Yet if you play not fair, above-board too, I'll tell you what--I've a foolish engine here:--I say no more--But if your Honor's guts are not enchanted-- Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. is,--a far more lawless, and yet far less happy, imitation of the rhythm of animated talk in real life than Massinger's--still it is made worse than it really is by ignorance of the halves, thirds, and two-thirds of a line which B. and F. adopted from the 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 passage-- Though I confess Any man would Desire to have her, and by any means, At any rate too, yet this common hangman That hath whipt off a /THOUsand maids' HEADS/ already-- That he should glean the harvest, sticks in my stomach! [Between the two /, upper-case syllables have the stress, written as a horizontal line above them in the original text, and lower-case syllables are unstressed, written as a u-shape (the u-symbol previously described) above them. text Ed.] In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and vehemence, 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'--u u --, or perhaps a 'paeon primus'--u u u; 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:-- --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. Fletcher 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 honor, 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.--