“Thus, you see! your Rhyme is incapable of expressing the greatest thoughts, naturally; and the lowest, it cannot, with any grace.  For what is more unbefitting the majesty of Verse, than ‘to call a servant,’ or ‘bid a door be shut’ in Rhyme?  And yet, this miserable necessity you are forced upon!

“‘But Verse,’ you say, ’circumscribes a quick and luxuriant Fancy, which would extend itself too far, on every subject; did not the labour which is required to well-turned and polished Rhyme, set bounds to it [pp. 492-493].  Yet this argument, if granted, would only prove, that we may write better in Verse, but not more naturally.

“Neither is it able to evince that.  For he who wants judgement to confine his Fancy, in Blank Verse; may want it as well, in Rhyme:  and he who has it, will avoid errors in both kinds [pp. 498, 571], Latin Verse was as great a confinement to the imagination of those poets, as Rhyme to ours:  and yet, you find OVID saying too much on every subject.

“Nescivit, says SENECA, quod bene cessit relinquere:  of which he [OVID] gives you one famous instance in his description of the Deluge.

    “Omnia pontus erat, deerant quoque litora ponto.
    Now all was sea; nor had that sea a shore.

“Thus OVID’s Fancy was not limited by Verse; and VIRGIL needed not Verse to have bounded his.

“In our own language, we see BEN.  JOHNSON confining himself to what ought to be said, even in the liberty of Blank Verse; and yet CORNEILLE, the most judicious of the French poets, is still varying the same Sense a hundred ways, and dwelling eternally upon the same subject, though confined by Rhyme.

“Some other exceptions, I have to Verse; but these I have named, being, for the most part, already public:  I conceive it reasonable they should, first, be answered.”

“It concerns me less than any,” said NEANDER, seeing he had ended, “to reply to this discourse, because when I should have proved that Verse may be natural in Plays; yet I should always be ready to confess that those which I [i.e., DRYDEN, see pp. 503, 566] have written in this kind, come short of that perfection which is required.  Yet since you are pleased I should undertake this province, I will do it:  though, with all imaginable respect and deference both to that Person [i.e., SIR ROBERT HOWARD, see p. 494] from whom you have borrowed your strongest arguments; and to whose judgement, when I have said all, I finally submit.

“But before I proceed to answer your objections; I must first remember you, that I exclude all Comedy from my defence; and next, that I deny not but Blank Verse may be also used:  and content myself only to assert that in serious Plays, where the Subject and Characters are great, and the Plot unmixed with mirth (which might allay or divert these concernments which are produced), Rhyme is there, as natural, and more effectual than Blank Verse.