"The language, wit, and conversation of our age, are improved and refined above the last.... Let us consider in what the refinement of a language principally consists; that is, 'either in rejecting such old words, or phrases, which are ill-sounding or improper; or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding, and more significant.' ... Let any man who understands English, read diligently the works of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake, that he will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense.... Many of (their plots) were made of some ridiculous, incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name 'Pericles Prince of Tyre,' nor the historical plays of Shakspeare; besides many of the rest, as the 'Winter's Tale, Love's Labour Lost, Measure for Measure,' which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment.... I could easily demonstrate, that our admired Fletcher neither understood correct plotting, nor that which they call the decorum of the stage.... The reader will see Philaster wounding his mistress, and afterwards his boy, to save himself.... And for his shepherd he falls twice into the former indecency of wounding women."[380] Fletcher nowhere permits kings to retain a dignity suited to kings. Moreover, the action of these authors' plays is always barbarous. They introduce battles on the stage; they transport the scene in a moment to a distance of twenty years or five hundred leagues, and a score of times consecutively in one act; they jumble together three or four different actions, especially in the historical dramas. But they sin most in style. Dryden says of Shakespeare: "Many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure."[381] Ben Jonson himself often has bad plots, redundancies, barbarisms: "Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was not known till Mr. Waller introduced it."[382] All, in short, descend to quibbles, low and common expressions: "In the age wherein those poets lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours.... Besides the want of education and learning, they wanted the benefit of converse.... Gentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each other; and, though they allow Cob and Tibb to speak properly, yet they are not much pleased with their tankard, or with their rags."[383] For these gentlemen we must now write, and especially for "reasonable men"; for it is not enough to have wit or to love tragedy, in order to be a good critic: we must possess sound knowledge and a lofty reason, know Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, and pronounce judgment according to their