Whose influence is begot of that loose grace, Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools; Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it; then, if sickly ears, Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, And I will have you, and that fault withal: Act v. sc. 2. In Biron's speech to the Princess: "And, therefore, like the eye, Full of straying shapes, of habits, and of forms "— either read stray, which I prefer; or throw full back to the preceding lines, "Like the eye, full Of straying shapes," &c. In the same scene: "Biron. And what to me, my love? and what to me? Therefore, if you my favour mean to get, A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest, There can be no doubt, indeed, about the propriety of expunging this speech of Rosaline's; it soils the very page that retains it. But I do not agree with Warburton and others in striking out the preceding line also. It is quite in Biron's character; and Rosaline, not answering it immediately, Dumain takes up the question for him, and, after he and Longaville are answered, Biron, with evident propriety, says: "Studies my mistress?" &c. "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM." ACT I. sc. 1.— "Her. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low- TH HERE is no authority for any alteration ;—but I never can help feeling how great an improvement it would be, if the two former of Hermia's exclamations were omitted;-the third and only appropriate one would then become a beauty, and most natural. Ib. Helena's speech : "I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight," &c. I am convinced that Shakespeare availed himself of the title of this play in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout, but especially, and perhaps unpleasingly, in this broad determination of ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and this, too, after the witty cool philosophising that precedes. The act itself is natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold which principles have on a woman's heart, when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because in general they feel less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for itself, and more of its out ward consequences, as detection and loss of character, than men, their natures being almost wholly extroitive. Still, however just in itself, the representation of this is not poetical; we shrink from it, and cannot harmonise it with the ideal. Act ii. sc. 1. Theobald's edition "Through bush, through briar What a noble pair of ears this worthy Theobald must have had! The eight amphimacers or cretics, "Over hill, över dāle, Thōio' bush, thōrō' briar; have a delightful effect on the ear in their sweet transition to the trochaic, "I do wander ev'ry whērě Swifter than the mōōněs sphere,” &c. The last words, as sustaining the rhyme, must be considered, as in fact they are, trochees in time. It may be worth while to give some correct examples in English of the principle metrical feet: Pyrrhic or Dibrach, u body, spirit. = Tribrach, nobody, hastily pronounced. Trochee, lightly. Gōd spāke. The paucity of spondees in single words in English, and indeed in the modern languages in general, makes perhaps the greatest distinction, metrically considered, between them and the Greek and Latin. Dactyl, -u mērrily. Anapæst, ʊʊ-= å pròpōs, or the first three syllables of ceremony. These simple feet may suffice for understanding the metres of Shakespeare, for the greater part at least; but Milton cannot be made harmoniously intelligible without the composite feet, the Ionics, Pæons, and Epitrites. Ib. sc. 2. Titania's speech (Theobald, adopting Warburton's reading): "Which she, with pretty and with swimming gate Follying (her womb then rich with my young squire) Oh! oh! Heaven have mercy on poor Shake- To my ears it would read far more Shakespearian thus: "And what poor duty cannot do, yet would, Ib. sc. 2. "Puck. Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon; |