speare retired to his native town, to enjoy, during | speare was one of the most considerable proprietors

the too short evening of his days, the fortune which of the other. To the latter of the two, the theatrienabled him to leave his children in a station more cal establishment of the Globe and Blackfriars, worthy of their ancient lineage than of that calling, Beaumont and Fletcher appear to have been atfrom which believers in his sonnets must grieve to tached from an early period of their career, though think that he sometimes bitterly revolted. To his not from the very first; and this circumstance would profession and to his worldly prudence he owed his serve to bring them into communion with Ben Jonwealth; if he had been merely a great genius, and son. Jonson set too high a value on his praise to not also a man of business, (gifts since again united be over lavish of it. While one of his poems bears in the person of Sir Walter Scott,) he might have frank and cordial testimony to his affection for Beaupined like Jonson, or starved like Massinger. We mont, and his admiration of the young poet's genius, can scarcely over-estimate the facilities, which his he hints only in his confidential talk with Drumeasy circumstances, in the latter half of his life, mond, that the young man set rather too high an must have afforded him for the composition and estimate on his powers. In the same conversations elaboration of his greatest works. But, in order | he declared his love for Fletcher without any qualduly to estimate what we owe him, we must also ification-a rare thing with one whose temper, natrecollect that his genius was now and afterwards urally moody, was irritated by misfortune and supthe animating principle of the drama, and of the posed neglect. Fletcher's genius for the more stage; and that had he not written "Hamlet," and poetical kinds of dramatic writing, extorted from "Lear," and his historical plays, the English thea- the gruff father of the rising generation (as he loved tre might have continued to be a mere school of to be regarded) the highest praise, when he adpopular buffoonery, imitation, and bombast. mitted, that, next himself, only Fletcher and Chapman could make a masque." Upon Fletcher's pastoral, the most ideal of all his compositions, being condemned by the crowd, he signified his hearty approbation of it, and prophesied for it the immortality which it enjoys.

Reckoned from 1607, the union of our two poets endured for nine or ten years.

The prosaic yet credulous Aubrey, the same

About the year 1607, the old English drama may be said to have been in the last month of its brief but resplendent summer. Those gorgeous plants which sprung up in natural luxuriance, under the influence of the warm sun and the free air, were still, day by day, bursting into flower. Their time, however, was all but over; the field was beginning to be covered, more and more thickly, by the autumnal growth which is the fruit of artificial culti-"picker-up of unconsidered trifles," who made a vation; and noxious weeds, though as yet hardly visible, were already rooted in the soil. The first ten years of the seventeenth century compose the great concluding period of Shakspeare's literary life; the period which comprehends the most thoughtful and solemn of his works. Ben Jonson, too, was then in the zenith of his activity and fame; but about to fall into his sad decline. "The Silent Woman," and "The Alchemist," were his only great works subsequent to the appearance of Beauinont and Fletcher. Side by side with Shakspeare and Jonson, stood a couple of veterans, the epic and eloquent Chapman, and Heywood, the " prose Shakspeare," still cheerful and indefatigable; while Webster, Middleton, Dekker, Marston, and others, had already occupied the ground which they must thenceforth share with formidable competitors-with our two poets, with Massinger, and with Ford. Drayton and Daniel, too, whose fame now rests on poetry of other kinds, were enrolled among the dramatists of their time.

butcher's boy of Shakspeare, describes the familiarity of their intercourse as the closest possible. He speaks of them as having lived in the same house, and as having had a community of goods so wide, as to embrace even the most objectionable feature of Plato's commonwealth. If at any time the two did "live together on the bank-side, not far from the play-house," they must have ceased to do so in 1613; for in that year Beaumont married, his wife being a lady of an old family, the daughter and coheir of Henry Isley of Sundridge in Kent. It does not appear that Fletcher was ever married. There is proof, in Beaumont's poetical" Letter to Ben Jonson," of at least one visit which they afterwards paid together to the country, and in the course of which two of their comedies were partly written. One would gladly believe Mr. Dyce to be right in conjecturing that Gracedieu may have been the place of their retirement. It would be agreeable to imagine that the fancy of the town-bred Fletcher was inspired, by wandering among the solitudes of Charnwood, and beneath the monastic cloisters of his friend's paternal home, with the images of seclusion which adorn his exquisite ode to Melancholy, printed for the first time in the very play to which Beaumont's letter is prefixed.

