Upon Mr FLETCHER'S incomparable Plays.

THE poet lives; wonder not how or why
Fletcher revives, but that he e'er could die :
Safe mirth, full language, flow in every page,
At once he doth both heighten and assuage;
All innocence and wit, pleasant and clear,
Nor church nor laws were ever libelled here;
But fair deductions drawn from his great brain,
Enough to conquer all that's false or vain;
He scatters wit, and sense so freely flings,
That very citizens speak handsome things,
Teaching their wives such unaffected grace,
Their looks are now as handsome as their face.
Nor is this violent: he steals upon
The yielding soul until the frenzy's gone;
His very lancings do the patient please,
As when good music cures a mad disease.
Small poets rifle him, yet think it fair,
Because they rob a man that well can spare;
They feed upon him, owe him every hit,
They're all but sub-excisemen of his wit.

J. M.S

On the Works of BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, now at length

printed.

GREAT pair of authors, whom one equal star

Begot so like in genius, that

you are

In fame, as well as writings, both so knit,
'That no man knows where to divide your wit,
Much less your praise: You, who had equal fire,

And did each other mutually inspire;

Whether one did contrive, the other write,
Or one framed the plot, the other did indite;

8 This poem is probably by Jasper Maine, as well as the next; for the stationer, in his concluding verses, mentions "thirty-four witnesses,' and as the number of poems besides his own is thirty-six, that of the encomiasts is thirty-four, there being two copies of verses by Cartwright and two by Maine.

Whether one found the matter, th' other dress,
Or th' one disposed what th' other did express :
Where'er your parts between yourselves lay, we,
In all things which you did, but one thread see;
So evenly drawn out, so gently spun,

That art with nature ne'er did smoother run.
Where shall I fix my praise then? or what part
Of all your numerous labours hath des
More to be famed than other? Shall I say
I've met a lover so drawn in your play,
So passionately written, so inflamed,
So jealously enraged, then gently tamed,
That I, in reading, have the person seen,

And
your pen hath part stage and actor been?
Or shall I say that I can scarce forbear
To clap, when I a captain* do meet there;
So lively in his own vain humour drest,
So braggingly, and like himself exprest,

That modern cowards, when they saw him play'd,
Saw, blush'd, departed, guilty and betray'd?
You wrote all parts right; whatsoe'er the stage
Had from you, was seen there as in the age,
And had their equal life: Vices which were
Manners abroad, did grow corrected there:
They who possest a box, and half-crown9 spent
To learn obsceneness, return'd innocent,

*Bessus.

And thank'd you for this coz'nage, whose chaste scene
Taught loves so noble, so reform'd, so clean,

I

That they, who brought foul fires, and thither came
To bargain, went thence with a holy flame.
Be't to your praise too, that your stock and vein
Held both to tragic and to comic strain ;1
Where'er you listed to be high and grave,
No buskin shew'd more solemn; no quill gave
Such feeling objects to draw tears from eyes,
Spectators sate parts in your tragedies.
And where you listed to be low and free,
Mirth turn'd the whole house into comedy;
So piercing (where you pleased) hitting a fault,
That humours from your pen issued all salt.

Half-crown. This was the price of the boxes at some of the private houses, such as the Phoenix in Drury-Lane.

Held both to tragic and to comic strain.] i. e. Your stock of understanding and knowledge, and your vein of wit and humour, are equally excellent in tragedy and comedy.-Seward.

Nor were you thus in works and
poems knit,
As to be but two halfs, and make one wit;
But as some things, we see, have double cause,
And yet the effect itself from both whole draws;
So, though you were thus twisted and combined,
As [in] two bodies to have but one fair mind,2
Yet, if we praise you rightly, we must say,
Both join'd, and both did wholly make the play.
For that you could write singly, we may guess
By the divided pieces which the press

Hath severally sent forth; 3 nor were join'd so,
Like some our modern authors made to go
One merely by the help of th' other, who
To purchase fame do come forth one of two;
Nor wrote you so, that one's part was to lick
The other into shape; nor did one stick
The other's cold inventions with such wit,

As served, like spice, to make them quick and fit ;
Nor, out of mutual want, or emptiness,

Did you conspire to go still twins to th' press;

2 As two bodies to have but one fair mind.] Amended by Seward. 3 By the divided pieces which the press

Hath severally sent forth.] I have before shewed that there were two comedies wrote by Beaumont singly, and given some reasons why the Nice Valour ought to be deemed one of them. Whether Mr Maine in this place referred to these two comedies, knowing which they were, or whether he only meant the Mask at Gray's-Inn, which was the only piece which we know to have been published in Beaumont's name before these Commendatory Poems were published, or whether he spoke in general terms, without a strict adherence to facts, must be left uncertain. -Seward.

