Out of the writing which aimed at simplicity and truth to nature grew "Poetic Diction," a special treasury of words and phrases deemed suitable for poetry, providing poets with a common stock of imagery, removing from them the necessity of seeing life and nature each one for himself.

The poetry which Dryden and Pope wrought out of their mental vigour, their followers wrote to pattern.

Poetry became reduced, as it never was before and has never been since, to a formula.

The Elizabethan sonneteers, as we saw, used a vocabulary and phraseology in common with their fellows in Italy and France, and none the less produced fine poetry.

But they used it to express things they really felt.