Evidence of Settle's authorship of _Absalom Senior_, on the other hand, is neither wanting nor disputed. We have had to wait until our own century for the pioneer work on this writer, since he cannot have been considered a sufficiently major poet by Samuel Johnson's sponsors, and Langbaine's account is sketchy. In a periodical paper[8] Macdonald summarized supplementary evidence on the dates of composition of Settle's poem; he was working on it in January 1681/2, and it was published on the following April 6. Lockyer, Dean of Peterborough, asserted to Joseph Spence, who includes the rumor in _Anecdotes_, that Settle was assisted by Clifford and Sprat and by "several best hands of those times";[9] but Spence is notoriously unreliable. In the lack of other evidence, then, it seems best to take the poem as wholly Settle's. It needs only to add a few words on its textual states. The First Edition, here reproduced, seems to exist in a single impression, and likewise the Second Edition of the Settle (1682, in quarto) seems to have been struck off in a single textual state. Of its individual variants from the First Edition only the following seem of any significance and, since there is no reason to suppose that it was printed from any copy other than the First, they may be merely the result of carelessness. FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION p. 3, line 4, enthron'd, with inthron'd with 3 8, Arts ... steps Art's ... step's 11 10, Rods; Rods? 13 26, to Descend do Descend 14 17, couch, couch 29 9, Cedar Cedars 31 21, Temples Temple [Footnote 8: "The Attacks on John Dryden," _Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association_, XXI, 41-74.] [Footnote 9: Joseph Spence, _Anecdotes ... of Books and Men_ (1858), p. 51.] For "No Link ... night" (p. 35, lines 19-24), the Second Edition substitutes, for an undetermined reason, the following: No less the Lordly Zelecks Glory sound For courage and for Constancy renoun'd: Though once in naught but borrow'd plumes adorn'd, So much all servile Flattery he scorn'd; That though he held his Being and Support, By that weak Thread the Favour of a Court, In Sanhedrims unbrib'd, he firmly bold Durst Truth and Israels Right unmov'd uphold; In spight of Fortune, still to Honour wed, By Justice steer'd, though by Dependence fed. Very little can be said of Pordage's poem, beyond its date of publication (January 17, 1681/2)[10] and the fact that no parallel has been found with his earlier work. As no detailed study on him, published or unpublished, has been traced, we can only have recourse to the standard works on the period; data thus easily accessible are not therefore reproduced here. A so-called second edition (MacDonald 205b) is identical with the first. [Footnote 10: _Modern Philology_, XXV (1928) 409-416.]