“If, then, Verse may be made natural in itself; how becomes it improper to a Play?  You say, ’The Stage is the Representation of Nature, and no man, in ordinary conversation, speaks in Rhyme’:  but you foresaw, when you said this, that it might be answered, ’Neither does any man speak in Blank Verse, or in measure without Rhyme!’ therefore you concluded, ’That which is nearest Nature is still to be preferred.’  But you took no notice that Rhyme might be made as natural as Blank Verse, by the well placing of the words, &c.  All the difference between them, when they are both correct, is the sound in one, which the other wants:  and if so, the sweetness of it, and all the advantages resulting from it which are handled in the Preface to the Rival Ladies [pp. 487-493], will yet stand good.

“As for that place of ARISTOTLE, where he says, ’Plays should be writ in that kind of Verse which is nearest Prose’:  it makes little for you, Blank Verse being, properly, but Measured Prose.

“Now Measure, alone, in any modern language, does not constitute Verse.  Those of the Ancients, in Greek and Latin, consisted in Quantity of Words, and a determinate number of Feet.  But when, by the inundations of the Goths and Vandals, into Italy, new languages were brought in, and barbarously mingled with the Latin, of which, the Italian, Spanish, French, and ours (made out of them, and the Teutonic) are dialects:  a New Way of Poesy was practised, new, I say, in those countries; for, in all probability, it was that of the conquerors in their own nations.  The New Way consisted of Measure or Number of Feet, and Rhyme.  The sweetness of Rhyme and observation of Accent, supplying the place of Quantity in Words:  which could neither exactly be observed by those Barbarians who knew not the Rules of it; neither was it suitable to their tongues, as it had been to the Greek and Latin.

“No man is tied in Modern Poesy, to observe any farther Rules in the Feet of his Verse, but that they be dissyllables (whether Spondee, Trochee, or Iambic, it matters not); only he is obliged to Rhyme.  Neither do the Spanish, French, Italians, or Germans acknowledge at all, or very rarely, any such kind of Poesy as Blank Verse among them.  Therefore, at most, ’tis but a Poetic Prose, a sermo pedestris; and, as such, most fit for Comedies:  where I acknowledge Rhyme to be improper.

“Farther, as to that quotation of ARISTOTLE, our Couplet Verses may be rendered as near Prose, as Blank Verse itself; by using those advantages I lately named, as Breaks in the Hemistich, or Running the Sense into another line:  thereby, making Art and Order appear as loose and free as Nature.  Or, not tying ourselves to Couplets strictly, we may use the benefit of the Pindaric way, practised in the Siege of Rhodes; where the numbers vary, and the rhyme is disposed carelessly, and far from often chiming.

“Neither is that other advantage of the Ancients to be despised, of changing the Kind of Verse, when they please, with the change of the Scene, or some new Entrance.  For they confine not themselves always to Iambics; but extend their liberty to all Lyric Numbers; and sometimes, even, to Hexameter.