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THE STAPLE OF NEWS.

Act iv. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech :

No, he would ha' done,

That lay not in his power: he had the use

Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's.

READ (1815),

-he had the use of

Your bodies, &c.

Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the 'of" from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding;—for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the proposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is

O' your bodies, &c.—

the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, up into the emphasized 'your.' In all points of view, therefore, Ben's judgment is just; for in this way, the line can not be read, as metre, without that strong and quick emphasis on 'your' which the sense requires;—and had not the sense required an emphasis on 'your,' the tmesis of the sign of its cases of,' 'to,' &c., would destroy almost all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy :—a lesson not to be rash in conjectural amendments. 1818.

Ib. sc. 4.

P. jun. I love all men of virtue, frommy Princess.—

'Frommy,' fromme, pious, dutiful, &c.

Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy sen. and Porter :

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I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had Lear in his mind in this mock mad scene.

THE NEW INN.

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

A heavy purse, and then two turtles, makes.

'MAKES,' frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for mates, or pairs.

Ib. sc. 3. Host's speech :

-And for a leap

O' the vaulting horse, to play the vaulting house.

Instead of reading with Whalley 'ply' for 'play,' I would suggest horse' for 'house.' The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, 'horse and house,' is below Jonson. The jeu-de-mots just below

Read a lecture

Upon Aquinas at St. Thomas à Waterings

had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity. Ib. sc. 6. Lovel's speech :

Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,

That open-handed sit upon the clouds,

And press the liberality of heaven

Down to the laps of thankful men!

Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is eidos xakenòv idɛîv—a sight which it is difficult to make one's self see,—a picture my fancy can not copy detached from the words.

Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c., of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,-most abominable stuff indeed!

Act iii. sc. 2.

Lovel's speech:

So knowledge first begets benevolence,

Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.

Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most

difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.

NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

Seward's Preface.

1750.

The King And No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent passions. H nce he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigor, chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn, &c.

THESE are among the endless instances of the abject state to which psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking.

Ib. Seward's comparison of Julia's speech in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. last scene

Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning, &c.

with Aspatia's speech in the Maid's Tragedy—

I stand upon the sea-beach now, &c. Act ii.

and preference of the latter.

It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure.

Ib. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in A Wife for a Month, act i. sc. 1, to the passage in King John, act v. sc. 7,—

Poison'd, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off!

Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel but you were an ass.

lb.

Every reader of taste will see how superior this is to the quotation from Shakspeare.

Of what taste?

Ib. Seward's classification of the plays :

Surely Monsieur Thomas, the Chances, Beggar's Bush, and the Pilgrim, should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole attempt ends in a woful failure.

HARRIS'S COMMENDATORY POEM ON FLETCHER.

I'd have a state of wit convok'd, which hath
A power to take up on common faith:--

THIS is an instance of that modifying of quantity by emphasis, without which our elder poets can not be scanned. 'Power,' here, instead of being one long syllable-pow'r-must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor yet as a trochee; but asthe first syllable is 14.

We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of our elder dramatic poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found the main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley, Porson, and their followers;—how much more, then, in writers in our own language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek, is in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law or even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent; secondly, emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the times of syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion that accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses them. With due attention to these,-above all, to that, which requires the most attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for example, might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the regulæ must be first known;-though I will venture to say, that he who does not find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger's flow to the time total of a trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But by virtue of the last principle-the retardation or acceleration of time—we have the proceleusmatic foot uu u u, and the dispondausnot to mention the choriambus, the ionics, pæons, and epitrites. Since Dryden, the metre of our poets leads to the sense in our elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the passion, leads to the metre. Read even Donne's

satires as he meant them to be read, and as the sense and passion demand, and you will find in the lines a manly harmony.

LIFE OF FLETCHER IN STOCKDALE'S EDITION. 1811.

In general their plots are more regular than Shakspeare's.—

THIS is true, if true at all, only before a court of criticism, which judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse Shakspeare's plots have their own laws or regulæ, and according to these they are regular.

one.

MAID'S TRAGEDY.

Act i. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout. Strat. As well as masque can be, &c.

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and all that follows to who is return'd'-is plainly blank verse, and falls easily into it.

Ib. Speech of Melantius :

These soft and silken wars are not for me:

The music must be shrill, and all confus'd,

That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms.

What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers of Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the fashion of the age from the Soldier's speech in the Counter Scuffle; and deeper than the fashion B. and F. did not fathom.

Ib. Speech of Lysippus :

Yes, but this lady

Walks discontented, with her wat❜ry eyes

Bent on the earth, &c.

Opulent as Shakspeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would not have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a no-character, or as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had written poems instead of tragedies.

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