All's Well, iii. 4.
Splitted the heart.—This is the sword.
Ant. and Cleop. v. 1.
In the case of final riming couplets the first line may be short, but never the second.
19.
Nothing is more common in the works of our old dramatists than malarrangement of the text, some lines being too long, some too short; but among them they are sure to contain the requisite number of feet. Editors have often taken the most justifiable liberty of rearranging the text; but on other occasions they have exclaimed against those who have followed their example. In this case, however, the only limit to the discretion of an editor is that of not putting—except in the cases above mentioned—more or less than five or six feet in a line. I must not omit to observe that editors have done injury to many passages, by the decasyllabic superstition which I have already noticed.
I will give one instance of a place where a most slight rearrangement gives perfect harmony to what has been a stumblingblock to editors:—
And sandy-bottom'd Severn have I sent him
Bootless home, and weather-beaten back.
1 Hen. IV. iii. 1.