nly blank verse, and
falls easily into it.

_Ib._ Speech of Melantius:--

"These soft and silken wars are not for me:
The music must be shrill, and all confus'd,
That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms."

What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers of
Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the fashion
of the age from the Soldier's speech in the Counter Scuffle; and deeper
than the fashion B. and F. did not fashion.

_Ib._ Speech of Lysippus:--

"Yes, but this lady
Walks discontented, with her wat'ry eyes
Bent on the earth," &c.

Opulent as Shakespeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would not
have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a no-character, or
as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had written poems
instead of tragedies.

_Ib._--

"_Mel._ I might run fiercely, not more hastily,
Upon my foe."

Read

"I might run _more_ fiercely, not more hastily."

_Ib._ Speech of Calianax:--

"Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite
through my office!"

The syllable _off_ reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he carries
on the image.

_Ib._ Speech of Melantius:--

... "Would that blood,
That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight," &c.

All B. and F.'s generals are pugilists or cudgel-fighters, that boast of
their bottom and of the _claret_ they have shed.

_Ib._ The Masque;--Cinthia's speech:--

"But I will give a greater state and glory,
And raise to time a _noble_ memory
Of what these lovers are."

I suspect that "nobler," pronounced as "nobiler" - u -, was the poet's
word, and that the accent is to be placed on the penultimate of "memory."
As to the passage--

"Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power," &c.--

removed from the text of Cinthia's speech, by these foolish editors as
unworthy of B. and F.--the first eight lines are not worse, and the last
couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained.

Act ii. Amintor's speech:--

"Oh, thou hast nam'd a word, that wipes away
All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name,
'The king,' there lies a terror."

It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger was
a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile _jure divino_
royalists, and Shakespeare a philosopher;--if aught personal, an
aristocrat.

"A King And No King."

Act iv. Speech of Tigranes:--