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ncy, in Blank Verse; may want it as well, in Rhyme: and he who has it, will avoid errors in both kinds [pp. 498, 571], Latin Verse was as great a confinement to the imagination of those poets, as Rhyme to ours: and yet, you find OVID saying too much on every subject. "_Nescivit_, says SENECA, _quod bene cessit relinquere_: of which he [OVID] gives you one famous instance in his description of the Deluge. "_Omnia pontus erat, deerant quoque litora ponto._ Now all was sea; nor had that sea a shore. "Thus OVID's Fancy was not limited by Verse; and VIRGIL needed not Verse to have bounded his. "In our own language, we see BEN. JOHNSON confining himself to what ought to be said, even in the liberty of Blank Verse; and yet CORNEILLE, the most judicious of the French poets, is still varying the same Sense a hundred ways, and dwelling eternally upon the same subject, though confined by Rhyme. "Some other exceptions, I have to Verse; but these I have named, being, for the most part, already public: I conceive it reasonable they should, first, be answered." "It concerns me less than any," said NEANDER, seeing he had ended, "to reply to this discourse, because when I should have proved that Verse may be _natural_ in Plays; yet I should always be ready to confess that those which I [_i.e., DRYDEN, see_ pp. 503, 566] have written in this kind, come short of that perfection which is required. Yet since you are pleased I should undertake this province, I will do it: though, with all imaginable respect and deference both to that Person [_i.e., SIR ROBERT HOWARD, see_ p. 494] from whom you have borrowed your strongest arguments; and to whose judgement, when I have said all, I finally submit. "But before I proceed to answer your objections; I must first remember you, that I exclude all Comedy from my defence; and next, that I deny not but Blank Verse may be also used: and content myself only to assert that _in serious Plays_, where the Subject and Characters are great, and the Plot unmixed with mirth (which might allay or divert these concernments which are produced), _Rhyme is there, as natural, and more effectual than Blank Verse_. "And now having laid down this as a foundation: to begin with CRITES, I must crave leave to tell him, that some of his arguments against Rhyme, reach no farther that from _the faults or defects of ill Rhyme_ to conclude against _the use of it in general_ [p. 598]. May not I conclude a
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