prosemann.

1589 G. Puttenham Arte Eng. Poesie iii. xviii. 160 The figure which the Greeks call Hiperbole..must be vsed very discreetly,..for although a prayse or other report may be allowed beyond credit, it may not be beyond all measure, specially in the proseman.

1607 F. Beaumont Woman-Hater (1679) iii. ii. 482 All broken Poets, all Prose-men that are fall'n from small sence, to meer Letters.

1678 H. Vaughan Thalia Rediviva 70 Write o're his Hearse For false, foul Prose-men this fair Truth in Verse.

1733 A. Pope 1st Satire 2nd Bk. Horace Imitated ii. i. 11 Verse-man or Prose-man, term me which you will.

1759 E. Young Conjectures on Orig. Composition 28 There is something in Poetry beyond Prose-reason..Mysteries..which render mere Prose-men Infidels to their Divinity.

1816 W. Combe Eng. Dance of Death II. 181 Poets and graver Prosemen tell us, Tis apt to make a Husband jealous.

1887 G. Saintsbury Hist. Elizabethan Lit. ix. 343 For the meditative reading of instructed persons he [sc. Browne] is perhaps the most delightful of English prosemen.

1926 Eng. Jrnl. 15 327 A few new poets and prosemen have cropped up since 1914.

1966 New Statesman 22 Apr. 608/1 St Anselm, that most intransigent of the church's writing doctors. An unbending archbishop, a proseman of Latin clarity and spareness.

2002 Los Angeles Times (Nexis) 3 Feb. r3 [Elmore] Leonard learned nothing of use to him and his stories, he's said, from poetic prose men like Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald.