Drydcii and the Critical Canons of the Eighteenth Centtiry 39 



akin to criticism they are accordingly at their best — in the essay 

 and prose generally, which is essentially critical in character, and 

 in the satire and whatever poetry is properly didactic or philo- 

 sophical. But they seldom produce an illusion, because they fail 

 to give their ideas the form and semblance of reality. Such as 

 they were, however, they corrected our literature of the medie- 

 valism which still clung to it, and they established a sound prose 

 tradition for the language in much the same way that Shakespeare 

 may be said to have established our national poetic tradition. 



39 



