When
Dryden had once discovered, that fear and pity were more likely to be
excited by other causes than the logic of metaphysical love, or the
dictates of fantastic honour, he must have found, that rhyme sounded as
unnatural in the dialogue of characters drawn upon the usual scale of
humanity, as the plate and mail of chivalry would have appeared on the
persons of the actors. The following lines of the Prologue to
"Aureng-Zebe," although prefixed to a rhyming play, the last which he
ever wrote, express Dryden's change of sentiment on these points:
"Our author, by experience, finds it true,
'Tis much more hard to please himself than you:
And, out of no feigned modesty, this day
Damns his laborious trifle of a play:
Not that it's worse than what before he writ,
But he has now another taste of wit;
And, to confess a truth, though out of time,
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme.
Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And Nature flies him like enchanted ground:
What verse can do, he has performed in this,
Which he presumes the most correct of his;
But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his breast at Shakespeare's sacred name:
Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage,
He, in a just despair, would quit the stage;
And to an age less polished, more unskilled,
Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield."
It is remarkable, as a trait of character, that, though our author
admitted his change of opinion on this long disputed point, he would not
consent that it should be imputed to any arguments which his opponents
had the wit to bring against him.
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