words. Then followed a time when the streams once more divided
and church and stage parted. The strolling players and the trade
guilds took the place both of the minstrel and of the monkish
actors, the monk went back once more to his quiet cell, and the
minstrel gradually disappeared.

So year after year went on. By slow degrees times changed, and
our literature changed with the times. But looking backward we
can see that the poet is the development of the minstrel, the
prose writer the development of the monkish chronicler and
copyist. Prose at first was only used for grave matters, for
history, for religious works, for dry treatises which were hardly
literature, which were not meant for enjoyment but only for use
and for teaching. But by degrees people began to use prose for
story-telling, for enjoyment. More and more prose began to be
written for amusement until at last it has quite taken the place
of poetry. Nowadays many people are not at all fond of poetry.
They are rather apt to think that a poetry book is but dull
reading, and they much prefer plain prose. It may amuse those
who feel like that to remember that hundreds of years ago it was
just the other way round. Then it was prose that was considered
dull--hence we have the word prosy.

All poetry was at first written to be sung, sung too perhaps with
some gesture, so that the hearers might the better understand the
story. Then by degrees poets got further and further away from
that, until poets like Spenser wrote with no such idea. But
while poets like Spenser wrote their stories to be read, another
class of poets was growing up who intended their poems to be
spoken and acted. These were the dramatists.