5

Like huge Colosses, they've together knit 5
Their shoulders to support a world of wit.

The tale of Atlas (though of truth it miss)
We plainly read mythologized in this!
Orpheus and Amphion, whose undying stories
Made Athens famous, are but allegories.
"Tis Poetry has power to civilize

Men, worse than stones, more blockish than the trees.
I cannot choose but think (now things so fall)
That Wit is past its climacterical;

And though the Muses have been dead and gone,
I know they'll find a resurrection.

"Tis vain to praise; they're to themselves a glory,
And silence is our sweetest oratory.

For he, that names but Fletcher, must needs be
Found guilty of a loud hyperbole.

His fancy so transcendently aspires,

He shews himself a wit, who but admires.

Here are no volumes stuff'd with chevrel sense,"

The very anagrams of eloquence;

Nor long long-winded sentences that be,

Being rightly spell'd, but wit's stenography;
Nor words as void of reason as of rhyme,
Only cæsura'd to spin out the time.
But here's a magazine of purest sense,
Cloath'd in the newest garb of eloquence:

Scenes that are quick and sprightly, in whose veins
Bubbles the quintessence of sweet high strains.
Lines, like their authors, and each word of it
Does say, 'twas writ by a gemini of wit.

How happy is our age! how blest our men!

When such rare souls live themselves o'er again.

they've together met

Their shoulders to support a world of wit.] I should not find fault with met and wit being made rhimes here, (the poets of those times giving themselves such a licence) but that two persons meeting their shoulders is neither sense nor English! I am therefore persuaded the author wrote knit. So twice in the copy by Jasper Maine:

"In fame, as well as writings, both so knit,
That no man knows where to divide your wit."

And again,

"Nor were you thus in works and poems knit," &c.

Theobald.

6 Chevrel sense.] Cheverel is soft pliable kid leather, and the word occurs in the same manner as in the text in several old plays. Mercutio, in Romeo and Juliet, says, "O, here's a wit of cheverel that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad."

We err, that think a poet dies; for this
Shews, that 'tis but a metempsychosis.
Beaumont and Fletcher here, at last, we see
Above the reach of dull mortality,

Or power of fate: And thus the proverb hits,
(That's so much cross'd) These men live by their wits.

ALEXR. BROME.7

On the Death and Works of Mr JOHN Fletcher.

My name, so far from great, that 'tis not known,
Can lend no praise but what thou'dst blush to own;
And no rude hand, or feeble wit, should dare
To vex thy shrine with an unlearned tear.

I'd have a state of wit convoked, which hath
A power to take up on common faith;

That, when the stock of the whole kingdom's spent
In but preparative to thy monument,

The prudent council may invent fresh ways
To get new contribution to thy praise;
And rear it high, and equal to thy wit;
Which must give life and monument to it.

8

So when, late, Essex died, the public face
Wore sorrow in't; and to add mournful grace
To the sad pomp of his lamented fall,
The commonwealth served at his funeral,
And by a solemn order built his hearse;
-But not like thine, built by thyself in verse,
Where thy advanced image safely stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands.
Base hands, how impotently you disclose

Your rage 'gainst Camden's learned ashes, whose

7 A poet of no mean powers, and one of the most strenuous and successful satirists upon the republicans of the time. He was born in 1620 and died 1666. Besides his poems, which principally consist of political songs, he wrote a comedy, entitled The Cunning Lovers.

8 So when, late, Essex died.] The Earl of Essex, who had been general for the parliament in the civil war against King Charles the First, died on the 14th of September, 1646, and the first folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's Works was published in 1647.-Theobald.

Defaced statua and martyr'd book,
Like an antiquity and fragment look,
Nonnulla desunt's legibly appear,

So truly now Camden's Remains lie there.

Vain malice! how he mocks thy rage, while breath
Of Fame shall speak his great Elizabeth!
"Gainst time and thee he well provided hath ;
Britannia is the tomb and epitaph.

