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"All I would wish," replied CRITES, "is that they who love his writings, may still admire him and his fellow poet. Qui Bavium non odit &c., is curse sufficient." "And farther," added LISIDEIUS; "I believe there is no man who writes well; but would think himself very hardly dealt with, if their admirers should praise anything of his. Nam quos contemnimus eorum quoque laudes contemnimus."
All the company smiled at the conceit of LISIDEIUS. But CRITES, more eager than before, began to make particular exceptions against some writers, and said, "The Public Magistrate ought to send, betimes, to forbid them: and that it concerned the peace and quiet of all honest people, that ill poets should be as well silenced as seditious preachers."
The heavy father, or cantankerous guardian, who for four acts and a half had stood between the lovers, suddenly changed his mind, and all was well. Even by our ancestors this was reckoned a rather too simple method of disentanglement. Lisideius, in Dryden's dialogue, in enumerating the points in which the French drama is superior to the English notes that
LISIDEIUS, after some modest denials, at last, confessed he had a rude notion of it; indeed, rather a Description than a Definition; but which served to guide him in his private thoughts, when he was to make a judgment of what others writ.
"I am confident," said he, "the most material things that can be said, have been already urged, on either side. If they have not; I must beg of LISIDEIUS, that he will defer his answer till another time. "I will not dispute how ancient it hath been among us to write this way.
Among the rest, it was the fortune of EUGENIUS, CRITES, LISIDEIUS and NEANDER to be in company together: three of them persons whom their Wit and Quality have made known to all the Town; and whom I have chosen to hide under these borrowed names, that they may not suffer by so ill a Relation as I am going to make, of their discourse.
The remark of Lisideius is suggested by a passage in Corneille, who instances, as an apt and artistic method of bringing about the conversion of a heavy father, that his daughter's lover should earn his gratitude by rescuing him from assassination! Conversions, closely examined, will be found to fall into two classes: changes in volition, and changes in sentiment.
"But what will LISIDEIUS say? if they themselves acknowledge they are too strictly tied up by those laws: for the breaking which, he has blamed the English? I will allege CORNEILLE's words, as I find them in the end of this Discourse of The three Unities. Il est facile aux speculatifs d'être severe, &c.
But LISIDEIUS, after he had acknowledged himself of EUGENIUS his opinion, concerning the Ancients; yet told him, "He had forborne till his discourse was ended, to ask him, Why he preferred the English Plays above those of other nations? and whether we ought not to submit our Stage to the exactness of our next neighbours?"
At last, they went up, through a crowd of French people, who were merrily dancing in the open air, and nothing concerned for the noise of the guns, which had alarmed the Town that afternoon. Walking thence together to the Piazza, they parted there, EUGENIUS and LISIDEIUS, to some pleasant appointment they had made; and CRITES and NEANDER to their several lodgings.
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