WIT WITHOUT MONEY.

Act i. Valentine's speech :

One without substance, &c.

THE present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have endeavored 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;

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.

-When your angers,

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

THIS worse than superfluous 'like' is very like an interpolation of some matter of fact critic-all 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 waistcoat.

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.

HERE must have been omitted a line rhyming to 'tree;' and the words of the next line have been transposed :—

6

It is well worthy of notice, and yet has not been, I believe, noticed hitherto, what a marked difference there exists in the dramatic writers of the Elizabetho-Jacobean age-(Mercy on me! what a phrase for the writers during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.!)-in respect of their political opinions. Shakspeare, in this as in all other things, himself and alone, gives the permanent politics of human nature, and the only predilection, which appears, shows itself in his contempt of mobs and the populacy. Massinger is a decided Whig ;-Beaumont and Fletcher high-flying, passive-obedience Tories. The Spanish dramatists furnished them with this, as with many other ingredients. By-the-by, an accurate and familiar acquaintance with all the productions of the Spanish stage previously to 1620, is an indispensable qualification for an editor of B. and F. ;—and with this qualification a most interesting and instructive edition might be given. This edition of Colman's (Stockdale, 1811) is below criticism.

In metre B. and F. are inferior to Shakspeare, on the one hand, as expressing the poetic part of the drama, and to Massinger, on the other, in the art of reconciling metre with the natural rhythm of conversation,-in which, indeed, Massinger is unrivalled. Read him aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more legitimate,—none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B. and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as

Too many fears 'tis thought too: and to nourish those

This has, often, a good effect, and is one of the varieties most common in Shakspeare.

RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE.

Act iii. Old Woman's speech

-I fear he will knock my

Brains out for lying.

MR. SEWARD discards the words 'for lying,' because most of the things spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little exaggeration, and because they destroy all appearance of measure.' Colman's Note.

Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humor lies in Estifania's having ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the metre, it is perfectly correct.

Ib.

Marg. As you love me, give way.

Leon. It shall be better, I will give none, madam, &c.

The meaning is: 'It shall be a better way, first ;- -as it is, I will not give it, or any that you in your present mood would wish.'

6

THE LAWS OF CANDY.

Act i. Speech of Melitus:

Whose insolence and never-yet match'd pride
Can by no character be well express'd,

But in her only name, the proud Erota.

Colman's note.

The poet intended no allusion to the word 'Erota' itself; but says that her very name, 'the proud Erota,' became a character and adage; as we say, a quixote or a Brutus: so to say an Erota,' expressed female pride and insolence of beauty.

Ib. Speech of Antinous :—

Of my peculiar honors, not deriv'd

From successary, but purchas'd with my blood.

The poet doubtless wrote 'successary,' which, though not adopted in our language, would be, on many occasions, as here, a much more significant phrase than ancestry.

THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER.

Act i. sc. 1.

Dinant's speech :—

Are you become a patron too? "Tis a new one,
No more on't, &c.

Seward reads:

Are you become a patron too? How long

Have you been conning this speech? "Tis a new one, &c.

IF conjectural emendation, like this, be allowed, we might venture to read

O miserable! Dinant sees through Cleremont's gravity, and

the actor is to explain it.

struggle of affected morality.

'Words are but words,' is the last

Act i. sc. 3.

VALENTINIAN.

Ir is a real trial of charity to read this scene with tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish-so reptile-are the feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet remember he was a bishop's son, and the duty to God was the supposed basis.

Personals, including body, house, home, and religion;-property, subordination, and inter-community;-these are the fundamentals of society. I mean here, religion negatively taken, so that the person be not compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to God, what would be, in that person, a lie ;—such as to force a man to go to church, or to swear that he believes what he does