Chapter XXXI: Act I: Speech of Seleucus

Altho' he be my enemy, should any
Of the gay flies that buz about the court,
_Sit_ to catch trouts i' the summer, tell me so,
I durst, &c.

Colman's note.

Pshaw! 'Sit' is either a misprint for 'set,' or the old and still provincial word for 'set,' as the participle passive of 'seat' or 'set.' I have heard an old Somersetshire gardener say:--"Look, Sir! I set these plants here; those yonder I 'sit' yesterday."

Act ii. Speech of Arcadius:--

Nay, some will swear they love their mistress,
Would hazard lives and fortunes, &c.

Read thus:--

Nay, some will swear they love their mistress so,
They would hazard lives and fortunes to preserve
One of her hairs brighter than Berenice's,
Or young Apollo's; and yet, after this, &c.

'/They would HAzard/' [1]--furnishes an anapæst for an 'iambus'. 'And yet,' which must be read, /'ANyet'/, is an instance of the enclitic force in an accented monosyllable. /'And YET'/ is a complete 'iambus'; but 'anyet' is, like 'spirit', a dibrach u u, trocheized, however, by the 'arsis' or first accent damping, though not extinguishing, the second.

[Footnote 1: As noted earlier in this text, the words between / marks are pronounced with stress on the upper-case syllables, and none on the lower-case syllables. In the original text, stress is indicated by a horizontal line over the syllable, and lack of stress by a u-shape, as the u u later in this paragraph. text Ed.]

WIT AT SEVERAL WEAPONS.