set are made to walk
about, and the Persons to stand still!

"Now, what, I beseech you! is more easy than to write a regular French
Play? or more difficult than to write an irregular English one, like
those of FLETCHER, or of SHAKESPEARE?

"If they content themselves, as CORNEILLE did, with some flat design,
which (like an ill riddle) is found out ere it be half proposed; such
Plots, we can make every way regular, as easily as they: but whene'er
they endeavour to rise up to any quick Turns or Counter-turns of Plot, as
some of them have attempted, since CORNEILLE's _Plays_ have been less in
vogue; you see they write as irregularly as we! though they cover it more
speciously. Hence the reason is perspicuous, why no French plays, when
translated, have, or ever can succeed upon the English Stage. For, if you
consider the Plots, our own are fuller of variety; if the Writing, ours
are more quick, and fuller of spirit: and therefore 'tis a strange
mistake in those who decry the way of writing Plays in Verse; as if the
English therein imitated the French.

"We have borrowed nothing from them. Our Plots are weaved in English
looms. We endeavour, therein, to follow the variety and greatness of
Characters, which are derived to us from SHAKESPEARE and FLETCHER, The
copiousness and well knitting of the Intrigues, we have from JOHNSON. And
for the Verse itself, we have English precedents, of elder date than any
of CORNEILLE's plays. Not to name our old Comedies before SHAKESPEARE,
which are all writ in verse of six feet or Alexandrines, such as the
French now use: I can show in SHAKESPEARE, many Scenes of Rhyme together;
and the like in BEN. JOHNSON's tragedies. In _CATILINE_ and _SEJANUS_,
sometimes, thirty or forty lines. I mean, besides the Chorus or the
Monologues; which, by the way, showed BEN. no enemy to this way of
writing: especially if you look upon his _Sad Shepherd_, which goes
sometimes upon rhyme, sometimes upon blank verse; like a horse, who eases
himself upon trot and amble. You find him, likewise, commending FLETCHER's
pastoral of the _Faithful Shepherdess_: which is, for the most part, [in]
Rhyme; though not refined to that purity, to which it hath since been
brought. And these examples are enough to clear us from, a servile
imitation of the French.

"But to return, from whence I have digressed. I dare boldly affirm these
two things of the English Drama,

"First. That we have many Plays of ours as regular a