Dryden was a great poet, and he dominated his own age and the age to come.  But besides being a poet he was a great prose-writer.  His prose is clear and fine and almost modern.  We do not have to follow him through sentences so long that we lose the sense before we come to the end.  “He found English of brick and left it marble,” says a late writer, and when we read his prose we almost believe that saying to be true.  He was the first of modern critics, that is he was able to judge the works of others surely and well.  And many of his criticisms of men were so true that we accept them now even as they were accepted then.  Here is what he says of Chaucer in his preface to The Fables:—­

“He [Chaucer] must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age.  Not a single character has escaped him.  All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies persons. . . .  The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling are so suited to their different educations, humours, and callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth.  Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity.  Their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming to them and to them only.  Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned.  Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different:  the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady-Prioress and the broad-speaking, gap-toothed Wife of Bath. . . .  It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God’s plenty.  We have our forefathers and great-grand-dames all before us, as they were in Chaucer’s days.  Their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of monks, and friars, and canons, and lady abbesses, and nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature though everything is altered.”

The Fables was the last book Dryden wrote.  He was growing to be an old man, and a few months after it was published he became very ill.  “John Dryden, Esq., the famous poet, lies a-dying,” said the newspapers on the 30th April, 1700.  One May morning he closed his eyes for ever, just as

    “Aurora had but newly chased the night,
    And purpled o’er the sky with blushing light.”

Chapter LXI DEFOE—­THE FIRST NEWSPAPERS

TO almost every house in the land, as regular as the milk man, more regular than the postman, there comes each morning the newspaper boy.  To most of us breakfast means, as well as things to eat, mother pouring out the tea and father reading the newspaper.  As mother passes father’s tea she says, “Anything in the paper, John?” And how often he answers, “Nothing, nothing whatever.”