by the choice of words; the same, with like care,
might be performed in English. If it cannot, I have committed an error on
the right hand, by commending too much, the copiousness and well sounding
of our language: which I hope my countrymen will pardon me. At least, the
words which follow in my _Dramatic Essay_ will plead somewhat in my
behalf. For I say there [p. 570], That this objection happens but seldom
in a Play; and then too, either the meanness of the expression may be
avoided, or shut out from the verse by breaking it in the midst.

But I have said too much in the Defence of Verse. For, after all, 'tis a
very indifferent thing to me, whether it obtain or not. I am content,
hereafter to be ordered by his rule, that is, "to write it, sometimes,
because it pleases me" [p. 575]; and so much the rather, because "he has
declared that it pleases him."

But, he has taken his last farewell of the Muses; and he has done it
civilly, by honouring them with the name of _his long acquaintances_ [p.
574]: which is a compliment they have scarce deserved from him.

For my own part, I bear a share in the public loss; and how emulous
soever I may be, of his Fame and Reputation, I cannot but give this
testimony of his Style, that it is extreme[ly] poetical, even in Oratory;
his Thoughts elevated, sometimes above common apprehension; his Notions
politic and grave, and tending to the instruction of Princes and
reformation of State: that they are abundantly interlaced with variety of
fancies, tropes, and figures, which the Critics have enviously branded
with the name of Obscurity and False Grammar.

Well, _he is now fettered in business of more unpleasant nature_ [p.
574]. The Muses have lost him, but the Commonwealth gains by it. The
corruption of a Poet is the generation of a Statesman.

_He will not venture again into the Civil Wars of Censure_ [Criticism].

_Ubi ... nullos habitura triumphos_.

If he had not told us, he had left the Muses; we might have half
suspected it by that word, _ubi_, which does not any way belong to
_them_, in that place. The rest of the verse is indeed LUCAN's: but that
_ubi_, I will answer for it, is his own.

Yet he has another reason for this disgust of Poesy. For he says,
immediately after, that _the manner of Plays which are now in most
esteem, is beyond his power to perform_ [p. 574]. To _perform_ the
_manner_ of a thing, is new English to me.

_However he condemns not the satisfacti