uestion,
whether Rhyme or not Rhyme be best or most natural for a grave or serious
Subject: but what is _nearest the nature_ of that which it presents.

Now, after all the endeavours of that Ingenious Person, a Play will still
be supposed to be a Composition of several persons speaking _ex tempore_
and 'tis as certain, that good verses are the hardest things that can be
imagined, to be so spoken [p. 582]. So that if any will be pleased to
impose the rule of measuring things to be the best, by _being nearest_
Nature; it is granted, by consequence, that which is most remote from the
thing supposed, must needs be most improper: and, therefore, I may justly
say, that both I and the question were equally mistaken. For I do own I
had rather read good verses, than either Blank Verse or Prose; and
therefore the author did himself injury, if he like Verse so well in
Plays, to lay down Rules to raise arguments, only unanswerable against
himself.

But the same author, being filled with the precedents of the Ancients
writing their Plays in Verse, commends the thing; and assures us that
"our language is noble, full, and significant," charging all defects upon
the ill placing of words; and proves it, by quoting SENECA loftily
expressing such an ordinary thing, as "shutting a door."

_Reserate clusos regii postes Laris_.

I suppose he was himself highly affected with the sound of these words.
But to have completed his Dictates [_injunctions_]; together with his
arguments, he should have obliged us by charming our ears with such an
art of placing words, as, in an English verse, to express so loftily "the
shutting of a door": that we might have been as much affected with the
sound of his words.

This, instead of being an argument upon the question, rightly stated, is
an attempt to prove, that Nothing may seem Something by the help of a
verse; which I easily grant to be the ill fortune of it: and therefore,
the question being so much mistaken, I wonder to see that author trouble
himself twice about it, with such an absolute Triumph declared by his own
imagination. But I have heard that a gentleman in Parliament, going to
speak twice, and being interrupted by another member, as against the
Orders of the House: he was excused, by a third [member] assuring the
House he had not yet spoken to the question.

But, if we examine the General Rules laid down for Plays by strict
Reason; we shall find the errors equally gross: for the grea