also we received several prologues and epilogues, with the songs appertaining to each play,' which were not in the former edition, but are now inserted in their proper places. Besides, in this edition you have the addition of no fewer than seventeen plays more than were in the former, which we have taken the pains and care to collect, and print out of quarto, in this volume, which, for distinction sake, are marked with a star in the catalogue of them facing the first page of the book. of the book. And whereas in several of the plays there were wanting the names of the persons represented therein, in this edition you have them all prefixed, with their qualities, which will be a great ease to the reader. Thus, every way perfect and complete, have you all, both tragedies and comedies, that were ever writ by our authors, a pair of the greatest wits and most ingenious poets of their age; from whose worth we should but detract by our most studied commendations.

If our care and endeavours to do our authors right, in an incorrupt and genuine edition of their works, and thereby to gratify and oblige the reader, be but requited with a suitable entertainment, we should be encouraged to bring Ben Jonson's two volumes into one, and publish them in this form, and also to reprint old Shakspeare: Both which are designed by

MR SEWARD'S PREFACE.

(OCTAVO, 1750.)

THE public at length receives a new edition of the two great poets, who, with a fate in each case alike unjust, were extolled for near a century after their deaths, as equals, rivals, nay, superiors to the immortal Shakspeare; but, in the present age, have been depressed beneath the smooth-polished enervate issue of the modern drama. And as their fame has been so different with respect to other poets, so has it varied also between themselves. Fletcher was a while supposed unable to rise to any height of eminence, had not Beaumont's stronger arm bore him upwards. Yet no sooner had he lost that aid, and demonstrated that it was delight and love, not necessity, which made him soar abreast with his amiable friend, but the stillinjurious world began to strip the plumes from Beaumont, and to dress Fletcher in the whole fame,

• Some of Seward's notes, containing proposals for amending passages in Shakspeare and our authors, have been omitted in the present edition.

leaving to the former nothing but the mere pruning of Fletcher's luxuriant wit, the lima labor, the plummet, and the rule, but neither the plan, materials, composition, or ornaments. This is di rectly asserted in Mr Cartwright's Commendatory Poem on Fletcher:

"Who therefore wisely did submit each birth
To knowing Beaumont ere it did come forth,
Working again until he said, 'twas fit,
And made him the sobriety of his wit.

Though thus he call'd his judge into his fame,
And for that aid allow'd him half the name," &c.

See Cartwright's Poem, below.

Mr Harris, in his Commendatory Poem, makes Beaumont a mere dead weight hanging on the boughs of Fletcher's palm;

"When thou didst sit

But as a joint commissioner in wit;
When it had plummets hung on to suppress
Its too-luxuriant growing mightiness.

Till as that tree, which scorns to be kept down,
Thou grew'st to govern the whole stage alone."

I believe this extremely injurious to Beaumont ; but as the opinion, or something like it, has lived for ages, and is frequent at this day, it is time at length to restore Beaumont to the full rank of fellowship which he possessed when living, and to fix the standard of their respective merits, before we shew the degree in which their united fame ought to be placed on the British theatre.

Mr Cartwright and Mr Harris wrote thirty years after Beaumont's death, and twenty after Fletcher's; and none of the numerous contemporary poems, published with theirs before the first folio edition of our authors, degrade Beaumont so very k

VOL. I.

low as these. Sir John Berkenhead allows him a full moiety of the fame, but seems to think his ge, nius 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 more 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.