Pen for a Party: Dryden's Tory Propaganda in its Contexts.

It is a pleasure to read two such illuminating, thought-provoking, and yet utterly different studies of Restoration politics and literature as Phillip Harth's Pen for a Party. Dryden's Tory Propaganda in its Contexts (Princeton: U.P., 1993; pp. xi + 341. [pounds]27.50) and Steven N. Zwicker's Lines of Authority. Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649-1689 (Ithaca/London: Cornell U.P., 1993; pp. x + 254. $35.75). Neither of these distinguished works is a mere account of 'literature' against the 'background' of politics, but rather both seek in their different ways to reveal the reciprocal relations - the 'traffic' as Zwicker terms it - between literature and politics in the late seventeenth century, and in doing so they range widely across literary genres and the historical record. Harth, the author of fine studies of Swift and Dryden, has now …