He who undertakes to answer this excellent critique of Mr Rymer, in behalf of our English poets against the Greek, ought to do it in this manner: either by yielding to him the greatest part of what he contends for, which consists in this, that the μύθος _i.e._ the design and conduct of it, is more conducing in the Greeks to those ends of tragedy, which Aristotle and he propose, namely, to cause terror and pity; yet the granting this does not set the Greeks above the English poets. But the answerer ought to prove two things: First, that the fable is not the greatest master-piece of a tragedy, though it be the foundation of it. Secondly, that other ends, as suitable to the nature of tragedy, may be found in the English, which were not in the Greek. Aristotle places the fable first; not _quoad dignitatem, sed quoad fundamentum_: for a fable, never so movingly contrived to those ends of his, pity and terror, will operate nothing on our affections, except the characters, manners, thoughts, and words, are suitable. So that it remains for Mr Rymer to prove, that in all those, or the greatest part of them, we are inferior to Sophocles and Euripides; and this he has offered at, in some measure; but, I think, a little partially to the ancients. For the fable itself: it is in the English more adorned with episodes, and larger than in the Greek poets; consequently more diverting. For if the action be but one, and that plain, without any counter-turn of design or episode, _i.e._ under-plot, how can it be so pleasing as the English, which have both under-plot and a turned design, which keeps the audience in expectation of the catastrophe? whereas in the Greek poets we see through the whole design at first. For the characters, they are neither so many nor so various in Sophocles and Euripides, as in Shakespeare and Fletcher; only they are more adapted to those ends of tragedy which Aristotle commends to us, pity and terror. The manners flow from the characters, and consequently must partake of their advantages and disadvantages. The thoughts and words, which are the fourth and fifth beauties of tragedy, are certainly more noble and more poetical in the English than in the Greek, which must be proved by comparing them somewhat more equitably than Mr Rymer has done. After all, we need not yield, that the English way is less conducing to move pity and terror, because they often shew virtue oppressed and vice punished; where they do not both, or either, they are not to be defended. And if we should grant that the Greeks performed this better, perhaps it may admit of dispute, whether pity and terror are either the prime, or at least the only ends of tragedy.