The statesman behind Achitophel
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, 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 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.
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