my knowledge: for beyond your poetry, my The acknowledgment 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, 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. 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 not so much a new way amongst us, as an old way new revived; for many years before Shakspeare's plays, was the tragedy of Queen Gorboduc in English verse, written by › Some years after this Dedication was written, Lord Roscommon, as Fenton informs us, in imitation of those learned and polite assemblies with which he had been acquainted abroad, formed the plan of a Society for refining our language, and fixing its standard. In this design, he adds, "his great friend Mr. Dryden was his principal assistant."-But the project was not carried into execution. The same scheme was again attempted by Swift, in the beginning of the present century, without success. 4 The author means THE TRAGEDIE OF FERREX AND PORREX, written by Thomas Sackville (afterwards Lord Buckhurst, and finally Earl of Dorset) and Thomas Norton, and acted before Queen Elizabeth, Jan. 18th, 1561-2. A spurious edition of this play appeared in 1565,under the title of THE TRAGEDIE OF GORBODUC; and the genuine piece was printed by John Daye, in 8vo. in 1571. The first three acts were written by Norton; the last two by Sackville. that famous Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, and progenitor to that excellent person,' 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 civilized 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; cæteras 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. Shakspeare (who On our author's mistake respecting the sex of Gorboduc, who was king of Britain, and the father of Ferrex and Porrex, Langbaine expatiates with his usual severity. This play, however, is not written in rhyme, which from the context appears to have been meant by the words English verse. The greater part of the piece is in blank verse; the choruses in alternate rhymes. Mr. Pope and Mr. Spence being struck with the merit of this tragedy, the latter gentleman republished it in 1735. with a preface; but unluckily followed a spurious edition of 1590, instead of the genuine copy above mentioned. s Charles, then Lord Buckhurst, who, in 1677, on the death of his father, became Earl of Dorset. 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, but the French more properly, prose mesuré: into which the English tongue so naturally slides, that in writing prose 'tis hardly to be avoided. And therefore I admire, 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 whipped 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 casily be 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 cither makes a vicious choice of words, or places them for rhyme-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, Our author is here again inaccurate. Many plays before those of Shakspeare exhibit passages in blank verse. 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 the 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 shewed us to conclude the sense, most commonly in distichs; 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 lyrick poesy, was afterwards followed in the epick 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 Sydney, 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 parti 7 First acted at the Duke's Theatre in 1662, and printed in 4to. in 1663. |