Due to his association with Charles II, Dryden was the first poet to be named poet laureate of England and was also made historiographer, a position that came with a large income. While having adapted to the Commonwealth, Dryden more directly benefitted from the Restoration, particularly through his friendship with such Royalists as the playwright Sir Robert Howard (1623-1698), who was also Dryden’s brother-in-law. He later celebrated Charles II’s leadership through the Great Fire of London in Annus Mirabilis (1667). And after the Restoration, Dryden acclaimed Charles II as the herald and ruler of such peace, lauding the high and the heroic. This poem reinforces classical (Roman) hierarchies, hailing as great the men who can lead society from disorder to harmony, the men who fight to end fighting in peace. John Dryden reached adulthood during the Commonwealth indeed, he dedicated his Heroic Stanzas (1659) “to the Glorious Memory of Cromwell,” shortly after Cromwell’s death.
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