Either read stray, which I prefer; or throw full back to the preceding lines,—

like the eye, full

Of straying shapes, &c.

In the same scene:

Biron. And what to me, my love? and what to me? Ros. You must be purged too, your sins are rank; You are attaint with fault and perjury:

Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,
A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,
But seek the weary beds of people sick.

There can be no doubt, indeed, about the propriety of expunging this speech of Rosaline's; it soils the very page that retains it. But I do not agree with Warburton and others in striking out the preceding line also. It is quite in Biron's character; and Rosaline not answering it immediately, Dumain takes up the question for him, and, after he and Longaville are answered, Biron, with evident propriety, says;—

Studies my mistress? &c.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

ACT i. sc. 1.

Her. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low-
Lys. Or else misgrafted, in respect of years;
Her. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young-
Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends
Her. O hell! to chuse love by another's eye!

ment it would be, if the two former of Hermia's exclamations were omitted;-the third and only appropriate one would then become a beauty, and most natural, Ib. Helena's speech :-

I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight, &c.

I am convinced that Shakspeare availed himself of the title of this play in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout, but especially, and, perhaps, unpleasingly, in this broad determination of ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and this, too, after the witty cool philosophizing that precedes. The act itself is natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold which principles have on a woman's heart, when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because in general they feel less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for itself, and more of its outward consequences, as detection, and loss of character than men,—their natures being almost wholly extroitive. Still, however just in itself, the representation of this is not poetical; we shrink from it, and cannot harmonize it with the ideal. Act. ii. sc. 1. Theobald's edition.

Through bush, through briar~

What a noble pair of ears this worthy Theobald must have had! The eight amphimacers or cretics,

Over hill, övér dale,

Thoro' bush, thōro' briar,

Ověr park, ōvěr pāle,

Thōro' flood, thōrŏ' fire—

have a delightful effect on the ear in their sweet transition to the trochaic,—

I do wander ev'ry whērě

Swiftěr than the moones sphere, &c.—

The last words as sustaining the rhyme, must be considered, as in fact they are, trochees in time.

It may be worth while to give some correct examples in English of the principal metrical feet:

Pyrrhic or Dibrach, uu = body, spirit.

Tribrach, uu u = nobody, hastily pronounced.

The paucity of spondees in single words in English and, indeed, in the modern languages in general, makes, perhaps, the greatest distinction, metrically considered, between them and the Greek and Latin. Dactyl, — v v — mērrily.

=

Anapæst, u uă propōs, or the first three syllables of cérémōny,*

Written probably by mistake for "ceremonious."

These simple feet may suffice for understanding the metres of Shakspeare, for the greater part at least ;-but Milton cannot be made harmoniously intelligible without the composite feet, the Ionics, Pæons, and Epitrites.

Ib. sc. 2. Titania's speech :-(Theobald adopting Warburton's reading.)

Which she, with pretty and with swimming gate
Follying (her womb then rich with my young squire)
Would imitate, &c.

Oh! oh! Heaven have mercy on poor Shakspeare, and also on Mr. Warburton's mind's eye!

Act. v. sc. 1. Theseus' speech:-(Theobald.)

And what poor [willing] duty cannot do,

Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.

To my ears it would read far more Shakspearian thus:

And what poor duty cannot do, yet would, Noble respect, &c.

Ib. sc. 2.

Puck. Now the hungry lion roars,

And the wolf behowls the moon ;

Whilst the heavy ploughman snores
All with weary task foredone, &c.

Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace,

and spontaneity! So far it is Greek ;-but then add, O ! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression and condensation of, English fancy! In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond.

THE

COMEDY OF ERRORS.

HE myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakspeare, has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from comedy by the license allowed, and even required, in the fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is possible. A comedy would scarcely allow even the two Antipholuses; because, although there have been instances of almost indistinguishable likeness in two persons, yet these are mere individual accidents, casus ludentis naturæ, and the verum will not excuse the inverisimile. But farce dares add the two Dromios, and is justified in so doing by the laws of its end and constitution. In a word, farces commence in a postulate, which must be granted.