ABSTRACT
The chapter considers a range of Polwhele’s mainly heroic verse from British defeat at Saratoga in 1776 to Allied victory at Waterloo in 1815. Polwhele’s blend of nostalgic Toryism, Ossianic bardism, and locally influenced social commentary makes for poetry in which a vision of national decline informs and is informed by his understanding of Cornish political and economic life. The chapter’s archipelagic approach to nuancing loyalist discourse speaks to ongoing debates about the continuities and fissures within political thought either side of the French Revolution and argues for the ongoing importance of the dialectic of retirement and engagement within patriotic verse.
