Selected Poems (1685-1700)

John Tutchin wrote like a man who expected the authorities to come for him tomorrow. These selected poems, spanning 1685 to 1700, capture a tumultuous era in English history through the eyes of a poet who refused to look away from the corruption around him. A journalist and polemicist, Tutchin wielded verse like a weapon against tyranny and hypocrisy, blending sharp political satire with genuine philosophical anger. "Tory Catch" offers a rollicking portrait of drunken revelry that hides a sharper critique, while "The Earth-quake of Jamaica" uses catastrophe to interrogate moral reckoning. Most audacious is "A Pindarick Ode in the Praise of Folly and Knavery," which inverts convention to celebrate precisely what polite society pretends to despise. Tutchin understood that folly and power often wear the same face. These poems endure because the follies he skewered have not aged a day.