An odd sort of propheticality in this Numps and old Noll!

Ib. sc. 6. Knockhum's speech :

He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth.

A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth's Election Dinner,-who shows how easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships what he eats.

Act v. sc. 5.

Pup. Di. It is not prophane.

Lan. It is not prophane, he says.
Boy. It is prophane.

Pup. It is not prophane.

Boy. It is prophane.

Pup. It is not prophane.

Lan. Well said, confute him with Not, still.

An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in Aristophanes :

Χορός.

ἀλλὰ μὴν κεκραξόμεσθά γ',

ὁπόσον ἡ φάρυγξ ἂν ἡμῶν

χανδάνῃ, δι' ἡμέρας,

βρεκεκεκεξ, κοάξ, κοάξ.

Διόνυσος.

τούτῳ γὰρ οὐ νικήσετε.

Χορός.

οὐδὲ μὴν ἡμᾶς σὺ πάντως.

Διόνυσος.

οὐδὲ μὴν ὑμεῖς γε δή μ' οὐδέποτε.

ACT I. sc. 1.

THE DEVIL IS AN ASS.

Pug. Why any: Fraud,

Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity,

Or old Iniquity, I'll call him hither.

The words in italics should probably be given to the masterdevil, Satan. Whalley's note.

That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at once his simpleness and his impatience.

Ib. sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel's soliloquy :

Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards.* Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft's speech :

Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge.—

I doubt not that money' was the first word of the line, and has dropped out :—

Money! Sir, money's a, &c.

* In 1664, at Bury St. Edmonds on the trial of Rose Cullender and Anty Duny. Ed.

THE STAPLE OF NEWS.

ACT IV. sc. 3.

Pecunia's speech :

No, he would ha' done,

That lay not in his power: he had the use

Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's.

Read (1815),

-he had the use of

Your bodies, &c.

Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the of' from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding; for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is

O' your bodies, &c.

the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, up into the emphasized 'your.' In all points of view, therefore, Ben's judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, without that strong and quick emphasis on 'your' which the sense requires;-and had not the sense required an emphasis on 'your,' the tmesis of the sign of its cases of,' 'to,' &c. would destroy almost all boundary between the dra

matic verse and prose in comedy :—a lesson not to be rash in conjectural amendments. 1818.

Ib. sc. 4.

P. jun. I love all men of virtue, frommy Princess.--

Frommy,' fromme, pious, dutiful, &c.

Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy sen. and Porter:I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had Lear in his mind in this mock mad scene.

THE NEW INN.

ACT I. sc. 1. Host's speech :

A heavy purse, and then two turtles, makes.—

Makes,' frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for mates, or pairs. Ib. sc. 3. Host's speech:

-And for a leap

O' the vaulting horse, to play the vaulting house.

Instead of reading with Whalley 'ply' for 'play,' I would suggest horse' for 'house.' The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, horse and house,' is below Jonson. The jeu-de-mots just below

Read a lecture

Upon Aquinas at St. Thomas à Waterings—

had a learned smack in it to season its insi

Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,
That open-handed sit upon the clouds,

And press the liberality of heaven
Down to the laps of thankful men!

Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is εἶδος χαλεπὸν ἰδεῖν—a sight which it is difficult to make one's self see,-a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from the words.

Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c. of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,-most abominable stuff indeed!

Act iii. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:

So knowledge first begets benevolence,
Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.-

Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.