The presence of these values, Deane contends, is not a curiosity but part of a vital and discernible tradition of modern neo-Augustanism that has been previously overlooked. By tracing these writers' common interest in Horace, John Dryden, and Samuel Johnson, he uncovers important links between seemingly diverse modern poets. Deane challenges the whole interpretation of literary modernism, which has traditionally linked the modern poets to the Romantics and seen both as anti-Augustan.