TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS
| Date | Poetry | Drama | Prose | |||||
| Lyrical | Narrative | Satirical and Didactic | Tragedy | Comedy | Narrative | Essay | Miscellaneous | |
| 1650 | ||||||||
| 1660 | Pepys | |||||||
| Dryden | Dryden | |||||||
| Butler | Evelyn | |||||||
| Dryden | ||||||||
| Dorset | Etheredge | Bunyan | ||||||
| |Sedley | Dryden | Dryden | Dryden[136] | |||||
| Rochester | ||||||||
| 1670 | Shadwell | Tillotson | ||||||
| Sprat | ||||||||
| Lee | Wycherley | |||||||
| Otway | ||||||||
| Oldham | ||||||||
| 1680 | Halifax | |||||||
| Shadwell | Temple | Temple | ||||||
| Dryden[137] | ||||||||
| Rowe | ||||||||
| Dryden[138] | ||||||||
| 1690 | Dryden[139] | |||||||
| Congreve | ||||||||
| Vanbrugh | ||||||||
| Dryden[140] | ||||||||
| 1700 | Dryden[141] | Farquhar | ||||||
In one prominent case we have a survival of the more elaborate style of the past, and that is in the history of Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715), Bishop of Salisbury, whose History of his own Times was published after his death. The style of the book is modeled on that of Clarendon. Burnet’s style is not of the same class as that of his predecessor: it has lapses into colloquialism; its sentences are snipped into small pieces by means of frequent colons and semicolons; and he has not Clarendon’s command of vocabulary.
EXERCISES
1. The two following lyrics are respectively of the Restoration and the Caroline periods. Compare and contrast them in (a) subject, (b) style, and (c) meter. Summarize the effect of either of them, and say which you prefer and why you prefer it.
(1) Love in fantastic triumph sate,
Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed,
For whom fresh pains he did create,
And strange tyrannic power he showed.
From thy bright eyes he took his fires,