Rhymes together; it will be as hard for you to produce as many lines in
Blank Verse, even among the greatest of our poets, against which I cannot
make some reasonable exception.

"And this, Sir, calls to my remembrance the beginning of your discourse,
where you told us _we should never find the audience favourable to this
kind of writing_, till we could produce as good plays _in_ Rhyme, as BEN.
JOHNSON, FLETCHER, and SHAKESPEARE had writ _out_ of it [p. 558]. But it
is to raise envy to the Living, to compare them with the Dead. They are
honoured, and almost adored by us, as they deserve; neither do I know any
so presumptuous of themselves, as to contend with them. Yet give me leave
to say thus much, without injury to their ashes, that not only we shall
never equal them; but they could never equal themselves, were they to
rise, and write again. We acknowledge them our Fathers in Wit: but they
have ruined their estates themselves before they came to their children's
hands. There is scarce a Humour, a Character, or any kind of Plot; which
they have not blown upon. All comes sullied or wasted to us: and were
they to entertain this Age, they could not make so plenteous treatments
out of such decayed fortunes. This, therefore, will be a good argument to
us, either not to write at all; or to attempt some other way. There are no
Bays to be expected in their walks, _Tentanda via est qua me quoque possum
tollere humo_.

"This way of Writing in Verse, they have only left free to us. Our Age is
arrived to a perfection in it, which they never knew: and which (if we may
guess by what of theirs we have seen in Verse, as the _Faithful
Shepherdess_ and _Sad Shepherd_) 'tis probable they never could have
reached. For the Genius of every Age is different: and though ours excel
in this; I deny not but that to imitate Nature in that perfection which
they did in Prose [_i.e., Blank Verse_] is a greater commendation than to
write in Verse exactly.

"As for what you have added, _that the people are not generally inclined
to like this way_: if it were true, it would be no wonder but betwixt the
shaking off of an old habit, and the introducing of a new, there should be
difficulty. Do we not see them stick to HOPKINS and STERNHOLD's Psalms;
and forsake those of DAVID, I mean SANDYS his Translation of them? If, by
the _people_, you understand the Multitude, the [Greek: _oi polloi_]; 'tis
no matter, what they think! They are sometimes in the right