PROSE WRITERS: LYLY; SIDNEY; BACON; BURTON.--In prose this amazing period was equally productive. Lyly, who corresponds approximately to the French Voiture, created _euphemism_: that is, witty preciosity. Sidney, in his _Arcadia_ furnished a curious example of the chivalric romance. Further in his _Defence of Poesie_, he founded literary criticism. Francis Bacon, historian, moralist, philosopher, perhaps collaborator with Shakespeare, has a place equally allocated to him in a history of literature as in a history of philosophical ideas. Robert Burton, moralist or rather _Meditator_, who gave himself the pseudonym of Democritus Junior because he was consumed with sadness, left a great work, but one in which there are many quotations, called _The Anatomy of Melancholy_. There is much analogy between him and the French Sénancour. Sterne, without acknowledgment, profusely pilfered from him. He is thoroughly English. He did not create melancholy but he greatly contributed to it and made a specialty of it. Despite his pranks and whimsicality, he possessed high literary merit. POETRY: WALLER.--The English seventeenth century, strictly speaking, virtually commencing about 1625, was inferior to the sixteenth, that has just been considered, which is easily explained by the civil wars distracting England at this period. In poetry, on the one hand, may be noticed the softened and pleasing Epicureans, of which the most prominent representative was Waller, a witty man of the world, who dwelt long in France, and was a friend of Saint-Évremond (who himself spent a portion of his life in England). Waller made a very fine eulogy of his cousin Cromwell, later another of Charles II, and was told by the latter, "This is not so good as that on Cromwell," whereupon he replied, "Sire, you know that poets always succeed better in fiction than in fact." Here was a man of much wit. HERBERT; HABINGTON.--Also must be remarked the austere and mystical such as George Herbert, with his _Temple_, a collection of religious and melancholy poems, and like Habington, sad and gloomy even as far as the thirst for dissolution, analogous to the modern Schopenhauer: "My God, if it be Thy supreme decree, if Thou wilt that this moment be the last wherein I breathe this air, my heart obeys, happy to retire far from the false favours of the great, from betrayals where the just are preyed upon...." DRAMATIC POETS.--Let the estimable dramatic poets be alluded to. Davenant, perhaps a son of Shakespeare; Otway, the illustrious author of _Venice Preserved_ and of many adaptations from the French (_Titus and Berenice_, the _Tricks of Scapin_, etc.); Dryden, declamatory, emphatic, but admirably gifted with dramatic genius, author of _The Virgin Queen_, _All for Love_ (Cleopatra), _Don Sebastian_, was always hesitating between the influence of Shakespeare and that of the French, over-inclined, too, to licentious scenes but pathetic and eloquent.