(3)

The chief merits of “classic” poetry—­its clearness, its vigour, its direct statement—­are such as belong theoretically rather to prose than to poetry.  In fact, it was in prose that the most vigorous intellect of the time found itself.  We have seen how Dryden, reversing the habit of other poets, succeeded in expressing his personality not in poetry which was his vocation, but in prose which was the amusement of his leisure hours.  Spenser had put his politics into prose and his ideals into verse; Dryden wrote his politics—­to order—­in verse, and in prose set down the thoughts and fancies which were the deepest part of him because they were about his art.  The metaphor of parentage, though honoured by use, fits badly on to literary history; none the less the tradition which describes him as the father of modern English prose is very near the truth.  He puts into practice for the first time the ideals, described in the first chapter of this book, which were set up by the scholars who let into English the light of the Renaissance.  With the exception of the dialogue on Dramatic Poesy, his work is almost all of it occasional, the fruit of the mood of a moment, and written rather in the form of a causerie, a kind of informal talk, than of a considered essay.  And it is all couched in clear, flowing, rather loosely jointed English, carefully avoiding rhetoric and eloquence and striving always to reproduce the ease and flow of cultured conversation, rather than the tighter, more closely knit style of consciously “literary” prose.  His methods were the methods of the four great prose-writers who followed him—­Defoe, Addison, Steele, and Swift.

Of these Defoe was the eldest and in some ways the most remarkable.  He has been called the earliest professional author in our language, and if that is not strictly true, he is at any rate the earliest literary journalist.  His output of work was enormous; he wrote on any and every subject; there was no event whether in politics or letters or discovery but he was not ready with something pat on it before the public interest faded.  It followed that at a time when imprisonment, mutilation, and the pillory took the place of our modern libel actions he had an adventurous career.  In politics he followed the Whig cause and served the Government with his pen, notably by his writings in support of the union with Scotland, in which he won over the Scots by his description of the commercial advantage which would follow the abolition of the border.  This line of argument, taken at a time when the governing of political tendencies by commercial interests was by no means the accepted commonplace it is now, proves him a man of an active and original mind.  His originality, indeed, sometimes over-reached the comprehension both of the public and his superiors; he was imprisoned for an attack on the Hanoverian succession, which was intended ironically; apparently he was ignorant of what every journalist