66

Moonlight walks, where all the fowls
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls;
Fountain-heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves!"

Working with a fervor, and warmed by a literary anbition, seldom if ever paralleled, this swarm of poets constituted likewise a society of friends, whose intercourse, broken at times by individual quarrels, was usually free, cordial, and happy. Then occurred those wit combats," the fame of which descended traditionally to the age of Fuller; then were held, day after day, those merry meetings at the Mermaid, which Beaumont, writing from the country, regretted, amidst the beauty of the summer -that intercommuning of buoyant natures, which, delightful at the time, returned afterwards on wings of fire and raised the clear spirit to the energy that created immortal works. There were different dra-Tragedy" are known to have been among the earmatic schools; a point which it is not possible at liest of their joint works. A little later Fletcher present to elucidate: but another fact, more easily wrote "The Faithful Shepherdess;" after which explained, was this; that the chief dramatists were they brought out, in partnership, the "King and usually connected with one or another of the lead- No King," and "The Knight of the Burning ing theatres, and not with all. There were two Pestle." Supposing the works to be ranked mereprincipal theatres; at the head of one of which stood ly according to their merit as stage-pieces, these Henslowe, and afterwards Alleyn; while Shak- may be held to be equalled, or surpassed, by some

They had not labored together above three or four years, before the fame of the two friends was firmly established. "Philaster" and "The Maid's

In

Amintor, a young nobleman of Rhodes, is tempt

of the other plays; but the true place of the authors | command a veil to be cast over some of the particin our file of poets would remain unaltered, if, re- ulars, to the filling up of which the outline owes so taining the five dramas just enumerated, we were much of its harrowing power. to lose everything else which they ever wrote. none of the series is the poetic vision so fine; ined by the king to abandon Aspatia, to whom he had none, perhaps, is the dramatic vitality so intense. The two earliest of the group are the most characteristic of them all, both for good and evil.

been betrothed, and to marry Evadne, a beautiful lady of the court. In the very bride-chamber, the bride acquaints her husband with the nature of the interest which the king has taken in her marriage. She is the royal mistress. Her brother, extorting the secret from Amintor, brings his sister to confession and to a fierce kind of penitence. Evadne murders her seducer; the broken-hearted Aspatia, assuming a male disguise, provokes her faithless lover to slay her; Evadne and Amintor both perish by suicide.

Philaster, or Love lies a-bleeding," is more valuable as a poem than as a drama; and more valuable, too, for the beauty of particular passages than for its effect as a whole. It is a romantic love-play, founded on a loose and feeble plot. A young and high-minded prince, dispossessed of his royal inheritance, (we hardly know how,) stalks, like a sorrowful ghost, through the halls that should have been his own. Between him and the usur- This is a story of guilt, and dishonor, and treachper's daughter there has sprung up a mutual and ery; but it is not one in which crime is lightly reacknowledged affection; but two obstacles are in garded or allowed to triumph. The dishonor is pasthe way. The princess is betrothed by her father sionately felt; the treacherous guilt is fearfully to a foreign suitor; and her lover becomes suspi- avenged. In the treatment of the theme (as, alas! cious of her fidelity. Both impediments are re- in every one of the works before us) there are moved. The lady's honor is vindicated; the un-introduced passages of reprehensible levity and worthiness of the bridegroom, with whom she had been threatened, is exposed; and her father, in a sudden access of kindness and justice, bestows on the prince his mistress and the kingdom. Upon this tottering and ill-jointed trellis-work are hung garlands of the most delicate fancy, and of the sweetest and most tender feeling. The melancholy musings of Prince Philaster, and his fitful gusts of jealousy and despair; the self-conscious purity of Arethusa, and her unshaken devotion to one whose weakness had exposed her to insult and danger; the silent, innocent, and unselfish love of the disguised Euphrasia; are set forth in scenes which, though exhibiting little skill or strength in the portraiture of character, abound in touches of rich imagery and true emotion. Few passages in English poetry are more finely conceived or expressed than some of those that occur among the adventures in the forest. Still sweeter is the description, by Philaster, of his finding Euphrasia by the fountain; and the whole idea of the character thus introduced, raises the work into a region of imagination which it would not otherwise have reached. Yet, pure and lofty as are most of the thoughts and feelings of this piece, the imaginative heaven of our poets was not free from clouds, even in this the morning of their day. The taint of moral evil has already come too near; the foul shape of Megra flits everywhere before our eyes; and all that surrounds her is infected by her presence.

