“But you add, that, ’Were this let pass; yet he who wants judgement in the liberty of the Fancy, may as well shew the defect of it, when he is confined to Verse:  for he who has judgement, will avoid errors; and he who has it not will commit them in all kinds of writing.’

“This argument, as you have taken it from a most acute person, so I confess it carries much weight in it.  But by using the word Judgement here indefinitely, you seem to have put a fallacy upon us.  I grant he who has judgement, that is, so profound, so strong, so infallible a judgement that he needs no helps to keep it always poised and upright, will commit no faults; either in Rhyme, or out of it:  and, on the other extreme, he who has a judgement so weak and crazed, that no helps can correct or amend it, shall write scurvily out of Rhyme; and worse in it.  But the first of these Judgements, is nowhere to be found; and the latter is not fit to write at all.

“To speak, therefore, of Judgement as it is in the best Poets; they who have the greatest proportion of it, want other helps than from it within:  as, for example, you would be loath to say that he who was endued with a sound judgement, had no need of history, geography, or moral philosophy, to write correctly.

“Judgement is, indeed, the Master Workman in a Play; but he requires many subordinate hands, many tools to his assistance.  And Verse, I affirm to be one of these.  ’Tis a ‘Rule and Line’ by which he keeps his building compact and even; which, otherwise, lawless Imagination would raise, either irregularly or loosely.  At least, if the Poet commits errors with this help; he would make greater and more without it.  ’Tis, in short, a slow and painful, but the surest kind of working.

“OVID, whom you accuse [p. 561] for luxuriancy in Verse, had, perhaps, been farther guilty of it, had he writ in Prose.  And for your instance of BEN.  JOHNSON [p. 561]; who, you say, writ exactly, without the help of Rhyme:  you are to remember, ’tis only an aid to a luxuriant Fancy; which his was not [p. 551].  As he did not want Imagination; so, none ever said he had much to spare.  Neither was Verse then refined so much, to be a help to that Age as it is to ours.

“Thus then, the second thoughts being usually the best, as receiving the maturest digestion from judgement; and the last and most mature product of those thoughts, being artfull and laboured Verse:  it may well be inferred, that Verse is a great help to a luxuriant Fancy.  And this is what that argument, which you opposed, was to evince.”

NEANDER was pursuing this discourse so eagerly that EUGENIUS had called to him twice or thrice, ere he took notice that the barge stood still; and that they were at the foot of Somerset Stairs, where they had appointed it to land.

The company were all sorry to separate so soon, though a great part of the evening was already spent:  and stood a while, looking back upon the water; which the moonbeams played upon, and made it appear like floating quicksilver.