“I mĭght rūn _mŏre_ fiērcelȳ, not more hastily.”
_Ib._ Speech of Calianax:—
“Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite
through my office!”
The syllable _off_ reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he carries
on the image.
_Ib._ Speech of Melantius:—
... “Would that blood,
That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight,” &c.
All B. and F.’s generals are pugilists or cudgel-fighters, that boast of
their bottom and of the _claret_ they have shed.
_Ib._ The Masque;—Cinthia’s speech:—
“But I will give a greater state and glory,
And raise to time a _noble_ memory
Of what these lovers are.”
I suspect that “nobler,” pronounced as “nobiler” - u -, was the poet’s
word, and that the accent is to be placed on the penultimate of “memory.”
As to the passage—
“Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power,” &c.—
removed from the text of Cinthia’s speech, by these foolish editors as
unworthy of B. and F.—the first eight lines are not worse, and the last
couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained.