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 whole

"Though I confess

Any man would

passage,

Desire to have her, and by any means,

At any rate too, yet this common hangman

That hath whipt off a thousand maids heads alreadyThat 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 veheinence, 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 -, or perhaps a pæon primus -; 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:

FLET

"For what concerns tillage,

Who 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 thus:

passage

"For what concerns tillage,

Who better can deliver it than Virgil,
In his Gěōrgicks, 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 understood as undervaluing the preceding work. "Not 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 sometimes thought of proposing "Astræa."

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, whiteness of naine.
You must be mine," &c.

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 to-day, I shall hereafter, and without reproach.'

"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,

'conning,"—that is, learning, or reading, and therefore

inattentive.

"WIT WITHOUT MONEY."

ACT I. Valentine's speech :

"One without substance," &c.

THE present text, and that proposed by Seward,

are equally vile.

I endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect, incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:

"One without substance of herself, that's woman;
Without the pleasure of her life, that's wanton;
Tho' she be young, forgetting it; tho' fair,
Making her glass the eyes of honest men,
Not her own admiration."

"That's wanton," or, "that is to say, wantonness." Act ii. Valentine's speech :

"Of half-a crown a week for pins and puppets."

"As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here."-Seward. A syllable wanting! Had this Seward neither ears nor fingers? The line is a more than usually regular iambic hendecasyllable.

Ib.

"With one man satisfied, with one rein guided;

With one faith, one content, one bed;

Aged, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;

A widow is," &c.

Is "apaid"-contented-too obsolete for B. and F.? If not, we might read it thus:

"Content with one faith, with one bed apaid,

She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;"

Or, it may be,—

“with one breed apaid”—

that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to,—

"A widow is a Christmas-box," &c.

Colman's note on Seward's attempt to put this play into metre.

The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were ignorant of any but the regular iambic verse. A study of the Aristophanic and Plautine metres would have enabled them to reduce B. and F. throughout into metre, except where prose is really intended.