This, my Lord! [i.e., the Dedicatee, the Lord BUCKHURST, p. 503] was the substance of what was then spoke, on that occasion:  and LISIDEIUS, I think, was going to reply; when he was prevented thus by CRITES.

“I am confident,” said he, “the most material things that can be said, have been already urged, on either side.  If they have not; I must beg of LISIDEIUS, that he will defer his answer till another time.  For I confess I have a joint quarrel to you both:  because you have concluded [pp. 539, 548], without any reason given for it, that Rhyme is proper for the Stage.

“I will not dispute how ancient it hath been among us to write this way.  Perhaps our ancestors knew no better, till SHAKESPEARE’s time, I will grant, it was not altogether left by him; and that PLETCHER and BEN JOHNSON used it frequently in their Pastorals, and sometimes in other Plays.

“Farther; I will not argue, whether we received it originally from our own countrymen, or from the French.  For that is an inquiry of as little benefit as theirs, who, in the midst of the Great Plague [1665], were not so solicitous to provide against it; as to know whether we had it from the malignity of our own air, or by transportation from Holland.

“I have therefore only to affirm that it is not allowable in serious Plays. For Comedies, I find you are already concluding with me.

“To prove this, I might satisfy myself to tell you, how much in vain it is, for you, to strive against the stream of the People’s inclination! the greatest part of whom, are prepossessed so much with those excellent plays of SHAKESPEARE, FLETCHER, and BEN.  JOHNSON, which have been written out of Rhyme, that (except you could bring them such as were written better in it; and those, too, by persons of equal reputation with them) it will be impossible for you to gain your cause with them:  who will (still) be judges.  This it is to which, in fine, all your reasons must submit.  The unanimous consent of an audience is so powerful, that even JULIUS CAESAR (as MACROBIOS reports of him), when he, was Perpetual Dictator, was not able to balance it, on the other side:  but when LABERIUS, a Roman knight, at his request, contended in the Mime with another poet; he was forced to cry out, Etiam favente me victus es Liberi.

“But I will not, on this occasion, take the advantage of the greater number; but only urge such reasons against Rhyme, as I find in the writings of those who have argued for the other way.

“First, then, I am of opinion, that Rhyme is unnatural in a Play, because Dialogue, there, is presented as the effect of sudden thought. For a Play is the Imitation of Nature:  and since no man, without premeditation, speaks in rhyme; neither ought he to do it on the Stage.  This hinders not but the Fancy may be, there, elevated to a higher pitch of thought than it is in ordinary discourse; for there is a probability that men of excellent and quick parts, may speak noble things ex tempore:  but those thoughts are never fettered with the numbers and sound of Verse, without study; and therefore it cannot be but unnatural, to present the most free way of speaking, in that which is the most constrained.