“But setting this defence aside, your argument is almost as strong against the use of Rhyme in Poems, as in Plays.  For the Epic way is everywhere interlaced with Dialogue or Discoursive Scenes:  and, therefore, you must either grant Rhyme to be improper there, which is contrary to your assertion; or admit it into Plays, by the same title which you have given it to Poems.

“For though Tragedy be justly preferred above the other, yet there is a great affinity between them; as may easily be discovered in that Definition of a Play, which LISIDEIUS gave us [p. 513].  The genus of them is the same, A JUST AND LIVELY IMAGE OF HUMAN NATURE, IN ITS ACTIONS, PASSIONS, AND TRAVERSES OF FORTUNE:  so is the End, namely, FOR THE DELIGHT AND BENEFIT OF MANKIND.  The Characters and Persons are still the same, viz., the greatest of both sorts:  only the manner of acquainting us with those actions, passions, and fortunes is different.  Tragedy performs it, viva voce, or by Action in Dialogue:  wherein it excels the Epic Poem; which does it, chiefly, by Narration, and therefore is not so lively an Image of Human Nature.  However, the agreement betwixt them is such, that if Rhyme be proper for one, it must be for the other.

“Verse, ’tis true, is not ‘the effect of Sudden Thought.’  But this hinders not, that Sudden Thought may be represented in Verse:  since those thoughts are such, as must be higher than Nature can raise them without premeditation, especially, to a continuance of them, even out of Verse:  and, consequently, you cannot imagine them, to have been sudden, either in the Poet or the Actors.

“A Play, as I have said, to be like Nature, is to be set above it; as statues which are placed on high, are made greater than the life, that they may descend to the sight, in their just proportion.

“Perhaps, I have insisted too long upon this objection; but the clearing of it, will make my stay shorter on the rest.

“You tell us, CRITES! that ’Rhyme is most unnatural in Repartees or Short Replies:  when he who answers, it being presumed he knew not what the other would say, yet makes up that part of the Verse which was left incomplete; and supplies both the sound and the measure of it.  This,’ you say, ’looks rather like the Confederacy of two, than the Answer of one.’

“This, I confess, is an objection which is in every one’s mouth, who loves not Rhyme; but suppose, I beseech you! the Repartee were made only in Blank Verse; might not part of the same argument be turned against you?  For the measure is as often supplied there, as it is in Rhyme:  the latter half of the hemistich as commonly made up, or a second line subjoined as a reply to the former; which any one leaf in JOHNSON’s Plays will sufficiently make clear to you.