prosaistn.

1776 T. Cogan John Buncle I. iii. 133 Often have I observed words jump with marvellous address into the closest connection with the preceeding line, when a dull prosaist would have thought them at least a dozen leagues distant.

1803 Ann. Rev. 1 322 Known to the public as a poet, and a prosaist of eloquence and erudition.

1879 M. Pattison Milton vi. 70 There is no other prosaist who possesses anything like Milton's command over the resources of our language.

1925 Times 20 May 14/2 Altogether, an amusing, piquant, provocative book by one of the most brilliant of English prosaists.

1977 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 24 Nov. 48/1 The magniloquent tirades of Milton spare the name of this more sedate, more philosophical prosaist.

1998 Russ. Rev. 57 250 Gippius was the successful poet/prosaist—Gurevich-the-struggling-journalist was not.

1831 T. Carlyle in Fraser's Mag. Mar. 103/2 A man who denied that Schiller was a Poet would himself be, from every side, declared a Prosaist.

1853 A. H. Clough in Putnam's Monthly Mag. Aug. 138 How that first of English prosaists was inspired with them [sc. poetic lines] remains a problem.

1892 Let. May in R. L. Stevenson Vailima Lett. (1895) 174 With all my romance, I am a realist and a prosaist, and a most fanatical lover of plain physical sensations plainly and expressly rendered.