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.' 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! 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 to-day, I shall hereafter, and without reproach.' THE SPANISH CURATE. Act IV. sc. 7. Amaranta's speech:-- And still I push'd him on, as he had been _coming_. Perhaps the true word is 'conning,' that is, learning, or reading, and therefore inattentive. 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 endeavoured 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;-- 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.