league, Shakspeare, expresses it in their Two Noble Kinsmen, vol. X. p. 32: "They were an endless mine to one another; They were both extremely remarkable for their ready flow of wit in conversation as well as composition, and gentlemen that remembered them, says Shirley, declare, that on every occasion they talked a comedy. As, therefore, they were so twinned in genius, worth, and wit, so lovely and pleasant in their lives, after death, let not their fame be ever again divided. And now, reader, when thou art fired into rage or melted into pity by their tragic scenes, charmed with the genteel elegance, or bursting into laughter at their comic humour, canst thou not drop the intervening ages, steal into Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher's club-room at the Mermaid, on a night when Shakspeare, Donne, and others visited them, and there join in society with as great wits as ever this nation, or perhaps ever Greece or Rome, could at one time boast? where, animated each by the other's presence, they even excelled themselves; "For wit is like a rest, Held up at tennis, which men do the best With the best gamesters. What things have we seen So nimble and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown For three days past; wit that might warrant be Till that were cancell'd; and when that was gone ed Was able to make the two next companies Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise." Hitherto the reader has received only the portraits of our authors without any proof of the similitude and justice of the draught; nor can we hope that it will appear just from a mere cursory view of the originals. Many people read plays chiefly for the sake of the plot, hurrying still on for that discovery. The happy contrivance of surprising but natural incidents is certainly a very great beauty in the drama, and little writers have often made their advantages of it; they could contrive incidents to embarrass and perplex the plot, and by that alone have succeeded and pleased, without perhaps a single line of nervous poetry, a single sentiment worthy of memory, without a passion workup with natural vigour, or a character of any distinguished marks. The best poets have rarely made this dramatic mechanism their point. Neither So. phocles, Euripides, Terence, Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, or Jonson, are at all remarkable for forming a labyrinth of incidents, and entangling their readers in a pleasing perplexity: Our late dramatic poets learnt this from the French, and they from romance-writers and novelists. We could almost wish the readers of Beaumont and Fletcher to drop the expectation of the event of each story, to attend with more care to the beauty and energy of the sentiments, diction, passions, and characters. Every good author pleases more, the more he is examined; (hence perhaps that partiality of editors to their own authors; by a more intimate acquaintance, they discover more of their beauties than they do of others) especially when the style and manner are quite old-fashioned, and the beauties hid under the uncouthness of the dress. The taste and fashion of poetry varies in every age, and though our old dramatic writers are as preferable to the modern as Vandyke and Rubens to our modern painters, yet most eyes must be accustomed to their manner before they can discern their excellencies. Thus the very best plays of Shakspeare were forced to be dressed fashionably by the poetic tailors of the late ages before they could be admitted upon the stage, and a very few years since his comedies in general were under the highest contempt. Few, very few durst speak of them with any sort of regard, till the many excellent criticisms upon that author made people study him, and some excellent actors revived these comedies, which completely opened men's eyes; and it is now become as fashionable to admire as it had been to decry them. Shakspeare therefore, even in his second-best manner, being now generally admired, we shall endeavour to prove that his second-rate and our au thors' first-rate beauties are so near upon a par that they are scarce distinguishable. A preface allows not room for sufficient proofs of this, but we will produce at least some parallels of poetic diction and sentiments, and refer to some of the characters and passions. The instances shall be divided into three classes The first of passages where our authors fall short in comparison of Shakspeare; the second of such as are not easily discerned from him; the third of those where Beaumont and Fletcher have the advantage. In the Maid's Tragedy there is a similar passage to one of Shakspeare, the comparison of which alone will be no bad scale to judge of their different ex cellencies. Melantius the general thus speaks of his friend Amintor : "His worth is great, valiant he is and temperate, If his friend need it: When he was a boy, As oft as I returned (as, without boast, I brought home conquest) he would gaze upon me, A youth gazing on every limb of the victorious chief, then begging his sword, feeling its edge, and poising it in his arm, are attitudes nobly expressive of the inward ardour and ecstacy of soul: But what is most observable is, "And in his hand Weigh it- -He oft, &c," By this beautiful pause, or break, the action and picture continue in view, and the poet, like Homer, is eloquent in silence. It is a species of beauty that shews an intimacy with that father of poetry, in whom it occurs extremely often. Milton has an exceeding fine one in the description of his LazarHouse: Despair 'Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch, Shook, but delay'd to strike," &c. Paradise Lost, book xi. line 489. 9 See two noble instances at 1. 141 of the 13th Book of the Iliad, and in the application of the same simile a few lines below. -Seward. As Shakspeare did not study versification so much as those poets who were conversant in Homer and Virgil, I don't remember in him any striking instance of this species of beauty. But he even wanted it not; his sentiments are so amazingly striking, that they pierce the heart at once; and diction and numbers, which are the beauty and nerves adorning and invigorating the thoughts of other poets, to him are but like the bodies of angels, azure vehicles, through which the whole soul shines transparent. Of this take the following instance. The old Belarius in Cymbeline is describing the in-born royalty of the two princes whom he had bred up as peasants in his cave: "This Paladour, (whom The king his father call'd Guiderius) Jove! Cymbeline, act iii. scene iii. Much the same difference as between these two passages occurs likewise in the following pictures of rural melancholy, the first of innocence forlorn, the second of philosophic tenderness : "I have a boy Sent by the gods I hope to this intent, Of which he borrow'd some to quench his thirst, |