consequently you cannot imagine them to have been sudden, either in the poet or the actors. A play, as I have said, to be like nature, is to be set above it; as statues which are placed on high are made greater than the life, that they may descend to the sight in their just proportion. Perhaps I have insisted too long on this obJection; but the clearing of it will make my stay shorter on the rest. You tell us, Crites, that rhyme appears most unnatural in repartees, or short replies; when he who answers, (it being presumed he knew not what the other would say, yet) makes up that part of the verse which was left incomplete, and supplies both the sound and measure of it. This, you say, looks rather like the confederacy of two, than the answer of one. This, I confess, is an objection which is in every man's mouth, who loves not rhyme: but suppose, I beseech you, the repartee weremade only in blank verse, might not part of the same argument be turned against you? for the measure is as often supplied there as it is in rhyme; the latter half of the hemistich as commonly made up, or a second line subjoined, as a reply to the former; which any one leaf in Jonson's plays will sufficiently clear to you. You will often find in the Greek tragedians, and in Seneca, that when a scene grows up into the warmth of repartees, (which is the close fighting of it,) the latter part of the trimeter is supplied by him who answers; and yet it was never observed as a fault in them by any of the ancient or modern critics.* The case is the same in our verse as it was in theirs; rhyme to us being in lieu of quantity to them. But if no latitude is to be allowed a poet, you take from him not only his license of quidlibet audendi, but you tie him up in a straiter compass than you would a philosopher. This is indeed Musas colere severiores, You would have him follow nature, but he must follow her on foot: you have dismounted him from his Pegasus. But you tell us, this supplying the last half of a verse, or adjoining a whole second to the former, looks more like the design of two, than the answer of one. Suppose we acknowledge it: How comes this confederacy to be more displeasing to you than in a dance which is well contrived? You see there the united design of many persons to make up one figure: after they have separated themselves in many petty divis There is this great difference, that, from the mode of pronouncing, the rhythm of the blank verse does not necessarily obtrude itself on the audience: that of the couplet indubitably must. ions, they rejoin one by one into a gross: the confederacy is plain amongst them, for chance could never produce any thing so beautiful; and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your sight. I acknowledge the hand of art appears in repartees, as of necessity it must in all kind of verse. But there is also the quick and poig nant brevity of it (which is a high imitation of nature in those sudden gusts of passion) to mingle with it; and this, joined with the cadency and sweetness of the rhyme, leaves nothing in the soul of the hearer to desire. It is an art which appears: but it appears only like the shadowings of painture, which being to cause the rounding of it, cannot be absent; but while that is considered, they are lost: so while we attend to the other beauties of the matter, the care and labour of the rhyme is carrried from us, or at least drowned in its own sweetness, as bees are sometimes buried in their honey. When a poet has found the repartee, the last perfection he can add to it is, to put it into verse. However good the thought may be, however apt the words in which it is couched, yet he finds himself at a little unrest, while rhyme is wanting. He cannot leave it till that comes naturally, and then is at ease, and sits down contented. From replies, which are the most elevated thoughts of verse, you pass to those which are most mean, and which are common with the lowest of household conversation. In these, you say, the majesty of verse suffers. You instance in the calling of a servant, or commanding a door to be shut, in rhyme. This, Crites, is a good observation of yours, but no argument; for it proves no more but that such thoughts should be waived, as often as may be, by the address o. the poet. But suppose they are necessary in the places where he uses them, yet there is no need to put them into rhyme. He may place them in the beginning of a verse, and break it off, as unfit, when so debased, for any other use; or granting the worst,-that they require more room than the hemistich will allow, yet still there is a choice to be made of the best words, and least vulgar, provided they be apt to express such thoughts. Many have blamed rhyme in general for this fault, when the poet, with a little care, might have redressed it. But they do it with no more justice, than if English poesy should be made ridiculous for the sake of the Water-poet's rhymes.* Our language is • John Taylor, the Water-poet, as he called himself from his profession of a waterman, was, according to Wood, a man who, having a prodigious gente to poetry, wrote eighty books, which not only made noble, full, and significant; and I know not why he who is master of it may not clothe ordinary things in it as decently as the Latin, if he use the same diligence in his choice of words: Delectus verborum origo est eloquentiæ. It was the saying of Julius Cæsar, one so curi- Reserate clusos regii postes laris.