, 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 Honour'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!"

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."

Act i. sc. 2. Charles's speech:--

... "For what concerns tillage,
Who better can deliver it than Virgil
In his Georgicks? and to cure your herds,
His Bucol