It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but Master Dan. Knockhum Jordan and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym and Pistol. Ib. sc. 5. "Quarl. She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here in Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with." Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M.P., in the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte :-" Houses plundered-then burnt;-sons conscribed-wives and daughters ravished, &c., &c.-" But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen ! with your fat will he grease the wheels of his triumphant chariot!" Ib. sc. 6. "Cok. Avoid in your satin doublet, Numps." This reminds me of Shakespeare's "Aroint thee, witch!" I find in several books of that age the words aloigne and eloigne-that is,-"keep your distance!" or "off with you u!" Perhaps "aroint" was a corruption of "aloigne" by the vulgar. The common etymology from ronger to gnaw seems unsatisfactory. Act iii. sc. 4.— "Quarl. How now, Numps! almost tired in your protectorship? overparted, overparted?" An odd sort of propheticality in this Numps and old Noll! Ib. sc. 6. Knockhum's speech : "He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth." A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth's Election Dinner,-who shows how easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships what he eats. Act v. sc. 5.— แ Pup. Di. It is not profane. Lan. It is not profane, he says. Pup. It is not profane. Boy. It is profane. Pup. It is not profane. Lan. Well said, confute him with Not, still.” An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in Aristophanes : "THE DEVIL IS AN ASS." ACT I. sc. 1.— "Pug. Why any: Frand, Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity, Or old Iniquity, I'll call him hither." "The words in italics should probably be given to the masterdevil, Satan."-Whalley's note. THAT is, against all probability, and with a (for Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards. Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft's speech : "Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge.” I doubt not that "money" was the first word of the line, and has dropped out : "Money! Sir, money's a," &c. "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)— ow, "he had the use of Your bodies," &c. W, 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 preposition 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 emphasised "your." In all points of view, therefore, Ben's judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot 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. |