⚫ But I turn from this exception, both because it happens not above twice or thrice in any play that those vulgar thoughts are used; and then too, were there no other apology to be made, yet the necessity of them, which is alike in all kind of writing, may excuse them. For if they are little and mean in rhyme, they are of consequence such in blank verse. Besides that the great eagerness and precipitation with which they are spoken, makes us rather mind the substance than the dress; that for which they are spoken, rather than what is spoke. For they are always the effect of some hasty concernment, and something of consequence depends on them. Thus, Crites, I have endeavoured to answer your objections: it remains only that I should vindicate an argument for verse, which you have gone about to overthrow. It had formerly been said, that the easiness of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant; but that the labour of rhyme bounds and circumscribes an over-fruitful fancy; the sense there being commonly confined to the couplet, and the words so ordered, that the rhyme naturally follows them, not they the rhyme. To this you answered, that it was much sport at the time, but were thought worthy of being remitted into a large folio. He was a stanch Cavalier, which might in some degree bribe Anthoay's judgment of his poetry. His poetry is very like that which Skelton wrote a century before him. Among other pieces, there are some comical addresses to his subscribers, whom he divides into those who had received and paid their books; those who had done neither; and those who, having received, were unable to pay. To the first class he abounds in gratitude; the second he addresses as between hope and despair; the third he treats civ. illy, as they were defaulters from inability, and had always given him plenty of sack and fair promises: but, as was reason, he reserves the extremity of his displeasure for a fourth class of subscribers, who, having received his books, refused to pay the sub scription. This Sir Robert Howard quoted, in his preface to the "Duke of Lerma," and unluckily translated It, "Shutting the palace gates," for which Dryden severely animadverts on him. dispute was not, which way a man may` write no argument to the question in hand; for the best, but which is most proper for the subject on which he writes. First, give me leave, sir, to remember you, objection, was only secondary: it was built on that the argument against which you raised this this hypothesis,-that to write in verse was being granted, (as it was briefly made out in proper for serious plays. Which supposition that discourse, by showing how verse might be made natural,) it asserted, that this way of wri, ting was a help to the poet's judgment, by putting bounds to a wild overflowing fancy. I think therefore it will not be hard for me to make good you add, that were this let pass, yet he who what it was to prove on that supposition. But wants judgment in the liberty of his fancy, may as well show the defect of it when he is confined to verse: for he who has judgment will avoid errors, and he who has it not, will commit them in all kinds of writing. This argument, as you have taken it from a most acute person,* so, I confess, it carries much weight in it: but by using the word judgment here indefinitely, you seem to have put a that is, so profound, so strong, or rather so infallacy upon us. I grant, he who has judgment, fallible a judgment, that he needs no helps to keep it always poised and upright, will commit no faults either in rhyme or out of it. And on the other extreme, he who has a judgment so amend it, shall write scurvily out of rhyme, and weak and crazed, that no helps can correct or nowhere to be found, and the latter is not fit to worse in it. But the first of these judgments is write at all. To speak therefore of judgment greatest proportion of it, want other helps than as it is in the best poets; they who have the from it, within. As for example, you would be loth to say, that he who is endued, with a sound judgment, has no need of history, geogra phy, or moral philosophy, to write correctly. Judgment is indeed the master-workman in a play; but he requires many subordinate hands, many tools to his assistance. And verse I affirm to be one of these: it is a rule and line by which he keeps his building compact and even, which otherwise lawless imagination would raise either irregularly or loosely; at least, if the poet greater and more without it:—it is, in short, a commits errors with this help, he would make slow and painful, but the surest kind of working. Ovid, whom you accuse for luxuriancy in verse, had perhaps been farther guilty of it, had he writ in prose. And for your instance of Bea • Meaning Sir Robert Howard himself. Jonson, who, you say, writ exactly without the help of rhyme; you are to remember, it is only an aid to a luxuriant fancy, which his was not: as he did not want imagination, so none ever said he had much to spare. Neither was verse then refined so much, to be a help to that age, as it is to ours. Thus then the second thoughts being usually the best, as receiving the maturest digestion from judgment, and the last and most mature product of those thoughts being artful and laboured verse, it may well be inferred, that verse is a great help to a luxuriant fancy; and that is what that argument which you opposed was to evince. Neander was pursuing this discourse so eagerly, that Eugenius had called to him twice or thrice, ere he took notice that the barge stood still, and that they were at the foot of Somerset stairs where they had appointed it to land. The com pany were all sorry to separate so soon, though a great part of the evening was already spent ; and stood a while looking back on the water, upon which the moonbeams played, and made it appear like floating quicksilver: at last they went up through a crowd of French people,* who were merrily dancing in the open air, and nothing concerned for the noise of guns, which had alarmed the town that afternoon. Walking thence together to the Piazze, they parted there; Eugenius and Lisideius to some pleasant appointment they had made, and Crites and Neander to their several lodgings. From the conduct of Louis XIV. who gradually retrenched until he altogether abolished the edict of Nantz, there was a constant emigration to England of his Huguenot subjects. HEADS OF AN ANSWER TO RYMER'S REMARKS, &c. In THOMAS RYMER, distinguished as the editor of the Fadera of England, was in his earlier years ambitious of the fame of a critic. 