SOURCE: Erskine-Hill, Howard. “Rochester: Augustan or Explorer.” In Renaissance and Modern Essays Presented to Vivian de Sola Pinto in Celebration of his Seventieth Birthday, edited by G. R. Hibbard, pp. 51-64. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966.

In the following essay, Erskine-Hill considers whether Rochester should be a viewed as an explorer/adventurer—one who lacks a stable pattern of any but the most elementary values—or as an “Augustan,” like John Dryden and Alexander Pope, who is confident in a Christian-classical world-view, and concludes he is most clearly the former.

I

Rochester, the man and his work, is a major landmark in the terrain of Restoration poetry. That he should come to be recognized as such, in the last fifty years, is due largely to the enthusiasm of the writings and teaching of Vivian de Sola Pinto.¹ But if Rochester's place is assured, the nature of his achievement...