I know not, whether I have been so careful of the Plot and Language, as I ought:  but for the latter, I have endeavoured to write English, as near as I could distinguish it from the tongue of pedants, and that of affected travellers.  Only, I am sorry that, speaking so noble a language as we do, we have not a more certain Measure of it, as they have in France:  where they have an “Academy” erected for that purpose, and endowed with large privileges by the present King [LOUIS XIV.].  I wish, we might, at length, leave to borrow words from other nations; which is now a wantonness in us, not a necessity:  but so long as some affect to speak them, there will not want others who will have the boldness to write them.

But I fear, lest defending the received words; I shall be accused for following the New Way:  I mean, of writing Scenes in Verse; though, to speak properly, ’tis no so much a New Way amongst us, as an Old Way new revived.  For, many years [i.e., 1561] before SHAKESPEARE’s Plays, was the Tragedy of Queen [or rather King] GORBODUC [of which, however, the authentic title is “FERREX and PORREX"] in English Verse; written by that famous Lord BUCKHURST, afterwards Earl of DORSET, and progenitor to that excellent Person, [Lord BUCKHURST, see p. 503] who, as he inherits his Soul and Title, I wish may inherit his good fortune!

But supposing our countrymen had not received this Writing, till of late!  Shall we oppose ourselves to the most polished and civilised nations of Europe?  Shall we, with the same singularity, oppose the World in this, as most of us do in pronouncing Latin?  Or do we desire, that the brand which BARCLAY has, I hope unjustly, laid upon the English, should still continue? Angli suos ac sua omnia impense mirantur; coeteras nationes despectui habent.  All the Spanish and Italian Tragedies I have yet seen, are writ in Rhyme.  For the French, I do not name them:  because it is the fate of our countrymen, to admit little of theirs among us, but the basest of their men, the extravagancies of their fashions, and the frippery of their merchandise.

SHAKESPEARE, who (with some errors, not to be avoided in that Age) had, undoubtedly, a larger Soul of Poesy than ever any of our nation, was the First, who (to shun the pains of continual rhyming) invented that kind of writing which we call Blank Verse [DRYDEN is here wrong as to fact, Lord SURREY wrote the earliest printed English Blank Verse in his Fourth Book of the AEneid, printed in 1548]; but the French, more properly Prose Mesuree:  into which, the English Tongue so naturally slides, that in writing Prose, ’tis hardly to be avoided.  And, therefore, I admire [marvel that] some men should perpetually stumble in a way so easy:  and, inverting the order of their words, constantly close their lines with verbs.  Which, though commended, sometimes, in writing Latin; yet, we were whipt at Westminster, if we used it twice together.