coarseness; but the ruling tone of feeling is one which is morally not inconsonant with the events represented. Regarded as a whole, "The Maid's Tragedy" is, in our judgment, its author's masterpiece. Over all its horrors there is thrown a veil of poetic imagery, which invests most closely the figure of the forlorn Aspatia, but streams out almost on every character and every scene. The feeling, too, is deep and varied; plaintive sorrow finds a voice most readily, while strong expression is also given to anger, and hatred, and despair. These are features of detail; but there is a dramatic and poetical excellence, of a rarer and loftier kind, in the harmony with which (a few jarring notes excepted) the unity of tragic emotion is maintained throughout. It does not present to us merely two or three situations powerfully designed and colored; it leads us on from one scene of passion to another, each rising beyond the scenes which had preceded it, and one and all converging towards the dreadful catastrophe in which everything is swallowed up, and " darkness is the burier of the dead."

Indeed,

"A King and No King" was, in the time of its authors, and long afterwards, one of the most popular of acted plays. A revival of it was projected by Garrick, who perceived the opportunities for display afforded to him by the character of Arbaces. The design, however, was given up, and it failed when carried into execution by Harris. the moral tone of the work could not have been endured by any audience living after the seventeenth century. The story relates the progress of a passion, which those who entertained it believed to be incestuous, and which is eventually rewarded by the discovery that they are not relations. The literary merits of the play have been estimated very diversely. Sonie critics, and no mean ones, have ranked it much above "The Maid's Tragedy." Mr. Dyce's judgment on it is more moderate and just.

In the second of their great works, the young dramatists plunged headlong into that realm of sin, around whose frontier they had skimmed so often in "Philaster.” The incidents of "The Maid's Tragedy" are profoundly revolting; they are possible only in a state of society utterly abandoned; and, unless on Madame de Stael's theory of the connection between an immoral stage and a moral people, they must have been intolerable in representation to any audience but one whose standard of purity was miserably low. Yet it has been attempted, in our day, to revive this play. It was The three plays we have just spoken of present brought on the stage of the Haymarket ten years the most noted instances, though by no means the ago, with alterations by Macready and Sheridan only ones, in which Beaumont and Fletcher have Knowles. Nor were these practised judges of stage been taxed with directly borrowing from Shakrequirements wrong in their estimate of its dramatic speare. Bessus is said to have been copied from merits. The bloody tale which it tells contains genu- Falstaff; the character and position of Philaster ine tragic elements; although, even in a description from_Hamlet; the melancholy songs of Aspatia, like the present, and far more in an actual repre- and Evadne's confession to her brother, from Ophesentation, the decencies of the nineteenth century lia; while the scene between Melantius and Amin

tor is supposed to be an imitation of the quarrel be- | play, nay, not a whole scene, nor perhaps so much tween Brutus and Cassius. But instances of this kind, however evidently suggested by the great original, faintly intimate the degree to which the works of Shakspeare dwelt upon the minds of his contemporaries. We learn as little from their jesting allusions, the turns of expression, and the bits of parody upon Shakspeare which are often introduced good-humoredly by our two poets, and sometimes by Jonson with spleen and sourness. His influence on the dramas of his time, and on all its walks of poetry, was much wider than this.

