ble a man lost
in the woods, who wanders aimlessly around in circles, seeing the confusing
trees but never the whole forest, and who seldom thinks of climbing the
nearest high hill to get his bearings. Later, however, this tendency to
realism became more wholesome. While it neglected romantic poetry, in which
youth is eternally interested, it led to a keener study of the practical
motives which govern human action.

The second tendency of the age was toward directness and simplicity of
expression, and to this excellent tendency our literature is greatly
indebted. In both the Elizabethan and the Puritan ages the general tendency
of writers was towards extravagance of thought and language. Sentences were
often involved, and loaded with Latin quotations and classical allusions.
The Restoration writers opposed this vigorously. From France they brought
back the tendency to regard established rules for writing, to emphasize
close reasoning rather than romantic fancy, and to use short, clean-cut
sentences without an unnecessary word. We see this French influence in the
Royal Society,[173] which had for one of its objects the reform of English
prose by getting rid of its "swellings of style," and which bound all its
members to use "a close, naked, natural way of speaking ... as near to
mathematical plainness as they can." Dryden accepted this excellent rule
for his prose, and adopted the heroic couplet, as the next best thing, for
the greater part of his poetry. As he tells us himself:

And this unpolished rugged verse I chose
As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.

It is largely due to him that writers developed that formalism of style,
that precise, almost mathematical elegance, miscalled classicism, which
ruled English literature for the next century.[174]

Another thing which the reader will note with interest in Restoration
literature is the adoption of the heroic couplet; that is, two iambic
pentameter lines which rime together, as the most suitable form of poetry.
Waller,[175] who began to use it in 1623, is generally regarded as the
father of the couplet, for he is the first poet to use it consistently in
the bulk of his poetry. Chaucer had used the rimed couplet wonderfully well
in his _Canterbury Tales_, but in Chaucer it is the poetical thought more
than the expression which delights us. With the Restoration writers, form
counts for everything. Waller and Dryden made the couplet the prevailing
litera