THE SCORNFUL LADY. ACT II. Sir Roger's speech : Did I for this consume my quarters in meditations, vows, 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 honour'd Englishman, Nic. Broughton? &c. TRANGE, that neither Mr. Theobald, nor STR heroic speech is in full-mouthed blank verse! Had they seen this, they would have seen that quar ters' is a substitution of the players for 'quires' or squares,' (that is) of paper: Consume my 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. (dd) 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. I THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY. CANNOT 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 merchete, 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 from the father, and because there is no bond, no law, no custom, but of mere debauchery. 1815. Act i. sc. 1. Rutilio's speech:— Yet if you play not fair play, &c. Evidently to be transposed and read thus: Yet if you play not fair, above-board too, I'll tell you what I've a foolish engine here:-I say no more- Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. 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 made 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 have her, and by any means, At any rate too, yet this common hangman That bath whipt off a thousand maids' heads already— That he should glean the harvest, sticks in my stomach! In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables. and the abbreviation of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and vehemence, are not so much a license, as a law,—a faithful copy of nature, and let them be read characteristically, the times will be found nearly equal. Thus the three words marked above make a choriambus-vu-, or perhaps a pæon primus —vvv; 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. ACT I. sc. 2. Charles's speech : -For what concerns tillage, Who better can deliver it than Virgil In his Georgicks? and to cure your herds, LETCHER was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a blunder, as Messrs. Sympson and · I read the passage thus: Colman suppose. -For what concerns tillage, Who better can deliver it than Virgil, In his Georgicks, or to cure your herds; (His Bucolicks are a master-piece.) But when, &c. Jealous of Virgil's honour, he is afraid lest, by referring to the Georgics alone, he might be under• Not stood as undervaluing the preceding work. that I do not admire the Bucolics, too, in their way-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 to the purpose. Instead of a story.' I have some- -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 Seward's note, and reading— -Whiteness of name, You must be mine! Nonsense! 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.' (f) THE SPANISH CURATE. ACT IV. sc. 7. Amaranta's speech : : And still I push'd him on, as he had been coming. PERHAPS the true word is conning,' that is learning, or reading, and therefore inattentive. matopé |