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." There he has the baronet on the
hip; and gives him a throw. He then makes bold to prove this
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." Thus, in
"Bartholomew Fair," or the lowest kind of comedy, where he was not to go
out of prose, Ben does yet so raise his matter, in that prose, as to
render it delightful, which he could never have performed had he only
said or done those very things that are daily spoken or practised in the
fair; for then the fair itself would be as full of pleasure to an
enquiring person as the play, which we manifestly see it is not. "But he
hath made an excellent lazar of it. The copy is of price, though the
original be vile." Even in the lowest prose comedy, then, the matter and
the wording must be lifted out of nature--as _we_ should now say,
idealized. In "Catiline" and "Sejanus" again, where the argument is
great, Ben sometimes ascends into rhyme; and had his genius been proper
for rhyme--which Dryden more than once asserts it was not--"it is
probable he would have adorned those subjects with that kind of writing.
Thus prose," he finely says, "though the rightful prince, yet is by
common consent deposed as too weak for the government of Serious Plays;
and he failing, there now start up two competitors, one the nearer in
blood, which is blank verse; the other more fit for the ends of
government, which is rhyme. Blank verse is, indeed, the nearer prose,
but he is blemished with the weakness of his predecessor. Rhyme (for I
will deal clearly) has somewhat of the usurper in him, but he is brave
and generous, and his dominion pleasing."

It was then, "for the reason of delight," that the ancients wrote all
their tragedies in verse--and not in prose; because it was most remote
from conversation. Rhyme had not then been invented. But again he
reminds his adversary, that it seems to have been adopted by the general
consent of poets in all modern languages--and that almost all their
Serious Plays are written in it, which, though it be no demonstration
that therefore they ought to be so, yet at least the practice first, and
the continuation of it, shows that it attained the end, which was to
please. It is thus that Dryden deals with Sir Robert, as if blank ver