Waller : Edmund (1606-87), English poet whose adoption of smooth, regular versification in place of argumentative structure & dramatic immediacy characteristic of his time prepared the way for the heroic couplet’s emergence by the end of that century as the dominant form of English poetic expression.
... dryly, "but you and I cannot yet be kindred - for hog is not bacon until it is well hanged." 7 (2) From Edmund Waller: Edmund Waller had written a lengthy "Panegyrick" to Oliver Cromwell the Protector. When the Restoration came about after Cromwell's death, the same Waller was not long in singing the "Happy Return" of Charles. When King Charles read this second poem, addressed to himself... himself, he told the poet that it was reported that he had written better verse to Oliver Cromwell. Unperturbed and undaunted, the ready-witted Waller answered: "Please your Majesty, we poets always excel in fiction."" How neat and ingenious was the way of getting out of a difficult situation! (3) From Dr. Busby: Dr. Busby, presumably the headmaster of Westminster School, was a very ...
... sensuousness became lost in exaggeration and poetry became a sort of hunt for metaphors, metaphors used not as aids to the imagination, but for their own sake, and the more absurd and violent, the better. Waller & Page 129 Dryden first and Pope to a much greater extent revolted against this style of forced ingenuity and proclaimed a new kind of poetry. They gave to Elizabethan language the name ...
... and a growing hardness of form and concentrated narrowness of the observing eye. This movement rises on one side into the ripened classical perfection of Milton, and falls away on the other through Waller into the reaction in Dryden and Pope. Page 89 ...
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