The effort to construct a dream-world, which alters English poetry so greatly in the nineteenth-century, a dream-world utterly different from the visionary realities of the Vita Nuova or of the poetry of Dante's contemporaries, is a problem of which various explanations may no doubt be found; in any case, the result makes a poet of the nineteenth century, of the same size as Marvell, a more trivial and less serious figure. Marvell is no greater personality than William Morris, but he had something much more solid behind him: he had the vast and penetrating influence of Ben Jonson. Jonson never wrote anything so pure as Marvell's Horatian Ode; but this ode has that same quality of wit which was diffused over the whole Elizabethan product and concentrated in the work of Jonson. And, as was said before, this wit which pervades the poetry of Marvell is more Latin, more refined, than anything that succeeded it. The great danger, as well as the great interest and excitement, of English prose and verse, compared with French, is that it permits and justifies an exaggeration of particular qualities to the exclusion of others. Dryden was great in wit, as Milton in magniloquence; but the former, by isolating this quality and making it by itself into great poetry, and the latter, by coming to dispense with it altogether, may perhaps have injured the language. In Dryden wit becomes almost fun, and thereby loses some contact with reality; becomes pure fun, which French wit almost never is. The midwife placed her hand on his thick skull, With this prophetic blessing: _Be thou dull._ A numerous host of dreaming saints succeed, Of the true old enthusiastic breed. This is audacious and splendid; it belongs to satire besides which Marvell's Satires are random babbling; but it is perhaps as exaggerated as-- Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns, And to his faithful champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns, And all that band them to resist His uncontrollable intent. How oddly the sharp Dantesque phrase "whence Gaza mourns" springs out from the brilliant but ridiculous contortions of Milton's sentence! Who from his private gardens, where He lived reservèd and austere, (As if his highest plot To plant the bergamot) Could by industrious valour climb To ruin the great work of Time, And cast the kingdoms old Into another mold; * * * * The Piet no shelter now shall find Within his parti-coloured mind, But, from this valour sad, Shrink underneath the plaid: