First edition of an allegorical poem inspired, like Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, by the Exclusion Crisis of 1681. ‘Honesty’ describes to ‘Error’, ‘Faction’ and ‘Beauty’ the court of Charles II (‘Titus the Second … the joy of human kind’), and the malign effects of Treason and Discord (an ex-lawyer) on the reputation of James (‘Resolution’). The debt to Dryden is clear, and D’Urfey attacks Shaftesbury in like manner, as ‘An old Quack Statesman … Some call him Hophni, some Achitophel, / Others chief Advocate for Hell’. But D’Urfey is equally scathing towards the coteries of the court, ‘A sort of men a mungrel race, / That Loyalty like Coin deface’:

A witty Rebel is no more
Than like a handsome publick Whore.

A second edition was published in the same year; the poem also underwent a curious transformation in 1739, when it was adapted by an unknown hand to cast Walpole (‘Hortensio’) in place of James.

Wing D 2764.

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