Imaginative inventors, of all ranks below the very highest, are like planetary satellites, which revolve indeed each on its own axis, but are all carried round in the orbit of their common centre; nay, to push the comparison a step further, Jupiter himself, as well as his moons, gravitates in dependence on the sun. Through the concurrence of the two impulses, the special and the common, it is natural and inevitable, that the appearance of every great work or group of works, in literature or art, should not only produce particular and designed imitation, but should throw over all productions of the same class a hue which otherwise they would not have possessed. Thus did thoughts, and feelings, and images innumerable, sown by Shakspeare beside the highway on which he travelled, spring up there into stately plants, and shed their seeds over every field that lay in the neighborhood. Even the spirit of the great poet did in some degree rest upon his contemporaries, when his wide mantle fell and covered them all-his divinest moods of emotion, his most dazzling trances of imagination, his profoundest intuitions of character, his marvellous reaches of thought, sounding all the depths of human nature;-these were indeed inspirations not vouch safed to any but himself, and apprehended but imperfectly even by the most exquisitely endowed of those to whom the poetic seer communicated his visions. But there was much that could be both comprehended and transfused; much that did pass from the most comprehensive of all created minds to the finest of the intelligences which surrounded and followed him. The magnetic rapport between his genius and that of his fellow-drainatists, could not, it is true, qualify any of them, even in their most intense phases of poetical rapture, to imagine characters, or mental histories, like those of Hamlet, of Othello and lago, of Lear, or of Macbeth: but the relation was close enough to enable several of them to conceive forms and incidents, feelings and thoughts, not so very dissimilar to those of "Romeo and Juliet," of As You Like It," of "Much Ado about Nothing." That Samuel Johnson should prefer Shakspeare's comedies to his tragedies does not surprise us. But that Milton should have gone to see a comedy of Shakspeare's when he was merry, and have been obliged to fall back upon Greek plays about " Pelops' line" when he was sad-not finding in Shakspeare enough of pity and of terror-and that Thomas Warton should have thought he showed good taste in doing so, is more than we can understand.

as two consecutive speeches, in the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, without being forcibly reminded, usually by a discord or a faintness of sound, that we are not listening to the enchanting music of the mighty master. But there are to be found, scattered thickly throughout their dramas, short passages, chiefly of external description, or of tender feeling, which strike in us on the same chords of thought and sentiment that are still vibrating under the hand of the greater poet. This similarity of character would be evident at once to any reader, who, being familiar with Shakspeare, should become acquainted with Beaumont and Fletcher for the first time through a selection of their most imaginative, most pathetic, or most sprightly passages. The same experiment performed on any other dramatists of the time, would leave a very different impression.

The secret may be told in one word. Whatever may be their just place as dramatists, Beaumont and Fletcher were better poets than any of their dramatic contemporaries, except Shakspeare himself. They mounted higher on the wings of ideal contemplation. None can be compared to them for exuberance and grace of fancy, none for their delicacy and tenderness of feeling in passages of emotion. Their superiority in the region of pure poetry is shown significantly by the fact, that many of the lyrics introduced into their dramas are of incomparable beauty; unapproached, not only by such indifferent commonplaces as the songs of Massinger's plays, but even by the gems which sparkle in the masques of Ben Johnson. The poetic spirit breathes not less warmly over innumerable passages of the dialogues, lulling us so delightfully in dreams of fantasy, that we forget for the time their faults. We forget that, as works of art, their dramas are immeasurably inferior to those of Jonson, the most skilful artist of our old dramatic school; that they are far behind him in the admirable structure of his plots, as in his boldly conceived and vigorously executed portraiture of character. We forget that they want alike the pomp and the thoughtfulness of Massinger; that they strive in vain after the tragic intensity of Webster; that they compensate but ill, by strained and extravagant situations, for the natural delineation of life and manners which was often attained by Heywood. We forget that there is hardly one of their works which must not, if regarded as a whole, be pronounced positively bad. We forget that, though they often thought finely, they were incapable of thinking either comprehensively or profoundly; that, though they felt deeply, their genuine passion was evanescent, and was succeeded by counterfeited hysterics; that, though they imagined poetically, and often dramatically, they lacked the power to work out their images into living groups, or into real and consistent scenes. All this, and much else, we forget or disregard, because of the fact, that these two fine spirits soared higher than any of the others into the poetical atmosphere of the visionary world; that these two eloquent tongues have told us, beyond what Now, of all his contemporaries, in respect both any of the others could have found utterance for, of matter and of expression, Beaumont and Fletcher what shapes had visited them in their dreams. All approached the nearest to him. They exhibited char- being disregarded, or assumed, which can justly be acteristics more akin to Shakspeare than can be dis-asserted in depreciation of the dramatic rank of our covered in any other. The language, doubtless, is poets, there remains the undoubted truth, that their far inferior, especially in vigor, precision, and com- works contain many passages poetically superior, prehension; so, too, the thought, the feeling, and with the one great exception, to all that is to be the imagery; still, there is in all a strong resem- found elsewhere among the treasury of our old blance. We could never, it is true, peruse a whole | English drama; and that we could cull from them,

