In this
startling conjunction we have the two ages in a nutshell: the
Commonwealth was an epic, the Restoration an opera.
The literary period covered by the life of Pope, 1688-1744, is marked
off by no distinct line from the generation before it. Taste continued
to be governed by the precepts of Boileau and the French classical
school. Poetry remained chiefly didactic and satirical, and satire in
Pope's hands was more personal even than in Dryden's, and addressed
itself less to public issues. The literature of the "Augustan age" of
Queen Anne (1702-1714) was still more a literature of the town and of
fashionable society than that of the Restoration had been. It was also
closely involved with party struggles of Whig and Tory, and the ablest
pens on either side were taken into alliance by the political leaders.
Swift was in high favor with the Tory ministers, Oxford and Bolingbroke,
and his pamphlets, the _Public Spirit of the Whigs_ and the _Conduct of
the Allies_, were rewarded with the deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin.
Addison became secretary of state under a Whig government. Prior was in
the diplomatic service. Daniel De Foe, the author of _Robinson Crusoe_,
1719, was a prolific political writer, conducted his _Review_ in the
interest of the Whigs, and was imprisoned and pilloried for his ironical
pamphlet, _The Shortest Way with the Dissenters_.
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