on_]. There may
be too great a likeness. As the most skilful painters affirm there may be
too near a resemblance in a picture. To take every lineament and feature
is not to make an excellent piece, but to take so much only as will make
a beautiful resemblance of the whole; and, with an ingenious flattery of
Nature, to heighten the beauties of some parts, and hide the deformities
of the rest. For so, says HORACE--

_Ut pictura Poesis erit
Haec amat obscurum; vult haec sub luce videri,
Judicis argutum quae non formidat acumen.
Et quae
Desperat, tractata nitescere posse, relinquit_.

In _Bartholomew Fair_, or the lowest kind of Comedy, that degree of
heightening is used which is proper to set off that subject. 'Tis true,
the author was not there to go out of Prose, as he does in his higher
arguments of Comedy, the _Fox_ and _Alchemist_; yet he does so raise his
matter in that Prose, as to render it delightful: which he could never
have performed had he only said or done those very things that are daily
spoken or practised in the Fair. For then, the Fair itself would be as
full of pleasure to an Ingenious Person, as the Play; which we manifestly
see it is not: but he hath made an excellent Lazar of it. The copy is of
price, though the origin be vile.

You see in _CATILINE_ and _SEJANUS_; where the argument is great, he
sometimes ascends to Verse, which shews he thought it not unnatural in
serious Plays: and had his genius been as proper for Rhyme as it was for
Humour, or had the Age in which he lived, attained to as much knowledge
in Verse, as ours; 'tis probable he would have adorned those Subjects
with that kind of writing.

Thus PROSE, though the rightful Prince, yet is, by common consent,
deposed; as too weak for the Government of serious Plays: and he failing,
there now start up two competitors! one, the nearer in blood, which is
BLANK VERSE; the other, more fit for the ends of Government, which is
RHYME. BLANK VERSE is, indeed, the nearer PROSE; but he is blemished with
the weakness of his predecessor. RHYME (for I will deal clearly!) has
somewhat of the Usurper in him; but he is brave and generous, and his
dominion pleasing. For this reason of Delight, the Ancients (whom I will
still believe as wise as those who so confidently correct them) wrote all
their Tragedies in Verse; though they knew it most remote from
conversation.

But I perceive I am falling into the da