and that images and actions may be raised above the life, and described in measure without rhyme, that leads you insensibly from your own principles to mine:  you are already so far onward of your way, that you have forsaken the imitation of ordinary converse.  You are gone beyond it; and to continue where you are, is to lodge in the open fields, betwixt two inns.  You have lost that which you call natural, and have not acquired the last perfection of art.  But it was only custom which cozened us so long; we thought, because Shakespeare and Fletcher went no farther, that there the pillars of poetry were to be erected; that, because they excellently described passion without rhime, therefore rhime was not capable of describing it.  But time has now convinced most men of that error.  It is indeed so difficult to write verse, that the adversaries of it have a good plea against many, who undertook that task, without being formed by art or nature for it.  Yet, even they who have written worst in it, would have written worse without it:  They have cozened many with their sound, who never took the pains to examine their sense.  In fine, they have succeeded; though, it is true, they have more dishonoured rhime by their good success, than they have done by their ill.  But I am willing to let fall this argument:  It is free for every man to write, or not to write, in verse, as he judges it to be, or not to be, his talent; or as he imagines the audience will receive it.

For heroic plays, in which only I have used it without the mixture of prose, the first light we had of them, on the English theatre, was from the late Sir William D’Avenant.  It being forbidden him in the rebellious times to act tragedies and comedies, because they contained some matter of scandal to those good people, who could more easily dispossess their lawful sovereign, than endure a wanton jest, he was forced to turn his thoughts another way, and to introduce the examples of moral virtue, writ in verse, and performed in recitative music.  The original of this music, and of the scenes which adorned his work, he had from the Italian operas; but he heightened his characters, as I may probably imagine, from the example of Corneille and some French poets.  In this condition did this part of poetry remain at his majesty’s return; when, growing bolder, as being now owned by a public authority, he reviewed his “Siege of Rhodes,” and caused it be acted as a just drama.  But as few men have the happiness to begin and finish any new project, so neither did he live to make his design perfect:  There wanted the fulness of a plot, and the variety of characters to form it as it ought; and, perhaps, something might have been added to the beauty of the style.  All which he would have performed with more exactness, had he pleased to have given us another work of the same nature.  For myself and others, who come after him, we are bound, with all veneration to his memory, to acknowledge what advantage we received from that excellent groundwork which he laid:  And, since it is an easy thing to add to what already is invented, we ought all of us, without envy to him, or partiality to ourselves, to yield him the precedence in it.