ess."

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.

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 _wastcoat_."

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:--

... "This goodly tree,
_Which leafless, and obscur'd with moss you see_,
An usher this, that 'fore his lady grew,
Wither'd a