icks is a master-piece."

Fletcher was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a blunder, as
Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose. I read the passage thus:--

... "For what concerns tillage,
Who better can deliver it than Virgil,
In his Georgicks, _or_ to cure your herds
(His Bucolicks are a master-piece); but when," &c.

Jealous of Virgil's honour, he is afraid lest, by referring to the
_Georgics_ alone, he might be understood as undervaluing the preceding
work. "Not that I do not admire the _Bucolics_ too, in their way.--But
when," &c.

Act iii. sc. 3. Charles's speech:--

... "She has a face looks like a _story_;
The _story_ of the heavens looks very like her."

Seward reads "glory;" and Theobald quotes from Philaster:--

"That reads the story of a woman's face."

I can make sense of this passage as little as Mr. Seward;--the passage from
Philaster is nothing to the purpose. Instead of "a story," I have
sometimes thought of proposing "Astraea."

_Ib._ Angellina's speech:--

... "You're old and dim, Sir,
And the shadow of the earth eclips'd your judgment."

Inappropriate to Angellina, but one of the finest lines in our language.

Act iv. sc. 3. Charles's speech:--

"And lets the serious part of life run by
As thin neglected sand, whiteness of name.
You must be mine," &c.

Seward's note, and reading:--

... "Whiteness of name,
You must be mine!"

Nonsense! "Whiteness of name" is in apposition to "the serious part of
life," and means a deservedly pure reputation. The following line--"You
_must_ be mine!" means--"Though I do not enjoy you to-day, I shall
hereafter, and without reproach."

"The Spanish Curate."

Act iv. sc. 7. Amaranta's speech:--

"And still I push'd him on, as he had been _coming_."

Perhaps the true word is "conning,"--that is, learning, or reading, and
therefore inattentive.

"Wit Without Money."

Act i. Valentine's speech:--

"One without substance," &c.

The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have
endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect,
incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:--

"One without substance of herself, that's woman;
Without the pleasure of her life, that's wanton;
Tho' she be young, forgetting it; tho' fair,
Making her glass the eyes of honest men,
Not her own admiration."

"That's wanton," or, "that is to say, wantonn