The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Ii Part 37

Perhaps the better reading is--

O' your bodies, &c.--

the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather s.n.a.t.c.hed, or sucked, up into the emphasized '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', 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 O' 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-de-mots' just below--

Read a lecture Upon _Aquinas_ at St. Thomas a _Water_ings--

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, That open-handed sit upon the clouds, And press the liberality of heaven Down to the laps of thankful men!

Like many other similar pa.s.sages in Jonson, this is [Greek (transliterated): eidos chalepon idein]--a sight which it is difficult 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 d.a.m.n a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,--most abominable stuff indeed!

Act in. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:--

So knowledge first begets benevolence, Benevolence breeds friends.h.i.+p, friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigor, chast.i.ty and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn, &c.

These are among the endless instances of the 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 pa.s.sioning, &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 pa.s.sage 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 princ.i.p.al figure.

Ib. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in A Wife for a Month, act i. sc. 1, to the pa.s.sage in King John, act v. sc. 7,--

Poison'd, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off!