prevailing intellectual characteristics are marked, in literature,
by the great predominance of prose over poetry. It will be no
disparagement to Pope, Prior, Gray, Collins, Akenside, Goldsmith, or
Young, to say that they did not attain in poetry what in prose was
attained by Swift, Defoe, Steele, Addison, Bolingbroke, Richardson,
Fielding, Smollet, Hume, Gibbon, Junius, and Burke; while Goldsmith is
as much valued for his prose as for his verse, Addison, Swift, and
Johnson more so. It is to these men, and to contemporaries of lesser
note, that English literature is indebted for the invention or
perfection of prose forms of the highest importance and beauty. Defoe
stands pre-eminent among the founders of the newspaper, destined to
attain so high a degree of power and utility. Addison, Steele, and
Johnson made the essay one of the most attractive and popular forms of
literature. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Horace Walpole, Chesterfield,
and Junius brought letter-writing to perfection. Defoe, Addison,
Richardson, and Fielding developed the realistic novel. A prosaic and
conventional tone pervaded even the poetry of the period. Appreciation
of poetry was almost extinguished, Addison, writing of the poets of the
past, made no mention of Shakespeare, and found it possible to say of
Chaucer:

In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh, in vain.

And of Spenser:

Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetick rage,
In ancient tales amus'd a barb'rous age.
But now the mystick tale that pleas'd of yore
Can charm an understanding age no more.[91]

"If you did amuse yourself with writing any thing in poetry," wrote
Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, in 1742, "you know how pleased I should
be to see it; but for encouraging you to it, d'ye see, 'tis an age most
unpoetical! 'Tis even a test of wit to dislike poetry; and though Pope
has half a dozen old friends that he has preserved from the taste of
last century, yet, I assure you the generality of readers are more
diverted with any paltry prose answer to old Marlborough's secret
history of Queen Mary's robes. I do not think an author would be
universally commended for any production in verse, unless it were an
ode to the Secret Committee, with rhymes of liberty and property,
nation and administration."

During the brilliant era of literary activity, known by the name of
Queen Anne, men of letters were encouraged by the