SOURCE: Jacobus, Lee A. “The Critical Reputation.” In John Cleveland, pp. 146-53. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975.

In the following essay, Jacobus summarizes the reactions of critics and editors of different eras to the works of Cleveland and makes his own assessment by considering the poems' historical context.

I. the Eighteenth-century Critics

Though the critical literature on Cleveland is not very extensive, the judgments which have been made about him have usually been impassioned, long-lasting, and sometimes simply prejudiced. Certainly the foundation of all criticism of Cleveland has been John Dryden's casual attribution to him of all that was undesirable in poetry. When Dryden held Cleveland up as an example he was not interested in being fair or in being sympathetic. He characterized the Clevelandism as a “clownish kind of raillery”¹ in an effort to demean his work. Whether or not Dryden could have been fair to Cleveland had he...