be waved, as often as may be, by the address of the Poet.  But suppose they are necessary in the places where he uses them; yet there is no need to put them into rhyme.  He may place them in the beginning of a verse and break it off, as unfit (when so debased) for any other use:  or granting the worst, that they require more room than the hemistich will allow; yet still, there is a choice to be made of best words and least vulgar (provided they be apt) to express such thoughts.

“Many have blamed Rhyme in general for this fault, when the Poet, with a little care, might have redressed it:  but they do it, with no more justice, than if English Poesy should be made ridiculous, for the sake of [JOHN TAYLOR] the Water Poet’s rhymes.

“Our language is noble, full, and significant; and I know not why he who is master of it, may not clothe ordinary things in it, as decently as the Latin; if he use the same diligence in his choice of words.

“Delectus verborum origo est eloquentiae was the saying of JULIUS CAESAR; one so curious in his, that none of them can be changed but for the worse.

“One would think ‘Unlock the door!’ was a thing as vulgar as could be spoken; and yet SENECA could make it sound high and lofty, in his Latin—­

    “Reserate clusos regii postes Laris.

“But I turn from this exception, both because it happens not above twice or thrice in any Play, that those vulgar thoughts are used:  and then too, were there no other apology to be made, yet the necessity of them (which is, alike, in all kind[s] of writing) may excuse them.  Besides that, the great eagerness and precipitation with which they are spoken, makes us rather mind the substance than the dress; that for which they are spoken, rather than what is spoke[n].  For they are always the effect of some hasty concernment; and something of consequence depends upon them.

“Thus, CRITES!  I have endeavoured to answer your objections.  It remains only that I should vindicate an argument for Verse, which you have gone about to overthrow.

“It had formerly been said [p. 492] that, ’The easiness of Blank Verse renders the Poet too luxuriant; but that the labour of Rhyme bounds and circumscribes an over fruitful fancy:  the Sense there being commonly confined to the Couplet; and the words so ordered that the Rhyme naturally follows them, not they, the Rhyme.’

“To this, you answered, that ’It was no argument to the question in hand:  for the dispute was not which way a man may write best; but which is most proper for the subject on which he writes.’

“First.  Give me leave, Sir, to remember you! that the argument on which you raised this objection was only secondary.  It was built upon the hypothesis, that to write in Verse was proper for serious Plays.  Which supposition being granted (as it was briefly made out in that discourse, by shewing how Verse might be made natural):  it asserted that this way of writing was a help to the Poet’s judgement, by putting bounds to a wild, overflowing Fancy.  I think therefore it will not be hard for me to make good what it was to prove.