66

DYCE'S BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

through a long course of extracts, poetry as beau-| among the critics, we would admit that there is no evidence entitling us peremptorily to assert that ful and touching as any in our language. Fletcher was concerned in the work to the exclusion "The Two of Beaumont. Be the authorship whose it may, It contains pasNoble Kinsmen" is undoubtedly one of the finest dramas in the volumes before us. sages which, in dramatic vigor and passion, yield hardly to anything-perhaps to nothing-in the whole collection; while for gorgeousness of imagery, for delicacy of poetic feeling, and for grace, animation, and strength of language, we doubt whether there exists, under the names of our authors, any drama that comes near to it. Never has any theme enjoyed the honors which have befallen the semi-classical legend of Palamon and Arcite. Chosen as the foundation of chivalrous narrative by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Dryden, it has furnished one of the fairest of the flowers that compose the dramatic crown of Fletcher, while from that flower, perhaps, leaves might be plucked to decorate another brow which needs them not.

In measuring the height of Beaumont and Fletcher, we cannot take a better scale than to put them alongside Shakspeare, and compare them with him. In this manner, an imaginary supposition may assist us in determining the nature of their excellence, and almost enable us to fix its degree. Suppose there were to be discovered, in the library of the Earl of Ellesmere, or in that of the Duke of Devonshire, two dramas not known before, and of doubtful authorship, the one being "Hamlet," and We should be at the other "the Winter's Tale." no loss, we think, to assign the former to Shakspeare: the judgment would be warranted alike by the consideration of the whole, and by a scrutiny of particular parts. But with regard to the other play, hesitation would not be at all unreasonable. Beaumont and Fletcher (as an eminent living critic has remarked to us) might be believed to have written all its serious parts, more especially the scenes of the jealousy of Leontes, and those beautiIf the admirers of Fletcher could vindicate for ful ones which describe the rustic festival. Strange to say, a case of this kind has actually arisen; and him the fifth act of this play, they would entitle him the uncertainty which still hangs over it agrees to a still higher claim upon our gratitude, as the entirely with the hesitation which we have ventured author of a series of scenes, as picturesquely conto imagine as arising in the case we have supposed. ceived, and as poetically set forth, as any that our Dramatically considered, In 1634, eighteen years after Beaumont's death, literature can boast. and nine after Fletcher's, there was printed, for the these scenes are very faulty: perhaps there are but first time, the play called "The Two Noble Kins-two of them that have high dramatic merits-the men." The bookseller in his title-page declared it interrupted execution of Palamon, and the preceding to have been "written by the memorable worthies scene in which Emilia, left in the forest, hears the of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William tumult of the battle, and receives successive reports On the faith of this of its changes and issue. But as a gallery of poetShakspeare, gentlemen." assertion, and on the evidence afforded by the char-ical pictures, as a cluster of images suggestive alike acter of the work, it has been assumed universally to the imagination and the feelings, as a cabinet of that Fletcher had a share in the authorship. Shak-jewels whose lustre dazzles the eye and blinds it to speare's part in it has been denied; though there the unskilful setting-in this light there are few is, perhaps, a preponderance of authority for the affirmative. Those who maintain the joint authorship commonly suppose the two poets to have written together; but Mr. Dyce questions this, and gives us an ingenious theory of his own, which assumes Fletcher to have taken up and altered the work long after Shakspeare's labor on it had been closed.

pieces comparable to the magnificent scene before the temples, where the lady and her lovers pray to the gods and the pathetically solemn close of the drama, admirable in itself, loses only when we compare it with the death of Arcite in Chaucer's masterpiece," the Iliad of the middle ages.'

