Sagest of Usurpers

Ian Gilmour

  • Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity by Blair Worden
    Allen Lane, 387 pp, £20.00, November 2001, ISBN 0 7139 9603 X

Shortly after Oliver Cromwell’s death in September 1658, Dryden wrote some ‘Heroique Stanza’s, Consecrated to the Glorious Memory of his most Serene and Renowned Highnesse Oliver Late Lord Protector of this Common Wealth, &c’. His poem’s sentiments were as reverential as its title. After maintaining that Cromwell’s ‘Grandeur he deriv’d from Heav’n alone’, that all his ‘parts [were] so equal perfect’, and that ‘Peace was the Prize of all his toils and care,’ Dryden predicted that ‘His Ashes in a peaceful Urne [would] rest.’

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