The Empress of Morocco Revised. One may perhaps be permitted to suggest here that another famous theatrical “impromptu,”
Oh Jemmy Thompson! Jemmy Thompson Oh!
is not altogether free from suspicion; some person may, of course, have delivered himself of it during a performance of Thomson’s play, but if he did, I think it most probable that he had previously seen it in A Criticism On The New Sophonisba, … 1730, which was published within a few days of the first performance.
iv. Poetical Reflections On A Late Poem Entituled, Absalom and Achitophel. By a Person of Honour, fol. 1682.
The Person of Honour, “according to Antony Wood, was Villiers Duke of Buckingham.” This is Malone’s statement, made more than once,[1] which has been accepted without question by all succeeding editors and biographers of Dryden, while Lady Burghclere, who perhaps had access to special sources of information, tells us:[2]
“Nor did Buckingham confine his indignation to his note-book. The fashionable society of the day eagerly devoured the pamphlet in which he strove to answer the poet’s charges. ‘Some (sic) reflections on a late poem entitled Absalom and Achitophel, by a Person of Honour,’ sold like wildfire in 1682. But as no less a judge than Sir Walter Scott considered its ‘celebrity was rather to be imputed to the rank and reputation of the author than to the merit of the performance,’[3] it can readily be believed that its extreme rarity, rather than its intrinsic merit, makes it valuable nowadays.”
Wood is apt to be unreliable in his statements as to the authorship of poetical tracts; he thought Azaria and Hushai was written by Settle, and ascribed The Tribe of Levi to Dryden himself—but in this particular case it is but due to him to refer to what he actually does say,[4] which is—
“However it was, sure I am that the Duke of Bucks did not cause him (Dryden) to be beaten, but wrote, or caused to be wrote, Reflections on the said Poem called Absalom and Achitophel, which being printed on a sheet of paper, was, tho’ no great matter in it, sold very dear. In which the author commends those that Mr. Dryden discommends, and discommends those which he commends.”