In proceeding to trace the further history of our poets, we are naturally led to touch upon another The question of Shakspeare's share in this play question which has puzzled all their editors and is really insoluble. On the one hand, there are critics. What was the share of each of the two, reasons making it very difficult to believe that he either in the construction of the works generally, or can have had any concern in it; particularly the in the composition of particular plays? The field heavy and undramatic construction of the piece, and of inquiry is considerably narrowed by our knowlthe want of individuality in the characters. Besides, edge of some dates; and also, in one or two inwe encounter in it direct and palpable imitations of stances, by other trustworthy evidence. According Shakspeare himself; among which the most prom- to a careful estimate, there are, of the fifty-three inent is the wretchedly drawn character of the plays now included in the collection, no fewer than jailer's daughter. On the other hand, there are, in seventeen which were not represented, and almost many passages, resemblances of expression (in the certainly cannot have been written, till after Beauvery particulars in which our two poets are most mont's death; while it is known that he had no part unlike Shakspeare) so close, that we must either in the composition of "The Faithful Shepherdess." admit Shakspeare's authorship of these parts, or Eighteen plays being thus excluded from Beausuppose Fletcher or some one else to have imitated mont's share, there remain thirty-five as to no one him designedly, and with very marvellous success. of which can it be alleged with positive certainty Among these passages, too, there are not a few that it was written by the one, by the other, or by which display a brilliancy of imagination, and a both. The assertions made in the prologues, epigrasp of thought, much beyond Fletcher's ordinary logues, and commendatory verses, are unauthoritapitch. Readers who lean to Mr. Dyce's theory, tive, and in many cases contradict each other. The will desire to learn his grounds for believing that internal evidence, again, is by no means sufficient Fletcher's labor on the play was performed in the for a determination of the question. We must dislatter part of his life. It appears to us that the card at once, as unproved and highly improbable, piece bears a close likeness to those more elevated an opinion of some of the older writers, which they works which are known to have been among the presented in two forms: some of them saying genearliest of our series: and, if it were not an un-erally, that Fletcher was the inventor, and Beaubrotherly act to throw a new bone of contention mont the critic and corrector; and others holding

Yet Beaumont's Masque will no way bear comparison with Fletcher's Pastoral; and certainly his part in the volume of miscellaneous poems, first published with his name in 1640, and his juvenile attempts formerly described, give no support to those who maintain that Beaumont was the greater genius of the two. But we need not enter too curiously into a question, which their love for each other, and for their common labors, has not chosen, it would seem, to leave us the materials for determining. They were yet young when death dissolved their partnership.

Beaumont to have planned the joint works, while been for him had all his acts of courtiership been Fletcher executed the designs thus furnished. We as innocent as the "countenance and loving affecmight describe as more plausible, but can scarcely tion" which he here showed to the work of a man regard as probable, and certainly not as proved, of kindred though weaker genius. another theory, which is supported by old authority, and has been favorably received in our own day. According to this hypothesis, Beaumont's genius was the more serious and elevated of the two; and it is to him that the prevalence of the tragic or higher poetic element is owing. Thus Mr. Darley speaks of "Beaumont's deeper, graver enthusiasm," and detects "a Beaumontesque air" in certain of the plays. This notion, it is to be feared, rests on as slippery ground as the others. It is, doubtless, a fact not to be forgotten, that the tone of the dramas does in certain respects sink, as we trace them in their historical order. They sink, both morally and as works of art. They lose not a little of their descriptive and lyrical luxuriance, though they acquire greater pointedness of stage effect: they recede from lofty and heroic themes to scenes of actual life, or, at the highest, to romantic and novel-like adventures. But circumstances existed fully adequate to account for this gradual be the finest the poets ever wrote. Commendation change, independently of all assumptions of differences in the genius or disposition of the two writers. Some such circumstances will suggest themselves incidentally, as we rapidly follow the poets through the remainder of their literary progress.

