And from it learn those melancholy strains
Fed the afflicted souls of primitive swains.
Thus the whole world to reverence will flock
Thy tragic buskin and thy comic sock:'
And winged Fame unto posterity
Transmit but only two, this age and thee.
THOMAS PEYTON.
Agricola Anglo-Cantianus.*
On the deceased Author, Mr JOHN FLETCHER, his Plays, and especially the Mad Lover.
WHILST his well-organ'd body doth retreat
To its first matter, and the formal heat3
Triumphant sits in judgment, to approve
Pieces above our censure, and our love;+
Such as dare boldly venture to appear
Unto the curious eye and critic ear:
Lo, the Mad Lover in these various times
Is press'd to life, to accuse us of our crimes.
While Fletcher lived, who equal to him writ
Such lasting monuments of natural wit?
Others might draw their lines with sweat, like those
That (with much pains) a garrison inclose;
Whilst his sweet fluent vein did gently run
As uncontroll❜d and smoothly as the sun.
After his death, our theatres did make
Him in his own unequal language speak:
And now, when all the muses out of their
Approved modesty silent appear,
2 This poem, though omitted by the editors of 1750 and 1778, has fully as much merit as most of the productions of the kind. The description of the puritan girl gradually overcoming her scruples, is not without humour. The encomiast seems to have been an unshaken votary of monarchy and the stage, at a time when both were proscribed.
3 And the formal heat, &c.] Formal heat I take to be a metaphysical and logical term for the soul, as the formal cause is that which constitutes the essence of any thing. Fletcher's soul therefore now sits in judgment, to approve works deserving of praise.-Seward,
* Pieces above our candour.] Amended by Theobald.
This play of Fletcher's braves the envious light,
As wonder of our ears once, now our sight.
Three-and-four-fold-blest poet, who the lives
Of poets, and of theatres, survives!
A groom, or ostler of some wit, may bring
His Pegasus to the Castalian spring;
Boast, he a race o'er the Pharsalian plain,
Or happy Tempe-valley, dares maintain :
Brag, at one leap, upon the double cliff
(Were it as high as monstrous Teneriffe)
Of far-renown'd Parnassus he will get,
And there (to amaze the world) confirm his seat:
When our admired Fletcher vaunts not aught,
And slighted every thing he writ as nought:
While all our English wond'ring world (in's cause)
Made this great city echo with applause.
Read him, therefore, all that can read; and those
That cannot, learn; if you're not learning's foes,
And wilfully resolved to refuse
The gentle raptures of this happy muse.
From thy great constellation (noble soul!)
Look on this kingdom; suffer not the whole
Spirit of poesy retire to heaven,
But make us entertain what thou hast given.
Earthquakes and thunder diapasons make;
The seas' vast roar, and irresistless shake
Of horrid winds, a sympathy compose;
So in these things there's music in the close:
And though they seem great discords in our ears,
They are not so to them above the spheres.
Granting these music, how much sweeter's that
Mnemosyne's daughters' voices do create?
Since heav'n, and earth, and seas, and air consent
To make an harmony, (the instrument,
Their own agreeing selves) shall we refuse
The music which the deities do use?
Troy's ravish'd Ganymede doth sing to Jove,
And Phoebus' self plays on his lyre above.
The Cretan gods, or glorious men, who will
Imitate right, must wonder at thy skill,
(Best poet of thy times!) or he will prove
As mad, as thy brave Memnon was with love.
ASTON COKAINE, Bart.5
5 Aston Cokaine, Bart.] This gentleman, who claimed being made a baronet by King Charles I., at a time when the king's distress prevented the creation passing the due forms, was a poet of some repute, for which
Upon the Works of BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.
How angels (cloistered in our human cells)
Maintain their parley Beaumont-Fletcher tells,
Whose strange inimitable intercourse
Transcends all rules, and flies beyond the force
Of the most forward souls; all must submit
Until they reach these mysteries of wit.
The intellectual language here's express'd,
Admired in better times, and dares the test
Of ours; for from wit, sweetness, mirth, and sense,
This volume springs a new true quintessence.
On the Works of the most excellent Dramatic Poet, Mr JOHN FLETCHER, never before printed.
HAIL, Fletcher! welcome to the world's great stage;
For our two hours, we have thee here an age
In thy whole works, and may th' impression call
The pretor that presents thy plays to all;
Both to the people, and the lords that sway
That herd, and ladies whom those lords obey.
And what's the loadstone can such guests invite
But moves on two poles, profit and delight?
reason the copy is inserted more than for its intrinsic worth. He was lord of the manors of Pooley, in Polesworth parish, Warwickshire, and of Ashburn, in Derbyshire; but, with a fate not uncommon to wits, spent and sold both; but his descendants of this age have been and are persons of distinguished merit and fortune.-Seward.
