“As for what you have added, that the people are not generally inclined to like this way:  if it were true, it would be no wonder but betwixt the shaking off of an old habit, and the introducing of a new, there should be difficulty.  Do we not see them stick to HOPKINS and STERNHOLD’s Psalms; and forsake those of DAVID, I mean SANDYS his Translation of them?  If, by the people, you understand the Multitude, the [Greek:  oi polloi]; ’tis no matter, what they think!  They are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong.  Their judgement is a mere lottery. Est ubi plebs recte putat, est ubi peccat.  HORACE says it of the Vulgar, judging Poesy.  But if you mean, the mixed Audience of the Populace and the Noblesse:  I dare confidently affirm, that a great part of the latter sort are already favourable to Verse; and that no serious Plays, written since the King’s return [May 1660], have been more kindly received by them, than the Siege of Rhodes, the MUSTAPHA, the Indian Queen and Indian Emperor. [See p. 503.]

“But I come now to the Inference of your first argument.  You said, ’The dialogue of Plays is presented as the effect of sudden thought; but no one speaks suddenly or, ex tempore, in Rhyme’ [p. 498]:  and you inferred from thence, that Rhyme, which you acknowledge to be proper to Epic Poesy [p. 559], cannot equally be proper to Dramatic; unless we could suppose all men born so much more than poets, that verses should be made in them, not by them.

“It has been formerly urged by you [p. 499] and confessed by me [p. 563] that ’since no man spoke any kind of verse ex tempore; that which was nearest Nature was to be preferred.’  I answer you, therefore, by distinguishing betwixt what is nearest to the nature of Comedy:  which is the Imitation of common persons and Ordinary Speaking:  and, what is nearest the nature of a serious Play.  This last is, indeed, the Representation of Nature; but ’tis Nature wrought up to an higher pitch.  The Plot, the Characters, the Wit, the Passions, the Descriptions are all exalted above the level of common converse [conversation], as high as the Imagination of the Poet can carry them, with proportion to verisimility [verisimilitude].

“Tragedy, we know, is wont to Image to us the minds and fortunes of noble persons:  and to pourtray these exactly, Heroic Rhyme is nearest Nature; as being the noblest kind of Modern Verse.

    “Indignatur enim privatis, et prope socco,
    Dignis carminibus narrari coena THYESTOE.

“says HORACE.  And in another place,

    “Effutire leveis indigna tragoedia versus.

“Blank Verse is acknowledged to be too low for a Poem, nay more, for a paper of Verses [pp. 473, 498, 559]; but if too low for an ordinary Sonnet, how much more for Tragedy! which is, by ARISTOTLE, in the dispute between the Epic Poesy and the Dramatic, (for many reasons he there alleges) ranked above it.