The editor's reasons for doubting Seward's hypothesis respecting The Nice Valour, will be found in the introduction to that play, vol. IV. p. 265. Maine may allude to Beaumont's Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, which came out in his life-time, as well as to The Masque, and to Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, Woman-Hater, and Thierry and Theodoret.

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nor were gone so,

Like some our modern authors made to go

On merely by the help of th' other.] The word go, which ends the next line, seems to have ran in the printer's head, and made him put gone here instead of some other word. Mr Theobald had prevented me in the emendation: We read join'd so, and as I have his concurrence, I have the less doubt in preferring it to Mr Sympson's conjecture-Nor were one so, though this latter is very good sense, and nearer the trace of the letters, but it would make one be repeated too often, for it is already in the third and fourth lines after, and 'tis very evident to me that it should have been in the second; for On merely, I read One merely.--Seward.

But what, thus join'd, you wrote, might have come forth
As good from each, and stored with the same worth
That thus united them: You did join sense;

In you 'twas league, in others impotence;
And the press, which both thus amongst us sends,
Sends us one poet in a pair of friends.

JASPER MAINE.S

Upon the Report of the Printing of the Dramatical Poems of Master JOHN FLETCHER, never collected before, and now set forth in one Volume.

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THOUGH When all Fletcher writ, and the entire

Man was indulged unto that sacred fire,

His thoughts, and his thoughts' dress, appear'd both such,
That 'twas his happy fault to do too much :
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,
'Tis known, that sometimes he did stand alone,
That both the spunge and pencil were his own;
That himself judged himself, could singly do,
And was at last Beaumont and Fletcher too:
Else we had lost his Shepherdess, a picce
Even and smooth, spun from a finer fleece;

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Jasper Maine.] This gentleman was author of The City Match, a comedy, and The Amorous War, a tragi-comedy. He was an eminent preacher in the civil war, but warmly adhering to the king, was deprived of all his preferments in Cromwell's time, and taken for charity into the Earl of Devonshire's family, where his learning, piety, and wit, rendered him a proper advocate for religion against the famous Mr Hobbs, then a tutor in that family. After the Restoration he was made canon of ChristChurch, and archdeacon of Chichester.-Seward.

He was born at Hatherleigh, in Devonshire, and died 6th December, 1672. Both his dramatic performances rank above mediocrity.

• Else we had lost his Shepherdess.] Mr Cartwright was a very bright, but a very young man, and seems to taste our authors' plays extremely well, but to have known nothing of their dates and history. He supposes the Shepherdess wrote after Beaumont's death, so that his testimony ought to have no sort of weight in excluding Beaumont from all share in the composition of the plays. He had taken up the supposition of Beau

Where softness reigns, where passions passions greet,
Gentle and high, as floods of balsam meet.

Where, dress'd in white expressions, sit bright loves,
Drawn, like their fairest queen, by milky doves;
A piece which Jonson in a rapture bid
Come up a glorified work; and so it did.

Else had his muse set with his friend, the stage
Had miss'd those poems, which yet take the age;
The world had lost those rich exemplars, where
Art, language, wit, sit ruling in one sphere;
Where the fresh matters soar above old themes,
As prophets' raptures do above our dreams;
Where, in a worthy scorn, he dares refuse
All other gods, and makes the thing his muse;
Where he calls passions up, and lays them so,
As spirits, awed by him to come and go;
Where the free author did whate'er he would,
And nothing will'd but what a poet should.

No vast uncivil bulk swells any scene,
The strength's ingenious, and the vigour clean;
None can prevent the fancy, and see through
At the first opening; all stand wond'ring how
The thing will be, until it is; which thence,
With fresh delight still cheats, still takes the sense;
The whole design, the shadows, the lights such,
That none can say he shews or hides too much:
Business grows up, ripen'd by just encrease,
And by as just degrees again doth cease;
The heats and minutes of affairs are watch'd,
And the nice points of time are met, and snatch d;
Nought later than it should, nought comes before,
Chemists and calculators do err more:

Sex, age, degree, affections, country, place,
The inward substance, and the outward face,
All kept precisely, all exactly fit;

What he would write, he was before he writ.

'Twixt Jonson's grave, and Shakspeare's lighter sound,
His muse so steer'd, that something still was found,
Nor this, nor that, nor both, but so his own,

That 'twas his mark, and he was by it known;

mont's being only a corrector, perhaps merely because Jonson had celebrated his judgment, not considering that he celebrated his fancy too.Seward.

Cartwright could not suppose the Shepherdess was wrote after Beaumont's death: His words only inean, "It Fletcher could not have wrote without Beaumont, we should not have had The Faithful Shepherdess," in which the latter had no concern.- -Ed. 1778.

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