To the University of Oxford, 1681.............. To his Royal Highness, upon his first Appearance at the Duke's Theatre, after his return from Scotland, 1682.. 229 To the Earl of Essex. By J. Banks, 1682. Spoken POEMS OF JOHN DRYDEN. ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 1681. TO THE READER. am It is not my intention to make an apology for my Poem: some will think it needs no excuse, and others will receive none. The design, I sure, is honest; but he who draws his pen for one party must expect to make enemies of the other: for wit and fool are consequents of Whig and Tory; and every man is a knave or an ass to the contrary side. There is a treasury of merits in the Fanatic church, as well as in the Popish, and a pennyworth to be had of saintship, honesty, and poetry, for the lewd, the factious, and the blockheads: but the longest chapter in Deuteronomy has not curses enough for an Anti-Bromingham. My comfort is, their manifest prejudice to my cause will render their judgment of less authority against me. Yet if a poem have a |