This worthless present was designed you, long before it was a Play; when
it was only a confused mass of thoughts tumbling over one another in the
dark: when the Fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping
Images of Things towards the light, there to be distinguished; and then,
either chosen or rejected by the Judgement. It was yours, my Lord! before
I could call it mine.
And I confess, in that first tumult of my thoughts, there appeared a
disorderly kind of beauty in some of them; which gave me hope, something
worthy of my Lord of ORRERY might be drawn from them: but I was then, in
that eagerness of Imagination, which, by over pleasing Fanciful Men,
flatters them into the danger of writing; so that, when I had moulded it
to that shape it now bears, I looked with such disgust upon it, that the
censures of our severest critics are charitable to what I thought, and
still think of it myself.
'Tis so far from me, to believe this perfect; that I am apt to conclude
our best plays are scarcely so. For the Stage being the Representation of
the World and the actions in it; how can it be imagined that the Picture
of Human Life can be more exact than Life itself is?
He may be allowed sometimes to err, who undertakes to move so many
Characters and Humours (as are requisite in a Play) in those narrow
channels, which are proper to each of them; to conduct his Imaginary
Persons through so many various intrigues and chances, as the labouring
Audience shall think them lost under every billow: and then, at length,
to work them so naturally out of their distresses, that when the whole
Plot is laid open, the Spectators may rest satisfied that every Cause was
powerful enough to produce the Effect it had; and that the whole Chain of
them was, with such due order, linked together, that the first Accident
[_Incident_], would, naturally, beget the second, till they All rendered
the Conclusion necessary.
These difficulties, my Lord! may reasonably excuse the errors of my
Undertaking: but for this confidence of my Dedication, I have an
argument, which is too advantageous for me not to publish it to the
World. 'Tis the kindness your Lordship has continually shown to all my
writings. You have been pleased, my Lord! they should sometimes cross the
Irish seas, to kiss your hands; which passage, contrary to the experience
of others, I have found the least dangerous in the world. Your favour has
shone upon me, at a remote distance, without the least knowledge of my
person: and, like the influence of the heavenly bodies, you have done
good, without knowing to whom you did it, 'Tis this virtue in your
Lordship, which emboldens me to this attempt. For did I not consider you
as my Patron, I have little reason to desire you for my Judge: and should
appear, with as much awe before you, in the Reading; as I had, when the
full theatre sate upon the Action.
For who so severely judge of faults, as he who has given testimony he
commits none? Your excellent _Poems_ having afforded that knowledge of it
to the World, that your enemies are ready to upbraid you with it as a
crime, for a Man of Business to write so well. Neither durst I have
justified your Lordship in it, if examples of it had not been in the
world before you: If XENOPHON had not written a Romance; and a certain
Roman, called AUGUSTUS CAESAR, a Tragedy and Epigrams. But their writing
was the entertainment of their pleasure; yours is only a diversion of
your pain. The Muses have seldom employed your thoughts, but when some
violent fit of the gout has snatched you from Affairs of State: and, like
the priestess of APOLLO, you never come to deliver his oracles, but
unwillingly, and in torment. So that we are obliged to your Lordship's
misery, for our delight. You treat us with the cruel pleasure of a
Turkish triumph, where those who cut and wound their bodies, sing songs
of victory as they pass; and divert others with their own sufferings.
Other men endure their diseases, your Lordship only can enjoy them!
Plotting and Writing in this kind, are, certainly, more troublesome
employments than many which signify more, and are of greater moment in
the world. The Fancy, Memory, and Judgement are then extended, like so
many limbs, upon the rack; all of them reaching, with their utmost
stress, at Nature: a thing so almost infinite and boundless, as can never
fully be comprehended but where the Images of all things are always
present.
Yet I wonder not your Lordship succeeds so well in this attempt. The
knowledge of men is your daily practice in the world. To work and bend
their stubborn minds; which go not all after the same grain, but, each of
them so particular a way, that the same common humours, in several
persons, must be wrought upon by several means.
Thus, my Lord! your sickness is but the imitation of your health; the
Poet but subordinate to the Statesman in you. You still govern men with
the same address, and manage business with the same prudence: allowing it
here, as in the world, the due increase and growth till it comes to the
just height; and then turning it, when it is fully ripe, and Nature calls
out (as it were) to be delivered. With this only advantage of ease to you,
in your Poetry: that you have Fortune, here, at your command: with which,
Wisdom does often unsuccessfully struggle in the world. Here is no
Chance, which you have not foreseen. All your heroes are more than your
subjects, they are your creatures: and, though they seem to move freely,
in all the sallies of their passions; yet, you make destinies for them,
which they cannot shun. They are moved, if I may dare to say so, like the
rational creatures of the Almighty Poet; who walk at liberty, in their own
opinion, because their fetters are invincible: when, indeed, the Prison of
their Will is the more sure, for being large; and instead of an Absolute
Power over their actions, they have only a Wretched Desire of doing that,
which they cannot choose but do.
