it, though with more reputation I could write in verse. I know I am not so fitted by nature to write comedy; I want that gaiety of humour which is required to it; my conversation is slow, dull, my humour saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company or make repartees; so that those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit; reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend."
That he had changed his mind, and adopted a higher view of the poet's duties a few years before his death, we see in his preface to the comedy written by his son John, from which we quote an extract, for the sake of its contrast to the last. Speaking of his son, he says:
"If it shall please God to restore him to me, I may perhaps inform him better of the rules of writing; and if I am not partial, he has already shown that a genius is not wanting to him. All that I can reasonably fear is that the perpetual good success of ill plays may make him endeavour to please by writing worse, and by accommodating himself to the wretched capacity and liking of the present audience, from which Heaven defend any of my progeny. A poet indeed must live by the many; but a good poet will make it his business to please only the few."
In the year in which his first comedy was exhibited he wrote his verses to Lord Chancellor Hyde on "New Year's Day," and his satire on the Dutch. The versification of both poems, though it is vastly below the perfection which afterwards he arrived at, shows a wonderful mastery of the heroic metre, which had hitherto, however beautiful the image or profound the thought it conveyed, for the most part been rough and halting. His next production for the stage was "The Rival Ladies," a tragi-comedy, which is superior to "The Wild Gallant," and which was tolerably successful.
