red the English Plays above those of
other nations? and whether we ought not to submit our Stage to the
exactness of our next neighbours?"

"Though," said EUGENIUS, "I am, at all times, ready to defend the honour
of my country against the French; and to maintain, we are as well able to
vanquish them with our pens, as our ancestors have been with their swords:
yet, if you please!" added he, looking upon NEANDER, "I will commit this
cause to my friend's management. His opinion of our plays is the same
with mine. And besides, there is no reason that CRITES and I, who have
now left the Stage, should re-enter so suddenly upon it: which is against
the laws of Comedy."

"If the question had been stated," replied LISIDEIUS, "Who had writ best,
the French or English, forty years ago [_i.e., in_ 1625]? I should have
been of your opinion; and adjudged the honour to our own nation: but,
since that time," said he, turning towards NEANDER, "we have been so long
bad Englishmen, that we had not leisure to be good Poets. BEAUMONT [_d._
1615], FLETCHER [_d._ 1625], and JOHNSON [_d._ 1637], who were only
[_alone_] capable of bringing us to that degree of perfection which we
have, were just then leaving the world; as if, in an Age of so much
horror, Wit and those milder studies of humanity had no farther business
among us. But the Muses, who ever follow peace, went to plant in another
country. It was then, that the great Cardinal DE RICHELIEU began to take
them into his protection; and that, by his encouragement, CORNEILLE and
some other Frenchmen reformed their _Theatre_: which, before, was so much
below ours, as it now surpasses it, and the rest of Europe. But because
CRITES, in his discourse for the Ancients, has prevented [_anticipated_]
me by touching on many Rules of the Stage, which the Moderns have
borrowed from them; I shall only, in short, demand of you, 'Whether you
are not convinced that, of all nations, the French have best observed
them?'

"In the Unity of TIME, you find them so scrupulous, that it yet remains a
dispute among their Poets, 'Whether the artificial day, of twelve hours
more or less, be not meant by ARISTOTLE, rather that the natural one of
twenty-four?' and consequently, 'Whether all Plays ought not to be
reduced into that compass?' This I can testify, that in all their dramas
writ within these last twenty years [1645-1665] and upwards, I have not
observed any, that have extended the time to thirty hours.