Then off his winding-sheet he throwed,
And by his trousers Tom I knowed;
He wasn't dead; but come to mess,
So here's an end,—as you may guess."
The implicatio, the agnitio, and the peripetia are so well worked out, that Aristotle would, I think, be compelled to admit it as an almost perfect specimen of that most ancient kind of drama which was recited by one actor. I refer especially to C. XXII. of the Poetics, which says, that that agnitio is most beautiful which is joined with the peripetia, of which here we have so striking an example. These reasons embolden me to ask if it be worth preserving in "N. & Q," and who was the author?
W. Fraser.
Tor-Mohun.