Though wrongly accused of this particular satire, it was not long before he did turn his attention to that department of verse. It was the time of the restless dissent of the Whigs from the succession of James; and in 1681 Dryden launched _Absalom and Achitophel_, one of the most brilliant satires in our language, against Shaftesbury and his adherents, who were inciting Monmouth to revolt. He found an admirable parallel in Absalom's revolt from his father David, and he sustained the comparison. The Scriptural names concealed living characters, and Shaftesbury masked as Achitophel, the evil counsellor, and Buckingham as Zimri. Feeling ran high. Shaftesbury was arrested and tried, but was acquitted, and his friends struck off a medal in commemoration. In 1682, therefore, came Dryden's second satire, the _Medal_. These two political satires called forth in the fevered state of the times a host of replies, two of the most scurrilous from the pens of Shadwell and Settle. Of these two poor Whigs the first was drawn and quartered in _MacFlecnoe_, while the two were yoked for castigation in Part II. of _Absalom and Achitophel_, which appeared in 1682. Dryden possessed preëminently the faculty for satire. He did not devote himself exclusively to an abstract treatment, nor, like Pope, to bitter personalities; he blends and combines the two methods most effectively. Every one of his brisk, nervous couplets carries a sting; every distich is a sound box on the ear. We reach now a most interesting period in Dryden's career and one that has provoked much controversy. In 1681 he published a long argument in verse, entitled _Religio Laici_ (the Religion of a Layman), in which he states his religious faith and his adherence to the Church of England. When King James came to the throne in 1685 he made an immediate attempt to establish the Roman Catholic faith; and now Dryden, too, turned Romanist, and in 1687 supported his new faith in the long poetical allegory, the _Hind and the Panther_. Of course his enemies cried turncoat; and it certainly looked like it. Dryden was well into manhood before the religious instinct stirred in him, and then, once waking, he naturally walked in the beaten track. But these instincts, though roused late, possessed the poet's impetuosity; and it was merely a natural intensifying of the same impulse that had brought him into the Church of England, which carried him to a more pronounced religious manifestation, and landed him in the Church of Rome. His sincerity is certainly backed by his acts, for when James had fled, and the staunch Protestants William and Mary held the throne, he absolutely refused to recant, and sacrificed his positions and emoluments. He was stripped of his royal offices and pensions, and, bitter humiliation, the laurel, torn from his brow, was placed on the head of that scorned jangler in verse, Shadwell.