The works, as they lie before us, present a strange and mortifying inequality. Our poets did not always choose their themes wisely; sometimes they treated very indifferently themes which they had chosen well. Some of their works, such as "Cupid's Revenge," are bad for the former reason; others, like "The Coxcomb," exhibit both faults together. The immortality which, beyond all controversy, Beaumont and Fletcher have achieved, belongs to the creators of Euphrasia, Aspatia, and Arbaces. Without these, they would have lived only in beautiful fragments, and as the playwrights of successful acting plays.

Yet there are several admirable pieces among the other works composed while the alliance endured. First probably in order, and far highest in value, stands Fletcher's celebrated pastoral, "The Faithful Shepherdess." Yet this piece failed signally on the stage, and could not under any circumstances have succeeded. It is to be judged and felt in the closet only, and by readers such as those to whom the author, on printing it, scornfully appealed, from "the common prate of common people." If we compare it with Jonson's fine fragment, "The Sad Shepherd," we find it, as usual, superior in poetical description, inferior in dramatic strength. Its lyrical beauty had evidently made a deep impression on the youthful mind of Milton; and it is much higher above Guarini's "Pastor Fido," its immediate original, than it is below Tasso's "Aminta," which likewise came before it. We will not compare any of these poems with the "Comus"-the only perfect specimen of this difficult and anomalous kind of dramatic composition.

The "Masque of the Inns of Court," written by Beaumont three years afterwards, was intended to celebrate the inauspicious marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to the Count Palatine. This short sketch is picturesquely conceived; it is full of lively images and felicitous expressions. Nor, can we look with indifference on a piece, in the representation of which it is recorded that Francis Bacon, then attorney-general, took an active interest. Alas for Bacon! Well would it have

To the period before Beaumont's death may be referred certainly one, and perhaps two tragedies, not yet named. The first is "Thierry and Theodoret," a piece stuffed full of horrors, and abounding in strained situations; but instinct with passion and energy, and presenting one scene, the unveiling of Ordella, which Charles Lamb considered to

even higher has been given to the death-scene of the princely boy Hengo. The sweet pathos of this scene, the heroism of Caratach, and the occasional bursts of poetry and lofty thought, which animate the tragedy of "Bonduca," redeem it from the neglect to which its ill-contrived plot, and its gross want of harmony and feeling, must otherwise have condemned it.

"The Knight of the Burning Pestle," another of the early works, is a kind of stepping-stone from the tragic to the comic, a transition-stratum between the primitive simplicity of "The Maid's Tragedy," and the rich but foul commixture of the later comedies. It is a twofold satire. Directly it ridicules the chivalrous romances, striking a note which had scarcely as yet been heard by the people of England; since Don Quixote, although evidently known to the authors of this play, did not appear in the earliest English translation till the year after. Indirectly, but quite unequivocally, it ridicules also the chivalrous dramas of Heywood, especially his "Four Prentices of London," and exhibits in humorous caricature the London citizens who delighted in those representations. The ordinary penalty was paid for an attack on popular delusions. The play was damned. It exhibits, however, an infinity of broad humor, both in character and in incident: its plot is well laid, and is carried out with great skill and consistency; there are some fine descriptions in it; and occasionally, though less clearly than in the romance of Cervantes, it shows an involuntary and interesting sympathy with the attractive extravagances which it was designed to parody.

These works were accompanied and succeeded by several comedies, the best of which were, "The Scornful Lady," and "The Honest Man's Fortune." The tone of the comedies indicated the progress towards that style of thought and composition, by which, when he was left alone, Fletcher was to recommend himself to the equivocal taste of his own age, and that of the Restoration.