Drydcii and flic Critical Canons of tJic Eighteenth Ccntnry 21 



and are mostly formal. But it seems clear enough at all events 

 that Dryden still considered poetry to be the mqre elevated, 

 though he may not liave understood very well what poetic eleva- 

 tion really is. Of blank verse he complains that it is less suitable 

 than rhyme for tragedy because it is not sufficiently elevated. 

 "Blank verse is acknowledged to be too low for a poem, nay more 

 for a paper of verses ; but if too low for an ordinary sonnet, how 

 much more for tragedy . . . ?"^ Poetic elevation, then, 

 would seem to depend upon rhyme. Poetr}', at all events poetry 

 of a high order, must rhyme. And in conformity with this notion 

 he falls into the habit of calling blank verse prose, "blank verse 

 being," he says, "but measured prose."- "Whether Heroic Verse 

 ought to be admitted into serious plays, is not now to be disputed. 

 . . . All the arguments which are formed against it, can 

 amount to no more than this, that it is not so near conversation 

 as prose, and therefore not so natural." 



Such was the fatal misconception which resulted in well-nigh 

 shelving blank verse completely for a century and in confirming 

 the general prejudice against Shakespeare as a poet and artist. 

 For if blank verse is no better than prose, what becomes of the 

 poetic pretensions of those who wrote it? And yet, fatuous as 

 the mistake seems to us, it must be remembered in Dryden's ex- 

 cuse, and in that of his contemporaries, that such was the pass to 

 which blank verse had been brought by this time as to make it 

 almost impossible to form a just conception of the measure either 

 in itself or as a basis for an estimate of Shakespeare's versifica- 

 tion. For the time being romanticism was thoroughly played out. 

 And although French influence had a good deal to do with the 

 erection of rhyme into an invariable poetic standard, as it had 

 with all the Hterar}^ positions occupied by English classicism, yet, 

 more important by all odds than any foreign influence was the 

 spirit of opposition that had finally been engendered by the ex- 

 tremity of the age preceding. 



Under these circumstances the Heroic Couplet became inevi- 

 table, not merely by reason of the encouragement afforded by the 



^Dryden. An Essav of Dramatic Poesy. 

 'Ibid. 



21 



