the beauties of his thoughts remaining; if his embroideries were burnt down, there would still be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot:  but I fear (at least let me fear it for myself) that we, who ape his sounding words, have nothing of his thought, but are all outside; there is not so much as a dwarf within our giant’s clothes.  Therefore, let not Shakespeare suffer for our sakes; it is our fault, who succeed him in an age which is more refined, if we imitate him so ill, that we copy his failings only, and make a virtue of that in our writings, which in his was an imperfection.

For what remains, the excellency of that poet was, as I have said, in the more manly passions; Fletcher’s in the softer:  Shakespeare writ better betwixt man and man; Fletcher, betwixt man and woman:  consequently, the one described friendship better; the other love:  yet Shakespeare taught Fletcher to write love:  and Juliet and Desdemona are originals.  It is true, the scholar had the softer soul; but the master had the kinder.  Friendship is both a virtue and a passion essentially; love is a passion only in its nature, and is not a virtue but by accident:  good nature makes friendship; but effeminacy love.  Shakespeare had an universal mind, which comprehended all characters and passions; Fletcher a more confined and limited:  for though he treated love in perfection, yet honour, ambition, revenge, and generally all the stronger, passions, he either touched not, or not masterly.  To conclude all, he was a limb of Shakespeare.

I had intended to have proceeded to the last property of manners, which is, that they must be constant, and the characters maintained the same from the beginning to the end; and from thence to have proceeded to the thoughts and expressions suitable to a tragedy:  but I will first see how this will relish with the age.  It is, I confess, but cursorily written; yet the judgment, which is given here, is generally founded upon experience:  but because many men are shocked at the name of rules, as if they were a kind of magisterial prescription upon poets, I will conclude with the words of Rapin, in his Reflections on Aristotle’s Work of Poetry:  “If the rules be well considered, we shall find them to be made only to reduce nature into method, to trace her step by step, and not to suffer the least mark of her to escape us:  it is only by these, that probability in fiction is maintained, which is the soul of poetry.  They are founded upon good sense, and sound reason, rather than on authority; for though Aristotle and Horace are produced, yet no man must argue, that what they write is true, because they writ it; but ’tis evident, by the ridiculous mistakes and gross absurdities, which have been made by those poets who have taken their fancy only for their guide, that if this fancy be not regulated, it is a mere caprice, and utterly incapable to produce a reasonable and judicious poem.”