope Gelasius in 494) and he wrote= did not experience from the catholick church so much charity as he is said to have had even for the spiritual enemy of mankind; for the famous John Picus, of Mirandula,

six thousand

rome el. sures us, no than

less

reason, in this poem, he is neither brought to set
his house in order, nor to dispose of his person
afterwards, as he in wisdom shall think fit.* GOD
is infinitely merciful; and his vicegerent is only
not so, because he is not infinite.

The true end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction; and he who writes honestly is no more an enemy to the offender, than the physician to the patient, when he prescribes harsh remedies to an inveterate disease: for those are only in order to prevent the chirurgeon's work of an ense rescindendum, which I wish not to my very enemies. To conclude all: if the body politick have any analogy to the natural, in my weak judgment an act of oblivion were as necessary in a hot distempered state, as an opiate would be in a raging fever.

having asserted and published at Rome in 1487, among
his nine hundred propositions, that it is more reasonable to
believe Origen saved, than to think him damned, the masters
in divinity censured him for it, asserting, that his propo-
sition was rash, blameable, savouring of heresy, and contrary
to the determination of the catholick church.

Among other opinions which the church considered as
heretical, Origen denied the eternity of hell-torments,
being of opinion, that after having been punished for some
ages, even damned spirits will be translated into a place
of infinite bliss.

* "And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father."

2 Sam. c. xvii. v. 23.

EPISTLE TO THE WHIGS,

PREFIXED TO

THE MEDAL,

A SATIRE AGAINST SEDITION.4

FOR to whom can I dedicate this poem with so much justice as to you? It is the representation of your own hero; it is the picture drawn at length, which you admire and prize so much in little. None of your ornaments are wanting; neither the landscape of the Tower, nor the rising sun, nor the Anno Domini of your new Sovereign's coronation. This must needs be a grateful under

2 Of the bill preferred against Lord Shaftesbury for High Treason in November, 1681, an account has already been given. See p. 81. On the Jury's refusing to find the bill, the acclamations by the people in the court lasted an hour, as appears from a letter of Sir Leoline Jenkins to the Prince of Orange, quoted by Dalrymple. To perpetuate the memory of this event, a medal was struck with Shaftesbury's head on one side; on the reverse, a view of the city of London, with a rising sun; and in the exergue, the word Latamur at the top, and at the bottom, 24 Nov. 1681. This gave occasion to our author's poem with the same title, which was first published in quarto in 1682.

taking to your whole party, especially to those
who have not been so happy as to purchase the
original. I hear the graver has made a good
market of it; all his Kings are bought up already,
or the value of the remainder so enhanced, that
many a poor Polander, who would be glad to
worship the image, is not able to go to the cost of
him; but must be content to see him here.

I must confess I am no great artist; but sign-
post painting will serve the turn to remember a
friend by, especially when better is not to be had.
Yet for your comfort, the lineaments are true;
and though he sat not five times to me, as he did
to B., yet I have consulted history, as the Italian
painters do, when they would draw a Nero or a
Caligula though they have not seen the man,
they can help their imagination by a statue of him,
and find out the colouring from Suetonius and

:

3 i. e. all his medals. Shaftesbury, it was supposed, entertained hopes that he should be elected King of Poland.

4 George Bower, I believe a Dutchman, who engraved several heads for King Charles, and James the Second, both before and after he came to the crown; and some satirical medals relative to the Popish Plot, which may be found in Evelyn's NUMISMATA. He also engraved medals after the Revolution for William and Mary; so that Lord Orford (ANECDOTES OF PAINTING, iii. 104. 4to.) is certainly mistaken in supposing him a volunteer artist. He appears to have engraved for any one who would employ him.

Tacitus. Truth is, you might have spared one
side of your medal; the head would be seen to
more advantage, if it were placed on a spike of the
Tower, a little nearer to the sun, which would
then break out to better purpose.

You tell us in your Preface to the NO PRO-
TESTANT PLOT,' that you shall be forced here-
after to leave off your modesty; I suppose you
mean that little which is left you; for it was worn
to rags, when you put out this medal. Never was
there practised such a piece of notorious impu-
dence in the face of an established government.
I believe, when he is dead, you will wear him in
thumb-rings, as the Turks did Scanderbeg; as if
there were virtue in his bones to preserve you
against monarchy. Yet all this while you pretend
not only zeal for the publick good, but a due
veneration for the person of the King; but all
men who can see an inch before them may easily
detect those gross fallacies. That it is necessary
for men in your circumstances to pretend both, is
granted you, for without them there could be no
ground to raise a faction; but I would ask you
one civil question,-what right has any man
among you, or any association of men, (to come
nearer to you,) who out of parliament cannot be
considered in a publick capacity, to meet, as you

S NO PROTESTANT PLOT was a tract in three parts,
printed in folio, in 1682.

Alluding to the scheme of an Association, found in
Shaftesbury's study. See p. 81.

1681,
and

Shaftesbury was suppond to be

auther of the first part, his servant having carried the copy to the press. The scions part was written by

; the

Third by Robert Ferguson, under the eye