so. For the stage being the representation of the world, and the actions in it, how can it be imagined, that the picture of human life can be more exact than life itself is? He may be allowed sometimes to err, who under5 takes to move so many characters and humours, as are requisite in a play, in those narrow channels which are proper to each of them; to conduct his imaginary persons through so many various intrigues and chances, as the labouring audience shall think them lost under 10 every billow; and then at length to work them so naturally out of their distresses, that when the whole plot is laid open, the spectators may rest satisfied that every cause was powerful enough to produce the effect it had; and that the whole chain of them was with such 15 due order linked together, that the first accident would naturally beget the second, till they all rendered the conclusion necessary.

These difficulties, my Lord, may reasonably excuse the errors of my undertaking; but for this confidence 20 of my dedication, I have an argument, which is too advantageous for me not to publish it to the world. 'Tis the kindness your lordship has continually shown to all my writings. You have been pleased, my Lord, they should sometimes cross the Irish seas, to kiss 25 your hands; which passage (contrary to the experience of others) I have found the least dangerous in the world. Your favour has shone upon me at a remote distance, without the least knowledge of my person; and (like the influence of the heavenly bodies) you have 30 done good, without knowing to whom you did it. 'Tis this virtue in your lordship, which emboldens me to this attempt; for, did I not consider you as my patron, i have little reason to desire you for my judge; and should appear with as much awe before you in the 35 reading, as I had when the full theatre sat upon the

action. For who could so severely judge of faults as he, who has given testimony he commits none? Your excellent poems having afforded that knowledge of it to the world, that your enemies are ready to upbraid you with it, as a crime for a man of business to write so 5 well. Neither durst I have justified your Lordship in it, if examples of it had not been in the world before. you; if Xenophon had not written a romance, and a certain Roman, called Augustus Caesar, a tragedy, and epigrams. But their writing was the entertainment 10 of their pleasure; yours is only a diversion of your pain. The Muses have seldom employed your thoughts, but when some violent fit of the gout has snatched you from affairs of state; and like the priestess of Apollo, you never come to deliver his oracles, but un- 15 willingly, and in torment. So that we are obliged to your Lordship's misery for our delight: you treat us with the cruel pleasure of a Turkish triumph, where those who cut and wound their bodies, sing songs of victory as they pass, and divert others with their own 20 sufferings. Other men endure their diseases; your Lordship only can enjoy them. Plotting and writing in this kind are certainly more troublesome employments than many which signify more, and are of greater moment in the world: the fancy, memory, and judg- 25 ment, are then extended (like so many limbs) upon the rack; all of them reaching with their utmost stress at Nature; a thing so almost infinite and boundless, as can never fully be comprehended, but where the images of all things are always present. Yet I wonder not 30 your Lordship succeeds so well in this attempt; the knowledge of men is your daily practice in the world; to work and bend their stubborn minds, which go not all after the same grain, but each of them so particular a way, that the same common humours, in several 35

persons, must be wrought upon by several means. Thus, my Lord, your sickness is but the imitation of your health; the Poet but subordinate to the Statesman in you; you still govern men with the same address, 5 and manage business with the same prudence; allowing it here (as in the world) the due increase and growth, till it comes to the just height; and then turning it when it is fully ripe, and Nature calls out, as it were, to be delivered. With this only advantage of ease to you 10 in your poetry, that you have fortune here at your command; with which wisdom does often unsuccessfully struggle in the world. Here is no chance, which you have not foreseen; all your heroes are more than your subjects, they are your creatures; and though they 15 seem to move freely in all the sallies of their passions, yet you make destinies for them, which they cannot shun. They are moved (if I may dare to say so) like the rational creatures of the Almighty Poet, who walk at liberty, in their own opinion, because their fetters are 20 invisible; when, indeed, the prison of their will is the more sure for being large; and instead of an absolute power over their actions, they have only a wretched desire of doing that which they cannot choose but do.

I have dwelt, my Lord, thus long upon your writing, 25 not because you deserve not greater and more noble commendations, but because I am not equally able to express them in other subjects. Like an ill swimmer, I have willingly stayed long in my own depth; and though I am eager of performing more, yet am loth to 30 venture out beyond my knowledge: for beyond your poetry, my Lord, all is ocean to me. To speak of you as a soldier, or a statesman, were only to betray my own ignorance; and I could hope no better success from it than that miserable rhetorician had, who solemnly 35 declaimed before Hannibal, of the conduct of armies,

and the art of war. I can only say, in general, that the souls of other men shine out at little crannies; they understand some one thing, perhaps, to admiration, while they are darkened on all the other parts; but your Lordship's soul is an entire globe of light, breaking 5 out on every side; and, if I have only discovered one beam of it, 'tis not that the light falls unequally, but because the body, which receives it, is of unequal parts.

The acknowledgment of which is a fair occasion offered me, to retire from the consideration of your 10 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 15 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. 20 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 25 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 30 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 35

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verse, written by 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 5 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, 10 which Barclay has (I hope unjustly) laid upon the English, should still continue? Angli suos ac sua omnia impensè mirantur; cæteras nationes despectui habent. All the Spanish and Italian tragedies I have yet seen, are writ in rhyme. For the French, I do 15 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, with some errors not to be avoided in that age, had 20 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 mesurée; into which the English tongue so naturally 25 slides, that, in writing prose, it is 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, 30 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 35 English, whom the necessity of a rhyme should force