ad the largest and
most comprehensive soul, and intuitive knowledge of human nature; and
the latter, as the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre
ever had. But to Shakespeare, Dryden objects, that his comic sometimes
degenerates into _clenches_, and his serious into bombast; to Jonson,
the sullen and saturnine character of his genius, his borrowing from the
ancients, and the insipidity of his latter plays. The examen leads to
the discussion of a point, in which Dryden had differed with Sir Robert
Howard. This was the use of rhyme in tragedy. Our author had, it will be
remembered, maintained the superiority of rhyming plays, in the
Introduction to the "Rival Ladies." Sir Robert Howard, the catalogue of
whose virtues did not include that of forbearance made a direct answer
to the arguments used in that Introduction; and while he studiously
extolled the plays of Lord Orrery, as affording an exception to his
general sentence against rhyming plays, he does not extend the
compliment to Dryden, whose defence of rhyme was expressly dedicated to
that noble author. Dryden, not much pleased, perhaps, at being left
undistinguished in the general censure passed upon rhyming plays by his
friend and ally, retaliates in the Essay, by placing in the mouth of
Crites the arguments urged by Sir Robert Howard, and replying to them in
the person of Neander. To the charge, that rhyme is unnatural, in
consequence of the inverted arrangement of the words necessary to
produce it, he replies, that, duly ordered, it may be natural in itself,
and therefore not unnatural in a play; and that, if the objection be
further insisted upon, it is equally conclusive against blank verse, or
measure without rhyme. To the objection founded on the formal and
uniform recurrence of the measure, he alleges the facility of varying
it, by throwing the cadence upon different parts of the line, by
breaking it into hemistichs, or by running the sense into another line,
so as to make art and order appear as loose and free as nature.[19]
Dryden even contends, that, for variety's sake, the pindaric measure
might be admitted, of which Davenant set an example in the "Siege of
Rhodes." But this licence, which was probably borrowed from the Spanish
stage, has never succeeded elsewhere, except in operas. Finally, it is
urged, that rhyme, the most noble verse, is alone fit for tragedies, the
most noble species of composition; that, far from injuring a scene, in
whi