Thy lovers were all untrue.
‘Tis well an Old Age is out,
And time to begin a New.
At the end of a century where monarchical succession had twice been broken and
restor ed, Dryden was buried in Chaucer’s grave. ‘What was said of Rome, adorned
by Augustus,may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry embellished by
Dryden’, wrote Dr Johnson: “he found it brick, and he left it marble.” ’ If Dryden
made English verse more elegant, he also left it more usable than when he had found
it.Prose
Dryden was equally a master of what he called ‘the other harmony of prose’. Although
musical, he contrives to sound as if he is talking to an intelligent friend. This civilized
to ne became general over a range of English discourse, including humbler genres:174 5 · STUART LITERATURE: TO 1700
A chronology of Restoration prose
1662 Revised Version of the Book of Common Prayer; Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing
1664 John Evelyn, Sylva
1665 Izaak Walton, Life of Richard Hooker(La Rochefoucauld, Maximes)
1667 Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural
Knowledge
1668 John Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesie; John Wilkins, Towards a Real Character, and a
Philosophical Language
1669 Bp. Gilbert Burnet, Conference between a Conformist and a Non-conformist
1670 Walton, Lives(Pascal (d.1662), Pensées)
1672 Andrew Marvell, The Rehearsal Transprosed
1674 Thomas Rymer, Reflections on Aristotle’s Treatise of Poesie
1675 Thomas Traherne, Christian Ethics
1677 (Spinoza (d.1677), Ethics)
1678 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
1679 Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England
1680 Sir Roger l’Estrange, Select Colloquies of Erasmus(trans.)
1685 Charles Cotton, Montaigne’s Essays(trans.)
1686 Lord Halifax, Letter to a Dissenter
1687 Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica(Latin)
1688 Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave; Halifax, Character of a Trimmer
1689 John Locke, Two Treatises on Government; First Letter on Toleration
1690 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
1692 Sir Richard Temple, Miscellanea
1693 Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy
1695 Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity; Archbishop Tillotson (d.1694), Works
1696 John Aubrey, Miscellanies; Richard Baxter (d.1691), Reliquiae Baxterianae; John Toland,
Christianity not Mysterious
1697 William Dampier, Voyages
1698 Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profanity of the Stage
1701 John Dennis, The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry
1703 Lord Clarendon (d.1674), The History of the Rebellion and the Civil Wars