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,
His Bucolicks is a master-piece.

FLE

LETCHER was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a blunder, as Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose. I read the passage thus:

-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 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.' (ee)

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 name.
You must be mine, &c.

Seward's note, and reading—

-Whiteness of name,

You must be mine!

6

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.

ERHAPS the true word is conning,' that is,

PERHA

learning, or reading, and therefore inattentive.

WIT WITHOUT MONEY.

ACT I. Valentine's speech :

One without substance, &c.

HE present text, and that proposed by Seward,

make the lines sense, though the whole is, I sus-
pect, incurable except by bold conjectural reforma-
tion. 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.

THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT.

ACT I. sc. 1. Second Ambassador's speech :

-When your angers,

Like so many brother billows, rose together,
And, curling up your foaming crests, defied, &c.

HIS worse than superfluous 'like' is very like an interpolation of some matter of fact criticall pus, prose atque venenum. The ‘your' in the

next line, instead of 'their,' is likewise yours, Mr. Critic!

Act ii. sc. 1. Timon's speech:

Another of a new way will be look'd at.—

We must suspect the poets wrote,' of a new day.' So immediately after,

Time may

For all his wisdom, yet give us a day.

SEWARD'S NOTE.

For this very reason I more than suspect the contrary.

Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Leucippe :

I'll put her into action for a wastcoat.—

What we call a riding-habit,—some mannish dress.

THE MAD LOVER.

ACT IV. Masque of beasts :—

-This goodly tree,

An usher that still grew before his lady,

Wither'd at root: this, for he could not woo,
A grumbling lawyer: &c.

ERE must have been omitted a line rhyming

H1

to tree;' and the words of the next line

have been transposed:

-This goodly tree,

Which leafless, and obscur'd with moss you see,
An usher this, that 'fore his lady grew,

Wither'd at root: this, for he could not woo, &c.