Thomson was a simple-minded man, with a faculty for watching and enjoying nature which belonged to few in his sophisticated age; it is unfortunate he should have spent his working hours in rendering the fruit of country rambles freshly observed into a cold and stilted diction.

It suited the eighteenth century reader well, for not understanding nature herself he was naturally obliged to read her in translations.
(3) The chief merits of "classic" poetry--its clearness, its vigour, its direct statement--are such as belong theoretically rather to prose than to poetry.

In fact, it was in prose that the most vigorous intellect of the time found itself.

We have seen how Dryden, reversing the habit of other poets, succeeded in expressing his personality not in poetry which was his vocation, but in prose which was the amusement of his leisure hours.

Spenser had put his politics into prose and his ideals into verse; Dryden wrote his politics--to order--in verse, and in prose set down the thoughts and fancies which were the deepest part of him because they were about his art.