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"I could wish, with all my heart," replied CRITES, "that many whom we know, were as bountifully thanked, upon the same condition, that they would never trouble us again. For amongst others, I have a mortal apprehension of two poets, whom this Victory, with the help of both her wings, will never be able to escape."
"There are so few who write well, in this Age," said CRITES, "that methinks any praises should be welcome. They neither rise to the dignity of the last Age, nor to any of the Ancients: and we may cry out of the Writers of this Time, with more reason than PETRONIUS of his, Pace vestra liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis! For you hear HORACE saying
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.
Therefore, I would ask CRITES to what part of Poesy, he would confine his arguments? and whether he would defend the general cause of the Ancients against the Moderns; or oppose any Age of the Moderns against this of ours?"
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."
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.
And besides, there is no reason that CRITES and I, who have now left the Stage, should re-enter so suddenly upon it: which is against the laws of Comedy." But the Muses, who ever follow peace, went to plant in another country.
Therefore, CRITES! you must either prove that words, though well chosen and duly placed, yet render not Rhyme natural in itself; or that, however natural and easy the Rhyme may be, yet it is not proper for a Play. "If you insist on the former part; I would ask you what other conditions are required to make Rhyme natural in itself, besides an election of apt words, and a right disposing of them?
All of them were thus far of EUGENIUS his opinion, that "the sweetness of English Verse was never understood or practised by our fathers"; even CRITES himself did not much oppose it: and every one was willing to acknowledge how much our Poesy is improved by the happiness of some writers yet living, who first taught us to mould our thoughts into easy and significant words; to retrench the superfluities of expression; and to make our Rhyme so properly a part of the Verse, that it should never mislead the Sense, but itself be led and governed by it.
CRITES had no sooner left speaking; but EUGENIUS, who waited with some impatience for it, thus began: "I have observed in your speech, that the former part of it is convincing, as to what the Moderns have profited by the Rules of the Ancients: but, in the latter, you are careful to conceal, how much they have excelled them.
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