low as these. Sir John Berkenhead allows him a full moiety of the fame, but seems to think his genius more turned to grave sublimity than to sprightliness of imagination.

"Fletcher's keen treble, and deep Beaumont's base."

Thus has this line of Sir John's been hitherto read and understood, but its authenticity in this light will be disputed when we come to that poem, and the justness of the character at present. We have among the Commendatory Poems one of Mr Earle's, wrote immediately after Beaumont's death, and ten years before Fletcher's. He seems to have been an acquaintance as well as contemporary, and his testimony ought to have much more weight than all the traditional opinions of those who wrote thirty years after. He ascribes to Beaumont three firstrate plays, The Maid's Tragedy, Philaster, and The King and no King. The first of these has a grave sublimity, mingled with more horror and fury than are frequently seen among the gay-spirited scenes of Fletcher, and probably gave rise to the report of Beaumont's deep base. But there is scarce a morę lively-spirited character in all their plays than Philaster; and I believe Beaumont aimed at drawing a Hamlet racked with Othello's love and jealousy. The King and no King too is extremely spirited in all its characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent passions: hence he is as it were at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigour, chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mix

From the Introduction, (p. xcii.) it will be seen that it was Bishop Earle himself who raised the report which Seward is endeavouring to refute.

tures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn, except the Hotspur of Shakspeare, and the impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer, of Homer.-For a defence of this character against Mr Rymer's cavils, see the concluding note on King and no King.3 Bessus, and his two Swordsmen, in this play, are infinitely the liveliest comic characters of mere bragging cowards which we have in our language; and if they do not upon the whole equal the extensive and inimitable humours of Falstaff and his companions, they leave all other characters of the same species, even Shakspeare's own Parolles, far behind them.

Our excellent Congreve has consolidated the two Swordsmen to form his Captain Bluff. And be it his honour to have imitated so well, though he is far from reaching the originals. Beaumont lived in the age of duelling upon every slight punctilio. Congreve wrote his Bluff in the Flanders war: times when a braggart was the most ridiculous of all characters; and so far was Beaumont from the supposed grave solemn tragic poet only, that comic humour, particularly in drawing cowardice, seems his peculiar talent. For the spirit of Bessus paulum mutatus, changed only so as to give a proper novelty of character, appears again in The Nice Valour, or Passionate Madman. The traces of the same hand, so strongly marked in this play, strike a new light upon Beaumont's character. For, in a letter to Jonson, printed at the end of The Nice Valour, vol. X.* he speaks of himself not as a mere corrector of other works, but as a poet of acknowledged eminence; and of The

3 See the introduction to that play, vol. XII.

The poem alluded to will be found among Beaumont's Poems, vol. XIV. p. 432.

Nice Valour, and some other comedy, which the publisher of the second folio' took for the Woman, Hater, as his plays, which must be understood indeed as chiefly his, not excluding Fletcher's as

5 The publishers of the second folio added several genuine songs, prologues, epilogues, and some lines in particular plays not contained in any former edition, which, by the account given, they perhaps got from either an old actor, or a playhouse prompter; they say from a gentleman who had been intimate with both the authors; they probably were directed by lights received from him, to place the Woman-Hater directly before The Nice Valour, and to make this the other play which Beaumont claims. The Little French Lawyer, and The Knight of the Burning Pestle, are most certainly two plays which Beaumont had a large share in; for his hand is very visible in the extreme droll character of The French Lawyer, who runs duello-mad; the prologue talks of the authors in the plural number, and the strain of high burlesque appears very similar in the two characters of Lazarillo in The Woman-Hater, and Ralpho in The Burning Pestle. Beaumont's name, too, is put first in the title-page of the first quarto of this last play, published a few years after Fletcher's death.-Seward.

No name is mentioned in the first quartos of either of these plays, which both appeared before the death of either of our poets. The reasons which Seward assigns for attributing Nice Valour and The Woman-Hater to Beaumont, he subjoined to the verses of the latter on The Faithful Shepherdess. As that poem has now been restored to its original situation before that drama, Seward's note, with Mr Nichols's very satisfactory answer, are inserted in this place. It is on this line in the poem referred to:

When Nature and his full thoughts bid him write.

