But
there is a vast difference betwixt a public entertainment on the
theatre, and a private reading in the closet: In the first, we are
confined to time; and though we talk not by the hour-glass, yet the
watch often drawn out of the pocket warns the actors that their
audience is weary; in the last, every reader is judge of his own
convenience; he can take up the book and lay it down at his pleasure,
and find out those beauties of propriety in thought and writing, which
escaped him in the tumult and hurry of representing. And I dare boldly
promise for this play, that in the roughness of the numbers and
cadences, (which I assure was not casual, but so designed) you will
see somewhat more masterly arising to your view, than in most, if not
any, of my former tragedies. There is a more noble daring in the
figures, and more suitable to the loftiness of the subject; and,
besides this, some newnesses of English, translated from the beauties
of modern tongues, as well as from the elegancies of the Latin; and
here and there some old words are sprinkled, which, for their
significance and sound, deserved not to be antiquated; such as we
often find in Sallust amongst the Roman authors, and in Milton's
"Paradise" amongst ours; though perhaps the latter, instead of
sprinkling, has dealt them with too free a hand, even sometimes to the
obscuring of his sense.
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