In the first Prologue I groused about reductionist modern mythologies of Augustan neoclassicism and humanism and about the anxiety of influence. These distort the complexities and actualities of eighteenth-century responses to the classical past and its own present. Part ii suggests some of the practical consequences of erroneous general approaches that influence particular approaches.

All readers of Dryden's Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668), for example, are familiar with its dominant interpretation: it is a balanced presentation of equally valued points of view from Dryden's comprehensive mind. There are neither winners nor losers in this debate among gentlemen. By implication, a victory by one side would be rude and unsuitable to the Augustan paradigm. On the contrary, though Dryden's Essay is indeed civilized its literary context makes plain that it reflects and contributes to vigorous reconsideration of the role of classical and French subjects, devices, and assumptions. This is to be expected in a nation whose recent civil war was more pressing and lamentably heroic than something in Rome some 1,700 years ago. Such independence also was to be expected in a nation in which, John Banks says in 1682, “ev'ry School-Boy has a right to be a Critick, and ev'ry Gentleman an Interest to stand the Champion of his Family.” Moreover, Dryden's Essay is set against the distant thunder of an Anglo-Dutch sea battle and an Anglo-French literary battle. Young John Dryden can demonstrate his challenged patriotism by politely demolishing all but the modern English position his analogue Neander proposes. Neither text nor context allows us to see the Essay as anything but a victory for the dramatic English Restoration Moderns who need to please their own audience.