"She, that forgat the greatness of her grief
And miseries, that must follow such mad passions,
Endless and wild as women!" &c.

Seward's note and suggestion of "in."

It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward what
he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a difficult
passage, of which there are two solutions;--one, that the writer was
somewhat more injudicious than usual;--the other, that he was very, very
much more profound and Shakespearian than usual. Seward's emendation, at
all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of Shakespeare, I
should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of Tigranes' state
of mind, disliking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously
representing them as mere products of the violence of the sex in general
in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to feel and to express
gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The inconsistency of the
passage would be the consistency of the author. But this is above Beaumont
and Fletcher.

"The Scornful Lady."

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 labour and expense, the recollection of those
thousand pieces, consum'd in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that
our honour'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_