“I could multiply other instances; but these are sufficient to prove, that there is no error in chosing a subject which requires this sort of Narration.  In the ill managing of them, they may.

“But I find, I have been too long in this discourse; since the French have many other excellencies, not common to us.

“As that, you never see any of their Plays end with a Conversion, or simple Change of Will:  which is the ordinary way our Poets use [are accustomed] to end theirs.

“It shows little art in the conclusion of a Dramatic Poem, when they who have hindered the felicity during the Four Acts, desist from it in the Fifth, without some powerful cause to take them off:  and though I deny not but such reasons may be found; yet it is a path that is cautiously to be trod, and the Poet is to be sure he convinces the audience, that the motive is strong enough.

“As, for example, the conversion of the Usurer in the Scornful Lady, seems to me, a little forced.  For, being a Usurer, which implies a Lover of Money in the highest degree of covetousness (and such, the Poet has represented him); the account he gives for the sudden change, is, that he has been duped by the wild young fellow:  which, in reason, might render him more wary another time, and make him punish himself with harder fare and coarser clothes, to get it up again.  But that he should look upon it as a judgement, and so repent; we may expect to hear of in a Sermon, but I should never endure it in a Play.

“I pass by this.  Neither will I insist upon the care they take, that no person, after his first entrance, shall ever appear; but the business which brings upon the Stage, shall be evident.  Which, if observed, must needs render all the events of the Play more natural.  For there, you see the probability of every accident, in the cause that produced it; and that which appears chance in the Play, will seem so reasonable to you, that you will there find it almost necessary:  so that in the Exits of their Actors, you have a clear account of their purpose and design in the next Entrance; though, if the Scene be well wrought, the event will commonly deceive you.  ‘For there is nothing so absurd,’ says CORNEILLE, ‘as for an Actor to leave the Stage, only because he has no more to say!’

“I should now speak of the beauty of their Rhyme, and the just reason I have to prefer that way of writing, in Tragedies, before ours, in Blank Verse.  But, because it is partly received by us, and therefore, not altogether peculiar to them; I will say no more of it, in relation to their Plays.  For our own; I doubt not but it will exceedingly beautify them:  and I can see but one reason why it should not generally obtain; that is, because our Poets write so ill in it [pp. 503, 578, 598].  This, indeed, may prove a more prevailing argument, than all others which are used to destroy it:  and, therefore,