SOURCE: "The Idea of a Restoration and the Verse Satires of Butler and Marvell," in Southern Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, July, 1981, pp. 131-42.

In the following essay, Cousins explores Butler's role as a Restoration poet, and the ways in which the political and religious milieu of the time informed his satire.

We are so used to making the word "Restoration" a mere label that we tend to play down its importance. Yet the word identifies more than a political act and, by association, a literary period: it identifies an idea central to English society during the reign of Charles II. Recognition of this idea would seem basic to an understanding of formal verse satire between 1660 and 1685. Between those years, Englishmen define their society chiefly in terms of "restoration." They assert that with the return of a Stuart king a number of other things have also been restored, mainly these...