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.