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.
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