# The statesman behind Achitophel

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH02.P006](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH02.P006/#char=808,836): "a great practical politician"

The unnamed man is Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, represented by Achitophel in Dryden's biblical political satire. [Jack Lynch's annotated teaching edition](https://www.jacklynch.net/Texts/absalom.html), based on the 1882–92 *Works* with revisions, identifies the figure in its note on Achitophel. Chesterton is right that the maxim occurs inside a portrait of political intelligence: Dryden's [lines 150–79](https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/content/absalom-and-achitophel) describe dangerous intrigue, restless ambition and deliberate risk-taking. The surrounding account concerns a strategist who courts storms even when calm would suit him, rather than a poet overcome by visions. This makes the original context a pointed answer to the maxim's application to artistic imagination. But Dryden is constructing a hostile satirical character, not documenting a clinical breakdown: his portrait supports Chesterton's account of the passage's subject, not a general causal law connecting calculation and mental illness.

## Sources

- [Absalom and Achitophel, edited by Jack Lynch](https://www.jacklynch.net/Texts/absalom.html), Introduction describing edition; note ‘Achitophel’ attached to line 150
- [Representative Poetry Online: Absalom and Achitophel](https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/content/absalom-and-achitophel), Lines 150–79 (especially 159–68); base text: second edition, 1681

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