Sir Aston Cockayne was born in 1608, at Elvaston, in Derbyshire. He suffered greatly during the rebellion for being a catholic. In 1641 he was created a baronet by Charles I. He died at an advanced age in 1684. Besides four plays, he was author of a volume of poems printed in 1658, more valuable on account of the illustrious friends to whom some of them are addressed, than for any intrinsic merit.
• Sir John seems to have been one of the gentlemen who were ever ready to furnish their quota to these encomiastic libraries of wit,' which the bookseller was anxious to prefix to his editions of authors. He has a copy of verses among the multitude who bewailed the death of Cartwright.
Which will be soon, as on the rack, confest,
When every one is tickled with a jest,
And that pure Fletcher's able to subdue
A melancholy more than Burton knew."
And though upon the bye, to his designs,
The native may learn English from his lines,
And th' alien, if he can but construe it,
May here be made free denison of wit.
But his main end does drooping Virtue raise,
And crowns her beauty with eternal bays;
In scenes where she inflames the frozen soul,
While Vice (her paint wash'd off) appears so foul,
She must this blessed isle and Europe leave,
And some new quadrant of the globe deceive;
Or hide her blushes on the Afric shore,
Like Marius, but ne'er rise to triumph more;
That honour is resign'd to Fletcher's fame;
Add to his trophies, that a poet's name
(Late grown as odious to our modern states,
As that of King to Rome) he vindicates
From black aspersions, cast upon't by those
Which only are inspired to lie in prose.
And, by the court of muses be't decreed,
What graces spring from poesy's richer seed,
When we name Fletcher, shall be so proclaim'd,
As all, that's royal, is when Cæsar's named.
ROBERT STAPYLTON, Knt.
7 And that pure Fletcher, able to subdue
A melancholy more than Burton knew.] Mr Sympson observed, that the comma stood in the place of 's, Fletcher is able. Burton was author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, a folio.—Seward.
8 Sir Robert Stapylton of Carleton in Yorkshire, a poet of much fame, was at the battle of Edgehill with king Charles the First, and had an honorary degree given him at Oxford for his behaviour on that occasion. He wrote the Slighted Maid, a comedy; The Step-Mother, a tragi-comedy; and Hero and Leander, a tragedy; besides several poems and translations.-Seward.
He was third son to Richard Stapylton, Esq. of Carleton in Yorkshire, and died 10th July, 1619. As a poet, he is, perhaps, one of the most absurd of the heroic dramatists after the Restoration. The Slighted Maid, one of the plays ridiculed in the Rehearsal, is worth perusing for its excessive bombast and absurdity.
To the Memory of my most honoured Kinsman, Mr FRANCIS BEAUMONT.
I'LL not pronounce how strong and clean thou writes,
Nor by what new hard rules thou took'st thy flights,
Nor how much Greek and Latin some refine,
Before they can make up six words of thine;
But this I'll say, thou strik'st our sense so deep,
At once thou mak'st us blush, rejoice, and weep.
Great father Jonson bow'd himself, when he
(Thou writ'st so nobly) vow'd, 'he envied thee.'
Were thy Mardonius arm'd, there would be more
Strife for his sword than all Achilles wore;
Such wise just rage, had he been lately tried,
My life on't he had been o' th' better side;
And, where he found false odds, (through gold or sloth)
There brave Mardonius would have beat them both.
Behold, here's Fletcher too! the world ne'er knew
Two potent wits co-operate, till you;
For still your fancies are so wov❜n and knit,
'Twas Francis Fletcher, or John Beaumont writ,
Yet neither borrow'd, nor were so put to't
To call poor gods and goddesses to do't;
Nor made nine girls your muses (you suppose,
Women ne'er write, save love-letters in prose)
But are your own inspirers, and have made
Such powerful scenes, as, when they please, invade.
Your plot, sense, language, all's so pure and fit,
He's bold, not valiant, dare dispute your wit.
George Lisle, Knight.] This I take to be the same with Sir John Lisle, one of king Charles's judges; for Wood, in his index to his Athenæ, calls Sir John by the name of George: He might perhaps have had two Christian names. If this was he, he was admitted at Oxford in the year 1622, seven years after Beaumont's death, and, as he was a kinsman, might be supposed to know more of his compositions than a stranger. His testimony, therefore, adds strength to what has been before advanced concerning Beaumont, nay it does so whether Sir George Lisle be the regicide or not. If he was, he was an eminent lawyer and speaker in the house of commons, and made lord commissioner of the privy-seal by the parliament. After the Restoration he fled to Losanna in Switzerland, where he was treated as lord chancellor of England, which so irritated some furious Irish loyalists that they shot him dead as he was going to church.-Seward.
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