That circumstance the poet Bayes forgot.
And we can boast, though ’tis a plotting age,
No place is freer from it than the stage.
Formerly people sought to write so that they might be understood, but “this new way of wit” was altogether incomprehensible:—
Wherefore, for ours, and for the kingdom’s peace,
May this prodigious way of writing cease;
Let’s have, at least once in our lives, a time
When we may hear some reason, not all rhyme.
We have this ten years felt its influence;
Pray let this prove a year of prose and sense.