If I have formerly mistaken the question, I must confess my ignorance so far, as to say I continue still in my mistake:  But he ought to have proved that I mistook it; for it is yet but gratis dictum; I still shall think I have gained my point, if I can prove that rhyme is best, or most natural for a serious subject.  As for the question as he states it, whether rhyme be nearest the nature of what it represents, I wonder he should think me so ridiculous as to dispute, whether prose or verse be nearest to ordinary conversation.

It still remains for him to prove his inference; that, since verse is granted to be more remote than prose from ordinary conversation, therefore no serious plays ought to be writ in verse:  and when he clearly makes that good, I will acknowledge his victory as absolute as he can desire it.

The question now is, which of us two has mistaken it; and if it appear I have not, the world will suspect, “what gentleman that was, who was allowed to speak twice in parliament, because he had not yet spoken to the question[A];” and perhaps conclude it to be the same, who, as it is reported, maintained a contradiction in terminis, in the face of three hundred persons.

[Footnote A:  A sneer which Sir Robert aims at Dryden.  Dryden had written twice on the question of rhyming tragedies.]

But to return to verse, whether it be natural or not in plays, is a problem which is not demonstrable of either side:  It is enough for me, that he acknowledges he had rather read good verse than prose:  for if all the enemies of verse will confess as much, I shall not need to prove that it is natural.  I am satisfied if it cause delight; for delight is the chief, if not the only, end of poesy:  Instruction can be admitted but in the second place, for poesy only instructs as it delights.  It is true, that to imitate well is a poet’s work; but to affect the soul, and excite the passions, and, above all, to move admiration (which is the delight of serious plays), a bare imitation will not serve.  The converse, therefore, which a poet is to imitate, must be heightened with all the arts and ornaments of poesy; and must be such as, strictly considered, could never be supposed spoken by any without premeditation.

As for what he urges, that “a play will still be supposed to be a composition of several persons speaking extempore, and that good verses are the hardest things which can be imagined to be so spoken;” I must crave leave to dissent from his opinion, as to the former part of it:  For, if I am not deceived, a play is supposed to be the work of the poet, imitating, or representing, the conversation of several persons:  and this I think to be as clear, as he thinks the contrary.

But I will be bolder, and do not doubt to make it good, though a paradox, that one great reason why prose is not to be used in serious plays, is, because it is too near the nature of converse:  There may be too great a likeness; as the most skilful painters affirm, that there may be too near a resemblance in a picture:  To take every lineament and feature is not to make an excellent piece, but to take so much only as will make a beautiful resemblance of the whole:  and, with an ingenious flattery of nature, to heighten the beauties of some parts, and hide the deformities of the rest.  For so says Horace,