Chapter 106

“Of half-a crown a week for pins and puppets.”

“As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here.”—Seward.

A syllable wanting! Had this Seward neither ears nor fingers? The line is a more than usually regular iambic hendecasyllable.

_Ib._—

“With one man satisfied, with one rein guided; With one faith, one content, one bed; _Aged_, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue; A widow is,” &c.

Is “apaid”—contented—too obsolete for B. and F.? If not, we might read it thus:—

“Content with one faith, with one bed apaid, She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;”—

Or, it may be,—

... “with one breed apaid”—

that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to,—

“A widow is a Christmas-box,” &c.

Colman’s note on Seward’s attempt to put this play into metre.

The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were ignorant of any but the regular iambic verse. A study of the Aristophanic and Plautine metres would have enabled them to reduce B. and F. throughout into metre, except where prose is really intended.

“The Humorous Lieutenant.”