Chapter XXIII: Act II: Sir Roger's speech

Did I for this consume my _quarters_ in meditations, vows, and woo'd
her in heroical epistles? Did I expound the Owl, and undertake, with
labor and expense, the recollection of those thousand pieces, consum'd
in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that our honor'd Englishman, Nic.
Broughton? &c.

Strange, that neither Mr. Theobald, nor Mr. Seward, should have seen that this mock heroic speech is in full-mouthed blank verse! Had they seen this, they would have seen that 'quarters' is a substitution of the players for 'quires' or 'squares,' (that is) of paper:--

Consume my quires in meditations, vows,
And woo'd her in heroical epistles.

They ought, likewise, to have seen that the abbreviated 'Ni. Br.' of the text was properly 'Mi. Dr.'--and that Michael Drayton, not Nicholas Broughton, is here ridiculed for his poem The Owl and his Heroical Epistles.

Ib. Speech of Younger Loveless:--

Fill him some wine. Thou dost not see me mov'd, &c.

These Editors ought to have learnt, that scarce an instance occurs in B. and F. of a long speech not in metre. This is plain staring blank verse.

THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY.

I cannot but think that in a country conquered by a nobler race than the natives, and in which the latter became villeins and bondsmen, this custom, 'lex merchetae', may have been introduced for wise purposes,--as of improving the breed, lessening the antipathy of different races, and producing a new bond of relationship between the lord and the tenant, who, as the eldest born, would, at least, have a chance of being, and a probability of being thought, the lord's child. In the West Indies it cannot have these effects, because the mulatto is marked by nature different from the father, and because there is no bond, no law, no custom, but of mere debauchery. 1815.

Act i. sc. 1. Rutilio's speech:--

Yet if you play not fair play, &c.

Evidently to be transposed and read thus:--

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