supposing our countrymen had not received this Writing, till of late!
Shall we oppose ourselves to the most polished and civilised nations of
Europe? Shall we, with the same singularity, oppose the World in this, as
most of us do in pronouncing Latin? Or do we desire, that the brand which
BARCLAY has, I hope unjustly, laid upon the English, should still
continue? _Angli suos ac sua omnia impense mirantur; coeteras nationes
despectui habent_. All the Spanish and Italian Tragedies I have yet seen,
are writ in Rhyme. For the French, I do not name them: because it is the
fate of our countrymen, to admit little of theirs among us, but the
basest of their men, the extravagancies of their fashions, and the
frippery of their merchandise.

SHAKESPEARE, who (with some errors, not to be avoided in that Age) had,
undoubtedly, a larger Soul of Poesy than ever any of our nation, was the
First, who (to shun the pains of continual rhyming) invented that kind of
writing which we call Blank Verse [_DRYDEN is here wrong as to fact, Lord
SURREY wrote the earliest_ printed _English Blank Verse in his Fourth
Book of the_ AEneid, _printed in_ 1548]; but the French, more properly
_Prose Mesuree_: into which, the English Tongue so naturally slides, that
in writing Prose, 'tis hardly to be avoided. And, therefore, I admire
[_marvel that_] some men should perpetually stumble in a way so easy:
and, inverting the order of their words, constantly close their lines
with verbs. Which, though commended, sometimes, in writing Latin; yet, we
were whipt at Westminster, if we used it twice together.

I know some, who, if they were to write in Blank Verse _Sir, I ask your
pardon!_ would think it sounded more heroically to write

_Sir, I, your pardon ask!_

I should judge him to have little command of English, whom the necessity
of a _rhyme_ should force upon this rock; though, sometimes, it cannot be
easily avoided.

And, indeed, this is the only inconvenience with which Rhyme can be
charged. This is that, which makes them say, "Rhyme is not natural. It
being only so, when the Poet either makes a vicious choice of words; or
places them, for Rhyme's sake so unnaturally, as no man would, in
ordinary speaking." But when 'tis so judiciously ordered, that the first
word in the verse seems to beget the second; and that, the next; till
that becomes the last word in the line, which, in the negligence of
Prose, would be so: it must, then, be granted, Rhyme