mainder, to the number of thirty-four, were carefully retained by the comedians till the time arrived when they furnished an obvious means for their subsistence, which they could no longer derive from their professional exertions. In the year 1647, ten of the players united in publishing them in folio,3 with a dedication to the despicable Philip Earl of Pembroke, lord-chamberlain, who had no other title to become godfa ther to the numerous works which were inscribed to him, than what he derived from the eminent patrons of literature from whom he was descended, or with whom he was allied. Shirley, who ranks high among the second class of the dramatic poets of his age, and who was the last of that illustrious race which was extinguished by the civil wars, furnished a preface of considerable elegance, and bearing testimony of his sin cere friendship and ardent admiration for the poets; but he was unfortunately deterred, by his modesty, from writing their lives. "He 3 The following is the title of this valuable edition :-" Comedies and Tragedies. Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Never printed before, and now published by the Authors' originall Copies. Si quid habent veri Vatum præsagia, vivam. London: Printed for Humphrey Robinson, at the Three Pigeons, and for Humphrey Mosely, at the Prince's Arms, in St Paul's Church-yard. 1647." must be a bold man," he says, dertake to write their lives." "that dares un What has been lost by his thus shrinking from a task which he was fully capable of performing, as he had lived in strict friendship with Fletcher, may be easily gathered from the present memoirs, which, from the scantiness, or rather almost total want of materials, cannot deserve the title of lives. Thirtysix recommendatory verses were prefixed by writers of various merit; among whom we find the names of most of the dramatic poets of any consequence who survived Fletcher. That the greater number of the plays were printed from the prompter's copy, is evident from the numerous stage-directions and memorandums in previous scenes, of articles to be got ready for the sequel. The stationer, however, professes, and with apparent truth, that he had restored all those scenes and speeches which were omitted at the representation. In point of accuracy this edition is not superior to the first edition of Shakspeare. The blunders are very numerous, consisting not only in literal and verbal mistakes, but in the omission of entire lines; but, in point of authority, it is, like almost all first editions of the seventeenth century, far preferable to the second edition. Oldys, in his manuscript notes on Langbaine, says, that several of our poets' dramatic performances were printed in 1650. This, however, extended only to the re-publication of such quarto plays as had become scarce, and which were in demand, to complete the collection of their works. In 1679 a second folio edition was printed," including all those which, having been previously printed in quarto, were not contained in the folio of 1647. In the address of the booksellers, we are informed that they had obtained a copy corrected by a gentleman who had “ had an intimacy with both our authors, and had been a spectator of most of them when they were acted in their lifetime." On the same authority, they inserted several prologues, epilogues, and songs, omitted in the former edition. A few of the more obvious mistakes are certainly corrected, and, it is not improbable, on some degree of authority; but in their stead we have innumerable fresh blunders, and too often an awkward and rash correction of the genuine text. In this * Thus entitled :-"Fifty Comedies and Tragedies. Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. All in one Volume. Published by the Authors' originall Copies, the Songs to each Play being added. Si quid habent veri Vatum præsagia, vivam. London: Printed by J. Macock, for John Martyn, Henry Herringman, Richard Morris. 1679.”. copy we find the first attempt to enumerate the dramatis persona, and to many plays the names. of the principal original actors at the Blackfriars are prefixed. In the year 1711 the first edition in octavo appeared, being nothing more than a reprint of the second folio, with an additional portion of blunders. A" Preface, giving some Account of the Authors and their Writings," was prefixed, being a mere transcript from the work of Langbaine, with a few quotations from Dryden and other authors. The only circumstance which gives value to this edition is the plates, which have been considered curious by collectors, as illustrating the costume of the stage at the time. Theobald, who had commented on Shakspeare with more success than Rowe, Pope, and Warburton, notwithstanding the far superior genius of these rivals, projected, in 1742, critical editions of Ben Jonson and of Beaumont and Fletcher, but his death interrupted both these undertakings, when he had sent the first and one half of the second volume of the latter to the press. His comments on the remainder fell into the hands of Mr Seward, then of Eyam, in s These lists were injudiciously omitted in the later copies, but are now restored. Derbyshire, subsequently one of the prebends of Lichfield cathedral, and Mr Sympson of Gainsborough, who set about the task of correcting every passage, which they did not immediately comprehend, with due diligence, but with a superlative degree of rashness, and with out any adequate knowledge of the language of the time. They divided the plays between them, but mutually assisted and applied to each other on any emergency. Seward appears to have possessed a high sense of the neglected beauties of our poets, (on which account his preface, though abounding in errors and ungrounded hypotheses, deserves to be preserved in every edition of their works,) with a considerable portion of critical acumen. His assistant, Mr Sympson, is not equally happy in his conjectures; but he possessed modesty, caution, and fidelity, certainly the most essential qualities in an editor, -in a much greater degree, though the example of his assistant, and of the other commentators of his time, frequently led him to offer conjectures when they were utterly unnecessary, and the want of a due acquaintance with the language of the dramatists of that period led him often to find dif. ficulties in passages, which such requisite knowledge would have at once explained to him. These |