Seward proceeds thus:

Here, says the judicious writer of Beaumont's life in the General Dictionary, Beaumont evidently shews that he was fired with that violent passion for writing which the poets very justly call inspiration, and he makes this one proof of Beaumont's not being a mere corrector of Fletcher's works, but a joint author. As I think I have collected some stronger proofs of this, both external and internal, than have been yet produced, and as I have already built the former part of my preface upon these proofs, I shall place them before the reader in the next note, just as they occurred to me.

sistance. Now these two plays totally differ in their manner from all that Fletcher wrote alone: They consist not of characters from real life, as Fletcher and Shakspeare draw theirs, but of pas

Both to be read, and censured of by those

Whose very reading makes verse senseless prose.

Here we see a consciousness of the poet's own merit, and an indignation at the stupidity of the age he lived in, which seem to have been the characteristics of Beaumont and Jonson. This will appear stronger in the process of this note, in which I shall endeavour to prove what share Beaumont had in the composition of the following plays. I have already mentioned that Mr Earle's testimony, wrote immediately after Beaumont's death, is deci sive as to Beaumont's having the largest share in the composition of The Maid's Tragedy, Philaster, and the King and no King; and that Bessus, in particular, was drawn by him. (See Mr Earle's poem, below.) This was undoubtedly the reason why Beaumont's name is put first in the old quartos of these plays, published by the players after Beaumont's death, but before Fletcher's. For, would the players have complimented the dead at the expence of their living friend, patron, and supporter? After two such proofs as these, general expressions, or even tradi tional opinions of the panegyric writers thirty years after, are lighter than vanity itself. From these plays no distinction of hands between Beaumont and Fletcher was discerned, nor any suspicion of such a distinction occurred till I came to The Wo

man

-Hater, vol. X., which appeared visibly to have more of Jonson's manner than any play I had before met with, which I mentioned at page 64 on that play, when deceived, as Langbaine had been, by the first quarto, (published several years after the death of both the authors) I verily thought that it had been Fletcher's only. I had not then attended to the poem of Beaumont's to Jonson, published at the end of The Nice Valour, and WomanHater, by the second folio. If the reader will consult that poem, he will find that it was sent from the country to Jonson, with two of the precedent comedies, not then finished, but which Beaumont claims as his own:

Ben, when these scenes are perfect, we'll taste wine,
I'll drink thy muse's health, thou shalt quaff mine.

It is plain that they had been his amusement during a summer

sions and humours personized, as cowardice in Lapet, nice honour in Shamont, the madness of different passions in the Madman, the love of nice eating in Lazarillo, the hate of women in Gondarino.

vacation in the country, when he had no companion but his muse to entertain him; for all the former part of the poem is a description of the execrable wine, and the more execrable company, which he was forced to endure. Fletcher therefore could not be with him. So that there are certainly two comedies which properly belong to Beaumont only, which therefore we must endeavour to find out. The verses tell us that he acknowledged all he had to be owing to Jonson; there is no doubt, therefore, of his imitating Jonson's manner in these comedies. Shirley, in the first folio, and the publisher of the second folio, both agree in making The Nice Valour one of these plays: now this play is extremely in Jonson's manner, as is observed in the beginning of the preface, and in a note on the verses to Jonson, (vol. XIV. p. 432.) The prologue of this play has no weight, being wrote several years after it; but the epilogue was evidently wrote in the author's lifetime, probably either by the author himself, or else by his friend Jonson: for it is extremely like Jonson in his prologues and epilogues, who generally lets his audience know that if they did not admire him it was their faults, not his. Sa this epilogue makes the author declare

How unlike is this to Fletcher and Shakspeare's manner, who, when they join together in The Two Noble Kinsmen, are even modesty itself? See the prologue and epilogue to that play, vol. XIII. The latter has these lines:

And yet mistake me not, I am not bold,

We've no such cause. If the tale we have told

(For 'tis no other) any way content,

(For to that honest purpose it was meant)
We have our end; and ye shall have ere long,
I dare say, many a better to prolong

Your old loves to us.

I hope the reader will now see sufficient grounds to believe that

! The author.