To the poet Waller, the immediate predecessor of Dryden, the classical writers themselves ascribed the honour of the innovation.

In fact Waller was only carrying out the ideals counselled and followed by Ben Jonson.

It was in the school of Waller and Dryden and not in that of the minor writers who called themselves his followers that he came to his own.
What then are the main differences between classicism of the best period--the classicism whose characteristics we have been describing--and the Romanticism which came before and after?
In the first place we must put the quality we have described as that of complete statement.

Classical poetry is, so to speak, "all there." Its meaning is all of it on the surface; it conveys nothing but what it says, and what it says, it says completely.

It is always vigorous and direct, often pointed and aphoristic, never merely suggestive, never given to half statement, and never obscure.