our own valley; for we dare not approach with any capacity in ourselves to apply your smile, since we have only preserved, as trustees to the ashes of the authors, what we exhibit to your honour, it being no more our own than those imperial crowns and garlands were the soldiers' who were honourably designed for their conveyance before the triumpher to the capitol.

But directed by the example of some, who once steered in our quality, and so fortunately aspired to choose your honour, joined with your (now glorified) brother, patrons to the flowing compositions of the then expired sweet swan of Avon, Shakspeare; and since, more particularly bound to your lordship's most constant and diffusive goodness, from which we did for many calm years derive a subsistence to ourselves, and protection to the scene (now withered and condemned, as we fear, to a long winter and sterility) we have presumed to offer to yourself what before was never printed of these authors.

Had they been less than all the treasure we had contracted in the whole age of poesy (some few poems of their own excepted, which, already published, command their entertainment with all lovers of art and language) or were they not the most justly admired and beloved pieces of wit and the world, we should have taught ourselves a less ambition.

Be pleased to accept this humble tender of our duties; and till we fail in our obedience to all your

The example of some, &c.] i. e. Heminge and Condell, who, in 1623, published the first edition of Shakspeare's Works. They dedicated them to this same nobleman, then Earl of Montgomery, and his elder brother, William Earl of Pembroke.-Ed. 1778.

commands, vouchsafe we may be known by the cognizance and character of,

TO

THE READER.

(FOLIO, 1647.)

POETRY is the child of nature, which, regulated and made beautiful by art, presenteth the most harmonious of all other compositions; among which (if we rightly consider) the dramatical is the most absolute, in regard of those transcendent abilities which should wait upon the composer; who must have more than the instruction of libraries (which of itself is but a cold contemplative knowledge,) there being required in him a soul miraculously knowing and conversing with all mankind, enabling him to express not only the phlegm and folly of thick-skinned men, but the strength and maturity of the wise, the air and insinuations of the court, the discipline and resolution of the soldier, the virtues and passions of every noble condition, nay, the counsels and characters of the greatest princes.

This, you will say, is a vast comprehension, and hath not happened in many ages. Be it then remembered, to the glory of our own, that all these are demonstrative and met in Beaumont and Fletcher, whom but to mention is to throw a cloud upon all former names, and benight posterity; this

book being, without flattery, the greatest monument of the scene that time and humanity have produced, and must live, not only the crown and sole reputation of our own, but the stain of all other nations and languages: for, it may be boldly averred, not one indiscretion hath branded this paper in all the lines, this being the authentic wit that made Blackfriars an academy, where the three hours spectacle, while Beaumont and Fletcher were presented, was usually of more advantage to the hopeful young heir, than a costly, dangerous, foreign travel, with the assistance of a governing monsieur or signor to boot; and it cannot be denied but that the young spirits of the time, whose birth and quality made them impatient of the sourer ways of education, have, from the attentive hearing these pieces, got ground in point of wit and carriage of the most severely-employed students, while these recreations were digested into rules, and the very pleasure did edify. How many passable discoursing dining wits stand yet in good credit, upon the bare stock of two or three of these single scenes!

And now, reader, in this tragical age, where the theatre hath been so much out-acted, congratulate thy own happiness, that, in this silence of the stage, thou hast a liberty to read these inimitable plays, to dwell and converse in these immortal groves which were only shewed our fathers in a conjuring-glass, as suddenly removed as represented; the landscape is now brought home by this optic, and the press, though too pregnant before, shall be now looked upon as greatest benefactor to Englishmen, that must acknowledge all the felicity of wit and words to this derivation.

You may here find passions raised to that excellent pitch, and by such insinuating degrees, that

shall not choose but consent, and go along you with them, finding yourself at last grown insensibly the very same person you read; and then stand admiring the subtile tracks of your engagement. Fall on a scene of love, and you will never believe the writers could have the least room left in their souls for another passion; peruse a scene of manly rage, and you would swear they cannot be expressed by the same hands; but both are so excellently wrought, you must confess none but the same hands could work them.

Would thy melancholy have a cure? thou shalt laugh at Democritus himself; and, but reading one piece of this comic variety, find thy exalted fancy in Elysium; and, when thou art sick of this cure, (for the excess of delight may too much dilate thy soul) thou shalt meet almost in every leaf a soft purling passion or spring of sorrow, so powerfully wrought high by the tears of innocence, and wronged lovers, it shall persuade thy eyes to weep into the stream, and yet smile when they contri bute to their own ruins.

Infinitely more might be said of these rare copies; but let the ingenuous reader peruse them, and he will find them so able to speak their own worth, that they need not come into the world with a trumpet, since any one of these incomparable pieces, well understood, will prove a preface to the rest; and if the reader can taste the best wit ever trod our English stage, he will be forced himself to become a breathing panegyric to them all.

Not to detain or prepare thee longer, be as capricious and sick-brained as ignorance and malice

Ingenuous reader.] In Coles's Dict. 1677, it is remarked, “Ingenuous and ingenious are too often confounded."-Ed, 1778.