Howard at once laid his finger upon the weak spot of the first. "It
is", he said, "no argument for the matter in hand. For the dispute is
not what way a man may write best in; but which is most proper for the
subject he writes upon. And, if this were let pass, the argument is
yet unsolved in itself; for he that wants judgment in the liberty of
his fancy may as well shew the want of it in its confinement."
[Footnote: _Preface to Four New Plays_: ib. 498.] Besides, he adds in
effect on the next page, so far from "confining the fancy" rhyme is
apt to lead to turgid and stilted writing.

The second argument stands on higher ground. It amounts to a plea for
the need of idealization; and, so far, may serve to remind us that the
extravagances of the heroic drama had their stronger, as well as their
weaker, side. No one, however, will now be willing to admit that the
cause of dramatic idealization is indeed bound up with the heroic
couplet; and a moment's thought will show the fallacy of Dryden's
assumption that it is. In the first place, he takes for granted that,
the further the language of the drama is removed from that of actual
life, the nearer the spirit of it will approach to the ideal. An
unwarrantable assumption, if there ever was one; and an assumption,
as will be seen, that contains the seeds of the whole eighteenth-century
theory of poetic diction. In the second place--but this is, in truth,
only the deeper aspect of the former plea--Dryden comes perilously
near to an acceptance of the doctrine that idealization in a work of
art depends purely on the outward form and has little or nothing to
do with the conception or the spirit. The bond between form and matter
would, according to this view, be purely arbitrary. By a mere turn of
the hand, by the substitution of rhyme for prose--or for blank verse,
which is on more than "measured" or harmonious prose--the baldest
presentment of life could be converted into a dramatic poem. From the