A history of English literature - Edward Albert

“Well,” said I, “honest man, that is a great mercy, as things go now with the poor. But how do you live then, and how are you kept from the dreadful calamity that is now upon us all?” “Why, sir,” says he, “I am a waterman, and there is my boat,” says he, “and the boat serves me for a house; I work in it in the day, and I sleep in it in the night, and what I get I lay it down upon that stone,” says he, showing me a broad stone on the other side of the street, a good way from his house; “and then,” says he, “I halloo and call to them till I make them hear, and they come and fetch it.”

Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year

TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

Date	Poetry			Drama		Prose
Date	Lyric	Narrative	Didactic	Satirical and Tragedy	Comedy	Narrative	Essay	Miscellaneous
1700		Blackmore	Garth		Steele[148]
								Defoe[149]
		Addison[150]	Lady Winchilsea				Defoe	Swift[151]
1710		Pope[152]				Addison[154]	Steele[153]	Addison
			Pope[155]	A. Philips		Steele[153]	Addison[154]	Steele
							Swift	Arbuthnot
	Gay		Young	Addison[156]				Bolingbroke
								Berkeley
1720	Prior					Defoe[157]
								Lady M. W. Montagu
			Swift		A. Ramsay
	A. Ramsay					Swift[158]
			\|Savage		Gay
1730			Pope[159]
1740

EXERCISES

1. Compare the two following passages as examples of satire. They represent the bitterest passages from Dryden and Pope respectively. Remark upon the two methods—whether they are personal or general, vindictive or magnanimous. Add a note on the style of Dryden contrasted with that of Pope, and compare their handling of the heroic couplet. Say which passage you prefer, and why you prefer it.

(1) Doeg,[160] though without knowing how or why,

Made still a blundering kind of melody;

Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin,

Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in;