Chapter 99

“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 merchetæ_, 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.