THE SCORNFUL LADY.

Act II. Sir Roger's speech

Did I for this consume my quarters in meditations, rows, and woo'd her in heroical epistles? Did I expound the Owl, and undertake, with labour and expense, the recollection of those thousand pieces, consum'd in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that our honourd Englishman, Sic. Broughton ? &c.

TRANGE, that neither Vr. Theobald, nor

STR.

da, seen

6

heroic speech is in fuli-niouthed blank verse! Had they seen this, they would have seen that “

quarters' is a substitution of the players for «quires' or * squares,' (that is) of paper :

Consume mr quires in meditations, vows,

And woo'd her in heroical epistles. (cc) They ought, likewise, to have seen that the abbreviated. Ni. Br.' of the text was properly Mi. Dr.' -and that Michael Drayton, not Nicholas Broughton, is here ridiculed for his poem The Owl and his Heroical Epistles. (til)

Ib. Speech of Younger Loveless :-
Fill him some wine. Thou dost not see me mov'd, &c.

These Editors ought to have learnt, that scarce an instance occurs in B. and F. of a long speech not in metre. This is plain staring blank verse. THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY.

I

CAVYOT but think that in a country con

quered by a nobler race than the natives, and in which the latter became villeins and bondsnien, this custoin, lex merchetre, may have been introduced for wise purposes,-as of improving the breed, lessening the antipathy of different races, and producing a new bond of relationship between the lord and the tenant, who, as the eldest born, would, at least, have a chance of being, and a probability of being thought, the lord's child. In the West Indies it cannot have these effects, because the mulatto is marked by nature different froin the father, and because there is no bond, no law, no custom, but of mere debauchery. 1815.

Act i. sc. 1. Rutilio's speech :

a

Yet if you play not fair play, Sic.
Evidently to be transposed and read thus :

Yet if you play not fair, abore-board too,
I'll tell

you

what-
I've a foolish engine here :-I say no more

But if your Honour's guts are not enchantedLicentions as the comic metre of B. and !.is,-a far more lawless, and yet far less happy, imitation of the rhythm of animated talk in real life than Massinger's-still it is niade worse than it really is

by ignorance of the halves, thirds, and two-thirds of a line which B. and F. adopted from the Italian and Spanish dramatists. Thus in Rutilio's speech :

Though I confess
Any man would desire to have her, and by any means,&c.
Correct the whicle passage-

Though I confess
Any man would
Desire to liave her, and by any means,
At any rate too, yet this common hangman
That bath whipt off a thousănd măids' heads already-

That he should glean the barrest, sticks in my stomach! In all conic metres the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and vehenience, are not so much in license, üs a law,faithful

copy of nature, and let them be read characteristically, thic times will be found nearly equal. Thus the threc words marked above make a choriambus - Uum, or perhaps a peeon primus-uwu; a dactyl, by virtue of comic rapidity, being only equal to an iambus when distinctly pronounced. I have no doubt that all B. and F.'s works might be safely corrected by attention to this rule, and that the editor is entitled to transpositions of all kinds, and to not a few omissions. For the rule of the metre once lost-what was to restrain the actors from interpolation ?

THE ELDER BROTHER.

passage thus :

Act I. sc. 2. Charles's speech :

-For what concerns tillage,
W'ho better can deliver it than Virgil
In his Georgicks ? and to cure your herds,

His Bucolicks is a master-piece. "LETCHER was too good a scholar to fall into

so gross a blunder, as Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose.

I read the

-For what concerns tillage,
Who better can deliver it than l'irgil,
In his Gčūrgicks, or to cure your herds ;

(Ilis Bucolicks are a master-piece.) But when, äc. Jealous of Virgil's honour, he is afraid lest, by referring to the Georgics alone, he might be understood as undervaluing the preceding work.

« Not that I do not admire the Bucolics, too, in their

-But when, &c.'
Act iii. sc. 3. Charles's speech :-

-She has a face looks like a story;
The story of the heavens looks very like her.
Seward reads ' glory;' and Theobald quotes from
Philaster-

That reads the story of a woman's face.I can make sense of this passage as little as Mr. Seward ;- the passage from Philaster is nothing

way :

a

to the purpose. Instead of ' a story.' I have some-
times thought of proposing Astræa.' (ee)
Ib. Angellina's speech :-

-You're old and dim, Sir,
And the shadow of the earth eclips'd your judgment.

Inappropriate to Angellina, but one of the finest
lines in our language.
Act iv. sc. 3. Charles's speech :-

And lets the serious part of life run by
As thin neglected sand, wbitcuess of name.

You must be mine, sc.
Seward's note, and reading-

-Whiteness of name, You must be mine! Yonsense! •Whiteness of name' is in apposition to the serious part of life,' and means a deservedly pure reputation. The following line-'You must be mine!' means— Though I do not enjoy you today, I shall hereafter, and without reproach. (.tt")

THE SPANISH CURATE.

Acr IV. sc. 7. Amaranta's speech :

And still I push'd him on, as lie had been coming. ERHAPS the true word is 'conning,' that is, learning, or reading, and therefore inattentive.

PERHIAN