"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)— Now, "he had the use of Your bodies," &c. OW, 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. Ib. sc. 4.— "P. jun. I love all men of virtue, frommy Princess." "Frommy," fromme-pious, dutiful, &c. Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy, sen., and Porter. I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had Lear in his mind in this mock mad scene. "THE NEW INN." ACT I. sc. 1. Host's speech: "A heavy purse, and then two turtles, makes." MAKES, AKES," frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for mates, or pairs. Ib. sc. 3. Host's speech: "And for a leap Of the vaulting horse, to play the vaulting house." Instead of reading with Whalley "ply" for "play," I would suggest "horse" for "house." The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, "horse and house," is below Jonson. The jeu-demots just below "Read a lecture Upon Aquinas at St. Thomas à Waterings”— had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity. Ib. sc. 6. Lovel's speech : "Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours, And press the liberality of heaven Down to the laps of thankful meu! Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is είδος χαλεπὸν ἰδεῖν—a sight which it is diff cult to make one's self see,-a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from the words. Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c., of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,-most abominable stuff indeed! Act iii. sc. 2. Lovel's speech : "So knowledge first begets benevolence, Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.” Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be. NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. SEWARD'S Preface. 1750. "The King and No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigour, chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn," &c. HESE are among the endless instances of the TH abject state to which psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking. Ib. Seward's comparison of Julia's speech in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. last scene "Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning," &c. with Aspatia's speech in the Maid's Tragedy— "I stand upon the sea-beach now," &c.—Act ii.— and preference of the latter. It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure. Ib. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning |