causes of harmony of versification been unremitted, and he had probably
already collected the materials of his intended English _Prosodia_.
Besides this labour, he had been engaged in a closer and more critical
examination of the ancient English poets, than he had before bestowed
upon them. These studies seem to have led Dryden to two conclusions:
first, that the drama ought to be emancipated from the fetters of rhyme;
and secondly, that he ought to employ the system of versification, which
he had now perfected, to the more legitimate purpose of epic poetry.
Each of these opinions merits consideration.

However hardily Dryden stood forward in defence of the heroic plays, he
confessed, even in the heat of argument, that Rhyme, though he was brave
and generous, and his dominion pleasing, had still somewhat of the
usurper in him. A more minute inquiry seems to have still further
demonstrated the weakness of this usurped dominion; and our author's
good taste and practice speedily pointed out deficiencies and
difficulties, which Sir Robert Howard, against whom he defended the use
of rhyme, could not show, because he never aimed at the excellencies
which they impeded. The perusal of Shakespeare, on whom Dryden had now
turned his attention, led him to feel, that something further might be
attained in tragedy than the expression of exaggerated sentiment in
smooth verse, and that the scene ought to represent not a fanciful set
of agents exerting their superhuman faculties in a fairy-land of the
poet's own creation, but human characters, acting from the direct and
energetic influence of human passions, with whose emotions the audience
might sympathise, because akin to the feelings of their own hearts. When
Dryden had once discovered, that fear and pity were more likely to be
excited by other causes than the logic of metaphysical love, or the
dictates of fantastic honour, he must have found, that rhyme sounded as
unnatural in the dialogue of characters drawn upon the usual scale of
humanity, as the plate and mail of chivalry would have appeared on the
persons of the actors. The following lines of the Prologue to
"Aureng-Zebe," although prefixed to a rhyming play, the last which he
ever wrote, express Dryden's change of sentiment on these points:

"Our author, by experience, finds it true,
'Tis much more hard to please himself than you:
And, out of no feigned modesty, this day
Damns his laborious trifle of a play:
Not