"MAID'S TRAGEDY."

ACT The

CT I. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout.

"Strat. As well as masque can be," &c.

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 fashion.

Ib. Speech of Lysippus :

"Yes, but this lady

Walks discontented, with her wat'ry eyes
Bent on the earth," &c.

Opulent as Shakespeare 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.

Ib.

Read

"Mel. I might run fiercely, not more hastily, Upon my foe."

"I might run more fiercely, not more hastily."

T

Ib. Speech of Calianax :

"Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite through my office!"

The syllable off reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he carries on the image.

Ib. Speech of Melantius :

"Would that blood,

That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight," &c.

All B. and F.'s generals are pugilists or cudgelfighters, that boast of their bottom and of the claret they have shed.

Ib. The Masque ;-Cinthia's speech:

"But I will give a greater state and glory,

And raise to time a noble memōry

Of what these lovers are."

I suspect that "nobler," pronounced as "nobiler" --, was the poet's word, and that the accent is to be placed on the penultimate of "memory." As to the passage

"Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power," &c.— removed from the text of Cinthia's speech by these foolish editors as unworthy of B. and F.-the first eight lines are not worse, and the last couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained. Act ii. Amintor's speech :

"Oh, thou hast nam'd a word, that wipes away

All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name,
'The king,' there lies a terror."

It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger was a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile jure divino royalists, and Shakespeare a philosopher;-if aught personal, an aristocrat.

"A KING AND NO KING."

ACT IV. Speech of Tigranes :

"She, that forgat tl.e greatness of her grief

And miseries, that must follow such mad passions,
Endless and wild as women!" &c.

NEWARD'S note and suggestion of "in."

SEW

It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward what he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a difficult passage, of which there are two solutions; -one, that the writer was somewhat more injudicious than usual;-the other, that he was very, very much more profound and Shakespearian than usual. Seward's emendation, at all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of Shakespeare, I should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of Tigranes' state of mind, disliking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously representing them as mere products of the violence of the sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The inconsistency of the passage would be the consistency of the author. But this is above Beaumont and Fletcher.

"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.

STRANGE, that have seen that this mock

TRANGE, that neither Mr. Theobald nor Mr.

heroic speech is in full-mouthed 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 my quires in meditations, vows,
And woo'd her in heroical epistles."

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.

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

CANNOT but think that in a country conquered by a nobler race than the natives, and in which the latter became villeins and bondsmen, this custom, lex merchetæ, 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 Jaw, 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

But if your Honour's guts are not enchanted."

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 twothirds of a line which B. and F. adopted from the