ry fashion, and in their hands the couplet becomes "closed"; that is,
each pair of lines must contain a complete thought, stated as precisely as
possible. Thus Waller writes:

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.[176]

That is a kind of aphorism such as Pope made in large quantities in the
following age. It contains a thought, is catchy, quotable, easy to
remember; and the Restoration writers delighted in it. Soon this mechanical
closed couplet, in which the second line was often made first,[177] almost
excluded all other forms of poetry. It was dominant in England for a full
century, and we have grown familiar with it, and somewhat weary of its
monotony, in such famous poems as Pope's "Essay on Man" and Goldsmith's
"Deserted Village." These, however, are essays rather than poems. That even
the couplet is capable of melody and variety is shown in Chaucer's _Tales_
and in Keats's exquisite _Endymion_.

These four things, the tendency to vulgar realism in the drama, a general
formalism which came from following set rules, the development of a simpler
and more direct prose style, and the prevalence of the heroic couplet in
poetry are the main characteristics of Restoration literature. They are all
exemplified in the work of one man, John Dryden.

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

Dryden is the greatest literary figure of the Restoration, and in his work
we have an excellent reflection of both the good and the evil tendencies of
the age in which he lived. If we can think for a moment of literature as a
canal of water, we may appreciate the figure that Dryden is the "lock by
which the waters of English poetry were let down from the mountains of
Shakespeare and Milton to the plain of Pope"; that is, he stands between
two very different ages, and serves as a transition from one to the other.

LIFE. Dryden's life contains so many conflicting elements of greatness and
littleness that the biographer is continually taken away from the facts,
which are his chief concern, to judge motives, which are manifestly outside
his knowledge and business. Judged by his own opinion of himself, as
expressed in the numerous prefaces to his works, Dryden was the soul of
candor, writing with no other master than literature, and with no other
object than to advance the welfare of his age and nation. Judged by his
acts, he was apparently a timeserver, catering to a depraved audience