I have dwelt, my Lord! thus long, upon your Writing; not because you
deserve not greater and more noble commendations, but because I am not
equally able to express them in other subjects. Like an ill swimmer, I
have willingly stayed long in my own depth; and though I am eager of
performing more, yet I am loath to venture out beyond my knowledge. For
beyond your Poetry, my Lord! all is Ocean to me.
To speak of you as a Soldier, or a Statesman, were only to betray my own
ignorance: and I could hope no better success from it, than that
miserable Rhetorician had, who solemnly declaimed before HANNIBAL "of the
Conduct of Armies, and the Art of War." I can only say, in general, that
the Souls of other men shine out at little cranies; they understand some
one thing, perhaps, to admiration, while they are darkened on all the
other parts: but your Lordship's Soul is an entire Globe of Light,
breaking out on every side; and if I have only discovered one beam of it,
'tis not that the light falls unequally, but because the body which
receives it, is of unequal parts.
The acknowledgement of which, is a fair occasion offered me, to retire
from the consideration of your Lordship to that of myself. I here present
you, my Lord! with that in Print, which you had the goodness not to
dislike upon the Stage; and account it happy to have met you here in
England: it being, at best, like small wines, to be drunk out upon the
place [i.e., _of vintage, where produced_]; and has not body enough to
endure the sea.
I know not, whether I have been so careful of the Plot and Language, as I
ought: but for the latter, I have endeavoured to write English, as near as
I could distinguish it from the tongue of pedants, and that of affected
travellers. Only, I am sorry that, speaking so noble a language as we do,
we have not a more certain Measure of it, as they have in France: where
they have an "Academy" erected for that purpose, and endowed with large
privileges by the present King [_LOUIS XIV._]. I wish, we might, at
length, leave to borrow words from other nations; which is now a
wantonness in us, not a necessity: but so long as some affect to speak
them, there will not want others who will have the boldness to write them.
But I fear, lest defending the received words; I shall be accused for
following the New Way: I mean, of writing Scenes in Verse; though, to
speak properly, 'tis no so much a New Way amongst us, as an Old Way new
revived. For, many years [i.e., 1561] before SHAKESPEARE's Plays, was the
Tragedy of _Queen_ [or rather _King_] _GORBODUC_ [_of which, however, the
authentic title is "FERREX and PORREX"_] in English Verse; written by
that famous Lord BUCKHURST, afterwards Earl of DORSET, and progenitor to
that excellent Person, [_Lord BUCKHURST, see_ p. 503] who, as he inherits
his Soul and Title, I wish may inherit his good fortune!
But supposing our countrymen had not received this Writing, till of late!
Shall we oppose ourselves to the most polished and civilised nations of
Europe? Shall we, with the same singularity, oppose the World in this, as
most of us do in pronouncing Latin? Or do we desire, that the brand which
BARCLAY has, I hope unjustly, laid upon the English, should still
continue? _Angli suos ac sua omnia impense mirantur; coeteras nationes
despectui habent_. All the Spanish and Italian Tragedies I have yet seen,
are writ in Rhyme. For the French, I do not name them: because it is the
fate of our countrymen, to admit little of theirs among us, but the
basest of their men, the extravagancies of their fashions, and the
frippery of their merchandise.
SHAKESPEARE, who (with some errors, not to be avoided in that Age) had,
undoubtedly, a larger Soul of Poesy than ever any of our nation, was the
First, who (to shun the pains of continual rhyming) invented that kind of
writing which we call Blank Verse [_DRYDEN is here wrong as to fact, Lord
SURREY wrote the earliest_ printed _English Blank Verse in his Fourth
Book of the_ AEneid, _printed in_ 1548]; but the French, more properly
_Prose Mesurée_: into which, the English Tongue so naturally slides, that
in writing Prose, 'tis hardly to be avoided. And, therefore, I admire
[_marvel that_] some men should perpetually stumble in a way so easy:
and, inverting the order of their words, constantly close their lines
with verbs. Which, though commended, sometimes, in writing Latin; yet, we
were whipt at Westminster, if we used it twice together.
