ed, as freely as I have taxed their
crimes. And now, if you are a malicious reader, I expect you should
return upon me that I affect to be thought more impartial than I am. But
if men are not to be judged by their professions, God forgive you
Commonwealth's-men for professing so plausibly for the government. You
cannot be so unconscionable as to charge me for not subscribing my name;
for that would reflect too grossly upon your own party, who never dare,
though they have the advantage of a jury to secure them. If you like not
my poem, the fault may possibly be in my writing (though it is hard for
an author to judge against himself); but more probably it is in your
morals, which cannot bear the truth of it. The violent on both sides
will condemn the character of Absalom, as either too favourably or too
hardly drawn. But they are not the violent whom I desire to please. The
fault on the right hand is to extenuate, palliate, and indulge; and to
confess freely, I have endeavoured to commit it. Besides the respect
which I owe his birth, I have a greater for his heroic virtues; and
David himself 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 show 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 be only for pity. I have not so much as an
uncharitable wish against Achitophel, but am content to be accused of a
good-natured error, and to hope with Origen, that the devil himself may
at last be saved. For which 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 merci