though, most commonly, the Sense is to be
confined to the Couplet; yet, nothing that does _perpetuo tenore fluere_,
'run in the same channel,' can please always. 'Tis like the murmuring of a
stream: which, not varying in the fall, causes at first attention; at
last, drowsiness. VARIETY OF CADENCES is the best Rule; the greatest help
to the Actors, and refreshment to the Audience.

"If, then, Verse may be made _natural in itself; how becomes it improper
to a Play_? You say, 'The Stage is the Representation of Nature, and no
man, in ordinary conversation, speaks in Rhyme': but you foresaw, when
you said this, that it might be answered, 'Neither does any man speak in
Blank Verse, or in measure without Rhyme!' therefore you concluded, 'That
which is nearest Nature is still to be preferred.' But you took no notice
that Rhyme might be made as natural as Blank Verse, by the well placing
of the words, &c. All the difference between them, when they are both
correct, is the sound in one, which the other wants: and if so, the
sweetness of it, and all the advantages resulting from it which are
handled in the _Preface_ to the _Rival Ladies_ [pp. 487-493], will yet
stand good.

"As for that place of ARISTOTLE, where he says, 'Plays should be writ in
that kind of Verse which is nearest Prose': it makes little for you,
Blank Verse being, properly, but Measured Prose.

"Now Measure, alone, in any modern language, does not constitute Verse.
Those of the Ancients, in Greek and Latin, consisted in Quantity of
Words, and a determinate number of Feet. But when, by the inundations of
the Goths and Vandals, into Italy, new languages were brought in, and
barbarously mingled with the Latin, of which, the Italian, Spanish,
French, and ours (made out of them, and the Teutonic) are dialects: a New
Way of Poesy was practised, new, I say, in those countries; for, in all
probability, it was that of the conquerors in their own nations. The New
Way consisted of Measure or Number of Feet, _and_ Rhyme. The sweetness of
Rhyme and observation of Accent, supplying the place of Quantity in Words:
which could neither exactly be observed by those Barbarians who knew not
the Rules of it; neither was it suitable to their tongues, as it had been
to the Greek and Latin.

"No man is tied in Modern Poesy, to observe any farther Rules in the Feet
of his Verse, but that they be dissyllables (whether Spondee, Trochee, or
Iambic, it matters not); only he is obliged t