ginals. 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."

Footnote:
1. The _dictum_ of Rymer, concerning the royal prerogative in poetry,
is thus expressed: "We are to presume the highest virtues, where we
find the highest of rewards; and though it is not necessary that
all heroes should be kings, yet, undoubtedly, all crowned heads, by
poetical right, are heroes. This character is a flower; a
prerogative so certain, so inseparably annexed to the crown, as by
no parliament of poets ever to be invaded." _The