14 Prosscr Hall Fryc 



the authority which was supposed to be its sole warrant, the pro- 

 moters of the movement were apt to become over-anxious and 

 timid; attempting" to avoid obscurity and confusion they would 

 run as likely as not into the opposite extreme of obviousness and 

 commonplace ; against shallowness and triviality their admiration 

 for precision and lucidity furnished little or no protection ; while 

 in their aspiration for elegance and ease they were in danger of 

 completing the mischief by polishing all the freshness and ani- 

 mation out of their work and leaving it insipid and lifeless. And 

 yet, however unforttmate these vices, they w^ere not incompatible 

 with the idea of prose, as were the very virtues of Elizabethanism. 

 In justice to their successors it is only fair to remember that the 

 Elizabethans did not do everything. Dramatic poetry and the 

 shorter, more spontaneous variety of lyric they had brought to 

 an advanced state of perfection. Outside of this field, however, 

 they had done little or nothing. When Ben Jonson attempts to 

 write couplets, the result is lamentable ; nor are Shakespeare's 

 own much to brag of, wdiile with prose they had failed signally. 

 As far as their prose had any literary significance at all. it was 

 nothing more or less than de-versified poetry. When Thomas 

 Browne wrote his Rcligio Medici, it was apparently all he could 

 do to refrain from dropping into verse. Rhythm, cadence, the 

 very movement of the language, the mood itself are all poetical — 

 nothing is wanting but metre, and that hardly. 6ven INIilton. 

 who has a prose purpose, is unable to strike the prose note and 

 hold it. Naturally there are one or two exceptions. Thomas 

 Fuller stumbles upon the right track occasionallv. Abo\-e all, 

 Cowley's essays are thoroughly admirable, though they had no 

 following at the time and have w^on iio appreciation since, prob- 

 ably because his factitious splendor as a poet has eclipsed his 

 genuine merits as a writer of prose. On the whole, however, the 

 predecessors of Dryden lacked a plain prose intention — the sense 

 for a sober, ever\-day meaning and for a vehicle for its convey- 

 ance. And while the need for such a vehicle nmst have been felt 

 and felt sorely, they seem to have been incapable of distinguish- 

 ing between the characteristic moods of prose and poetry.^ With 



'Matthew Arnold. '1 he Sfiiciy of Poetry. Itssoys in Criticism, Second 

 Series (Eversley), pp. ;!7-40. 



