Of our times is like a fanatic, that has no wit in ordinary easy things,
and yet attempts the hardest task of brains in the whole world, only
because, whether his play or work please or displease, he is certain to
come off better than he deserves, and find some of his own latitude to
applaud him, which he could never expect any other way, and is as sure
to lose no reputation, because he has none to venture:--
Like gaming rooks, that never stick
To play for hundreds upon tick,
'Cause, if they chance to lose at play,
They've not one halfpenny to pay;
And, if they win a hundred pound,
Gain, if for sixpence they compound.
Nothing encourages him more in his undertaking than his ignorance, for
he has not wit enough to understand so much as the difficulty of what he
attempts; therefore he runs on boldly like a foolhardy wit, and Fortune,
that favours fools and the bold, sometimes takes notice of him for his
double capacity, and receives him into her good graces. He has one
motive more, and that is the concurrent ignorant judgment of the present
age, in which his sottish fopperies pass with applause, like Oliver
Cromwell's oratory among fanatics of his own canting inclination. He
finds it easier to write in rhyme than prose, for the world being
over-charged with romances, he finds his plots, passions, and repartees
ready made to his hand, and if he can but turn them into rhyme the
thievery is disguised, and they pass for his own wit and invention
without question, like a stolen cloak made into a coat or dyed into
another colour. Besides this, he makes no conscience of stealing
anything that lights in his way, and borrows the advice of so many to
correct, enlarge, and amend what he has ill-favouredly patched together,
that it becomes like a thing drawn by counsel, and none of his own
performance, or the son of a whore that has no one certain father. He
has very great reason to prefer verse before prose in his compositions;
for rhyme is like lace, that serves excellently well to hide the piecing
and coarseness of a bad stuff, contributes mightily to the bulk, and
makes the less serve by the many impertinences it commonly requires to
make way for it, for very few are endowed with abilities to bring it in
on its own account. This he finds to be good husbandry and a kind of
necessary thrift, for they that have but a little ought to make as much
of it as they can. His prologue, which is commonly none of his own, is
always better than his play, like a piece of cloth that's fine in the
beginning and coarse afterwards; though it has but one topic, and that's
the same that is used by malefactors, when they are to be tried, to
except against as many of the jury as they can.