I know some, who, if they were to write in Blank Verse _Sir, I ask your
pardon!_ would think it sounded more heroically to write
_Sir, I, your pardon ask!_
I should judge him to have little command of English, whom the necessity
of a _rhyme_ should force upon this rock; though, sometimes, it cannot be
easily avoided.
And, indeed, this is the only inconvenience with which Rhyme can be
charged. This is that, which makes them say, "Rhyme is not natural. It
being only so, when the Poet either makes a vicious choice of words; or
places them, for Rhyme's sake so unnaturally, as no man would, in
ordinary speaking." But when 'tis so judiciously ordered, that the first
word in the verse seems to beget the second; and that, the next; till
that becomes the last word in the line, which, in the negligence of
Prose, would be so: it must, then, be granted, Rhyme has all advantages
of Prose, besides its own.
But the excellence and dignity of it, were never fully known, till Mr.
WALLER taught it. He, first, made writing easily, an Art: first, showed
us to conclude the Sense, most commonly in distiches; which in the Verse
of those before him, runs on for so many lines together, that the reader
is out of breath, to overtake it.
This sweetness of Mr. WALLER's Lyric Poesy was, afterwards, followed in
the Epic, by Sir JOHN DENHAM, in his _Cooper's Hill_; a Poem which, your
Lordship knows! for the majesty of the style, is, and ever will be the
Exact Standard of Good Writing.
But if we owe the invention of it to Mr. WALLER; we are acknowledging for
the noblest use of it, to Sir WILLIAM D'AVENANT; who, at once, brought it
upon the Stage, and made it perfect in _The Siege of Rhodes_.
The advantages which Rhyme has over Blank Verse, are so many that it were
lost time to name them.
Sir PHILIP SIDNEY, in his _Defence of Poesy_, gives us one, which, in my
opinion, is not the least considerable: I mean, _the Help it brings to
Memory_; which Rhyme so knits up by the Affinity of Sounds, that by
remembering the last word in one line, we often call to mind both the
verses.
Then, in the Quickness of Repartees, which in Discoursive Scenes fall
very often: it has so particular a grace, and is so aptly suited to them,
that _the Sudden Smartness of the Answer, and the Sweetness of the Rhyme
set off the beauty of each other_.
But that benefit, which I consider most in it, because I have not seldom
found it, is that _it Bounds and Circumscribes the Fancy_. For
Imagination in a Poet, is a faculty so wild and lawless, that, like a
high ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the
Judgement. The great easiness of Blank Verse renders the Poet too
luxuriant. He is tempted to say many things, which might better be
omitted, or, at least, shut up in fewer words.
But when the difficulty of artful Rhyming is interposed, where the Poet
commonly confines his Sense to his Couplet; and must contrive that Sense
into such words that the Rhyme shall naturally follow them, not they the
Rhyme [pp. 571 581]: the Fancy then gives leisure to the Judgement to
come in; which, seeing so heavy a tax imposed, is ready to cut off all
unnecessary expenses.
This last consideration has already answered an objection, which some
have made, that "Rhyme is only an Embroidery of Sense; to make that which
is ordinary in itself, pass for excellent with less examination." But,
certainly, that which most regulates the Fancy, and gives the Judgement
its busiest employment, is like[ly] to bring forth the richest and
clearest thoughts. The Poet examines that most which he produceth with
the greatest leisure, and which, he knows, must pass the severest test of
the audience, because they are aptest to have it ever in their memory: as
the stomach makes the best concoction when it strictly embraces the
nourishment, and takes account of every little particle as it passes
through.
But, as the best medicines may lose their virtue, by being ill applied;
so is it with Verse, if a fit Subject be not chosen for it. Neither must
the Argument alone, but the Characters and Persons be great and noble:
otherwise, as SCALIGER says of CLAUDIAN, the Poet will be _Ignobiliore
materia depressus_. The Scenes which (in my opinion) most commend it, are
those of Argumentation and Discourse, on the result of which, the doing or
not doing [of] some considerable Action should depend.
But, my Lord! though I have more to say upon this subject; yet, I must
remember, 'tis your Lordship, to whom I speak: who have much better
commended this Way by your writing _in_ it; than I can do, by writing
_for_ it. Where my Reasons cannot prevail, I am sure your Lordship's
Example must. Your Rhetoric has gained my cause; as least, the greatest
part of my design has already succeeded to my wish: which was, to
interest so noble a Person in the Quarrel; and withal, to testify to the
World, how happy I esteem myself in the honour of being, My Lord,
Your Lordship's most humble, and most obedient servant,