Article: Recycling political poetry: Tom D'Urfey's The Progress of Honesty 1680/1739.(Critical Essay)

D'Urfey's The Progress of Honesty in 1680 praises Charles II and his brother James under the names of Titus the Second and Resolution and condemns Monmouth, the king's illegitimate son, calling him Marcian. The poem was reissued in 1739 with revised diction and no indication of author. The characters of Titus and Marcian are altered to make them appropriate to George II and Prince Frederick, the king's alienated son, and Resolution is replaced by Hortensio, a statesman who represents Walpole.

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Poems on affairs of state are usually so tied to their times that they risk a speedy oblivion. As Jonathan Swift remarked to Alexander Pope about The ...

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