I am only troubled when great and judicious Poets, and those who are acknowledged such, have writ or spoke against it.  As for others, they are to be answered by that one sentence of an ancient author. Sed ut primo ad consequendos eos quos priores ducimus accendimur, ita ubi aut praeteriri, aut aequari eos posse desperavimus, studium cum spe senescit:  quod, scilicet, assequi non potest, sequi desinit; praeteritoque eo in quo eminere non possumus, aliquid in quo nitamur conquirimus.”

LISIDEIUS concluded, in this manner; and NEANDER, after a little pause, thus answered him.

“I shall grant LISIDEIUS, without much dispute, a great part of what he has urged against us.

“For I acknowledge the French contrive their Plots more regularly; observe the laws of Comedy, and decorum of the Stage, to speak generally, with more exactness than the English.  Farther, I deny not but he has taxed us justly, in some irregularities of ours; which he has mentioned.  Yet, after all, I am of opinion, that neither our faults, nor their virtues are considerable enough to place them above us.

“For the lively Imitation of Nature being the Definition of a Play [p. 513]; those which best fulfil that law, ought to be esteemed superior to the others, ’Tis true those beauties of the French Poesy are such as will raise perfection higher where it is; but are not sufficient to give it where it is not.  They are, indeed, the beauties of a Statue, not of a Man; because not animated with the Soul of Poesy, which is Imitation of Humour and Passions.

“And this, LISIDEIUS himself, or any other, however biased to their party, cannot but acknowledge; if he will either compare the Humours of our Comedies, or the Characters of our serious Plays with theirs.

“He that will look upon theirs, which have been written till [within] these last ten years [i.e., 1655, when MOLIERE began to write], or thereabouts, will find it a hard matter to pick out two or three passable Humours amongst them.  CORNEILLE himself, their Arch Poet; what has he produced, except the Liar? and you know how it was cried up in France.  But when it came upon the English Stage, though well translated, and that part of DORANT acted to so much advantage by Mr. HART, as, I am confident, it never received in its own country; the most favourable to it, would not put it in competition with many of FLETCHER’s or BEN.  JOHNSON’s.  In the rest of CORNEILLE’s Comedies you have little humour.  He tells you, himself, his way is first to show two lovers in good intelligence with each other; in the working up of the Play, to embroil them by some mistake; and in the latter end, to clear it up.

“But, of late years, DE MOLIERE, the younger CORNEILLE, QUINAULT, and some others, have been imitating, afar off, the quick turns and graces of the English Stage.  They have mixed their serious Plays with mirth, like our Tragi-Comedies, since the death of Cardinal RICHELIEU [in 1642]:  which LISIDEIUS and many others not observing, have commended that in them for a virtue [p. 531], which they themselves no longer practise.