But as it is an error, on the one side, to make too great a disproportion betwixt the imaginary time of the play, and the real time of its representation; so, on the other side, it is an oversight to compress the accidents of a play into a narrower compass than that in which they could naturally be produced. Of this last error the French are seldom guilty, because the thinness of their plots prevents them from it; but few Englishmen, except Ben Jonson, have ever made a plot, with variety of design in it, included in twenty-four hours, which was altogether natural. For this reason, I prefer the "Silent Woman" before all other plays, I think justly, as I do its author, in judgment, above all other poets. Yet, of the two, I think that error the most pardonable, which in too strait a compass crowds together many accidents, since it produces more variety, and, consequently, more pleasure to the audience; and, because the nearness of proportion betwixt the imaginary and real time, does speciously cover the compression of the accidents. Thus I have endeavoured to answer the meaning of his argument; for, as he drew it, I humbly conceive that it was none,--as will appear by his proposition, and the proof of it. His proposition was this: "If strictly and duly weighed, it is as impossible for one stage to present two rooms, or houses, as two countries, or kingdoms," &c. And his proof this: "For all being impossible, they are none of them nearest the truth or nature of what they present." Here you see, instead of proof or reason, there is only _petitio principii_. For, in plain words, his sense is this: Two things are as impossible as one another, because they are both equally impossible: But he takes those two things to be granted as impossible, which he ought to have proved such, before he had proceeded to prove them equally impossible: He should have made out first, that it was impossible for one stage to represent two houses, and then have gone forward to prove, that it was as equally impossible for a stage to present two houses, as two countries. After all this, the very absurdity, to which he would reduce me, is none at all: For he only drives at this, that, if his argument be true, I must then acknowledge that there are degrees in impossibilities, which I easily grant him without dispute; and, if I mistake not, Aristotle and the School are of my opinion. For there are some things which are absolutely impossible, and others which are only so _ex parte_; as it is absolutely impossible for a thing _to be_, and _not to be_ at the same time: But for a stone to move naturally upward, is only impossible _ex parte materiae_; but it is not impossible for the first mover to alter the nature of it.