1678, he published a small duodecimo, entitled, "The Tragedies of the last Age considered and examined by the practice of the Ancients, and the common Sense of all Ages, in a letter to Fleetwood and Shepherd." The criticisms apply chiefly to the tragedies of the latter part of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.; out of which he has singled, as the particular subjects of reprehension, those of "Rollo," "The Maid's Tragedy," and "King and no King," In this criticism, there was "much malice mingled with a little wit;" obvious faults and absurdities were censured as disgusting to com. mon sense, on the one hand: on the other, licenses unpractised by the ancients were condemned as barbarous and unclassical. A severe critic, if able but plausibly to support his remarks by learning and acumen, strikes terror through the whole world of literature. It is in vain to represent to such a person that he only examines the debtor side of the account, and omits to credit the unfortunate author with the merit that he has justly a title to claim. In stead of a fair accounting between the public and the poet, his cause is tried as in a criminal action, where, if he is convicted of a crime, all the merit of his work will not excuse him. There must be something in the mind of man favourable to a system which tends to the levelling of talents in the public estimation, or such critics as Rymer could never have risen into notice. Yet Dryden, in the following projected answer to his Remarks, has treated him with great respect: and Pope, according to Spence, pronounced him "one of the best critics we ever had." That Dryden should have been desirous to conciliate the favour of an avowed critic, was natural enough; but that Pope should have so in If Dryden had arranged and extended the materials of his answer, it is possible that he would have treated Rymer with less deference than he showed while collecting them; for in the latter years of Dryden's life they were upon bad terms. To a reader of the present day, when the cant of criticism has been in some degree abandoned, nothing can be more disgusting than the remarks of Rymer, who creeps over the most beautiful passages of the drama with eyes open only to their defects, or their departure from scholastic precept; who denies the name of poetry to the "Paradise Lost," and compares judging of "Rollo " by "Othello," to adjusting one crooked line by another. But I would be by no means understood to say, that there is not sometimes justice, though never mercy, in his criticism. Dryden had intended to enter the lists with Rymer in defence of the ancient theatre, and with this view had wrote the following Heads of an Answer to the Remarks. They were jotted down on the blank leaves of a copy of the book presented to Dryden by Rymer. The volume falling into the hands of the publishers of Beaumont and Fletcher's works, in 1711, they prefixed Dryden's observations, as furnishing an apology for their authors. They were again published by Dr. Johnson, into whose hands they were put by Garrick, who had the original in his collection. The arrangement is different in the two copies; that of Dr. Johnson has been adopted, as preferred by Mr. Malone. HEADS OF AN ANSWER то RYMER'S REMARKS ON THE TRAGEDIES OF THE LAST AGE. > THAT we may the less wonder why pity and terror are not now the only spring on which our tragedies move,* and that Shakspeare may be more excused, Rapin confesses, that the French tragedies now all run on the tendre; and gives the reason, because love is the passion which most predominates in our souls; and that therefore the passions represented become insipid, unless they are conformable to the thoughts of the audience. But it is to be concluded, that this passion works not now amongst the French so strongly, as the other two did amongst the ancients. Amongst us, who have a stronger genius for writing, the operations from the writing are much stronger; for the raising of Shakspeare's passions is more from the excellency of the words and thoughts, than the justness of the occasion; and if he has been able to pick single occasions, he has never founded the whole reasonably; yet, by the genius of poetry in writing, he has succeeded. Rapin attributes more to the dictio, that is, to the words and discourse of a tragedy, than Aristotle has done, who places them in the last rank of beauties; perhaps, only last in order, because they are the last product of the design, of the disposition or connexion of its parts, of the characters, of the manners of those characters, and of the thoughts proceeding from those manners. Rapin's words are remarkable:-It is not the admirable intrigue, the surprising events, and extraordinary incidents, that make the beauty of a tragedy; it is the discourses, when they are natural and passionate.-So are Shakspeare's. The parts of a poem, tragic or heroic, are, 1. The fable itself. 2. The order or manner of its contrivance in relation of the parts to the whole. Rymer sets out with the old dogma, that no source of tragedy was legitimate, except that springing from pity or terror. 3. The manners, or decency of the charac ters, in speaking or acting what is proper for them, and proper to be shown by the poet. 4. The thoughts, which express the manners, 5. The words, which express those thoughts. In the last of these, Homer excels Virgil; Virgil all other ancient poets; and Shakspeare all modern poets. For the second of these, the order: the meaning is, that a fable ought to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, all just and natural; so that that part, e. g. which is the middle, could not naturally be the beginning or end, and so of the rest; all depend on one another, like the links of a curious chain. If terror and pity are only to be raised, certainly this author follows Aristotle's rules, and Sophocles' and Euripides' example; but joy may be raised too, and that doubly, either by seeing a wicked man punished, or a good man at last fortunate; or perhaps indignation, to see wickedness prosperous, and goodness depressed: both these may be profitable to the end of tragedy, reformation of manners; but the last improperly, only as it begets pity in the audience; though Aristotle, I confess, places tragedies of this kind in the second form. He who undertakes to answer this excellent critique of Mr. Rymer, in behalf of our Engish poets against the Greek, ought to do it in this manner: either by yielding to him the greatest part of what he contends for, which consists in this, that the púbos, i. e. the design and conduct of it, is more conducing in the Greeks to those ends of tragedy which Aristotle and he propose, namely, to cause terror and pity; yet the granting this does not set the Greeks above the English poets. But the answerer ought to prove two things. First, That the fable is not the greatest masterpiece of a tragedy, though it be the founda■ tion of it. |