Thus princes' honours; but wit only gives
A name which to succeeding ages lives.

Singly we now consult ourselves and fame,
Ambitious to twist ours with thy great name.
Hence we thus bold to praise: For as a vine,
' With subtle wreath and close embrace, doth twine
A friendly elm, by whose tall trunk it shoots,
And gathers growth and moisture from its roots;
About its arms the thankful clusters cling
Like bracelets, and with purple ammelling
The blue-cheek'd grape, stuck in its vernant hair,
Hangs like rich jewels in a beauteous ear.
So grow our praises by thy wit; we do

Borrow support and strength, and lend but show.
And but thy male wit, 9 like the youthful sun,
Strongly begets upon our passion,

Making our sorrow teem with elegy,

Thou yet unwept, and yet unpraised might'st be.
But they're imperfect births; and such are all

Produced by causes not univocal,

The scapes of Nature, passives being unfit;
And hence our verse speaks only mother-wit.
Oh, for a fit o' th' father! for a spirit
That might but parcel of thy worth inherit;
For but a spark of that diviner fire,

Which thy full breast did animate and inspire;
That souls could be divided, thou traduce
But a small particle of thine to us!

Of thine; which we admired 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;
In which orb thy throng'd light did make the star,
Thou wert the intelligence did move that sphere.

9 And but thy male wit, &c.] Mr Seward omits this and the nine following lines.-Ed. 1778.

Thy fury was composed; Rapture no fit

That hung on thee; nor thou far gone in wit

As men in a disease; thy fancy clear,

Muse chaste, as those flames whence they took their fire;3
No spurious composures amongst thine,

Got in adultery 'twixt Wit and Wine.

And as the hermetical physicians draw

From things that curse of the first-broken law,
That ens venenum, which extracted thence
Leaves nought but primitive good and innocence:
So was thy spirit calcined; no mixtures there
But perfect, such as next to simples are.
Not like those meteor-wits which wildly fly
In storm and thunder through the amazed sky;
Speaking but th' ills and villainies in a state,
Which fools admire, and wise men tremble at,
Full of portent and prodigy, whose gall
Oft 'scapes the vice, and on the man doth fall.
Nature used all her skill, when thee she meant
A wit at once both great and innocent.

1

Yet thou hadst tooth; but 'twas thy judgment, not
For mending one word a whole sheet to blot.
Thou couldst anatomise with ready art,

And skilful hand, crimes lock'd close up i' th' heart.
Thou couldst unfold dark plots, and shew that path
By which Ambition climb❜d to greatness hath;
Thou couldst the rises, turns, and falls of states,
How near they were their periods and dates;
Couldst mad the subject into popular rage,
And the grown seas of that great storm assuage;
Dethrone usurping tyrants, and place there
The lawful prince and true inheriter;
Knew'st all dark turnings in the labyrinth
Of policy, which who but knows he sinn❜th,
Save thee, who un-infected didst walk in't,
As the great genius of government.

* Muse chaste, as those frames whence they took their fire ;] This seems obscure, for what are those frames whence Fletcher took his fire? The stars? Even if this was meant, I should think flames the better word: But as flames will signify heavenly fire in general, either the stars, sun, angels, or even the Spirit of God himself, who maketh his ministers flames of fire, I much prefer the word, and believe it the original. As this poet was a clergyman of character with regard to his sanctity, and much celebrates Fletcher's chastity of sentiments and language, it is very evident that many words which appear gross to us were not so in King Charles the First's age.-Seward.

And when thou laidst thy tragic buskin by,
To court the stage with gentle comedy,
How new, how th' humours, how express'd
proper
In rich variety, how neatly dress'd

In language, how rare plots, what strength of wit
Shined in the face and every limb of it!

The stage grew narrow while thou grew'st to be
In thy whole life an excellent comedy.

To these a virgin-modesty, which first met
Applause with blush and fear, as if he yet
Had not deserved; till bold with constant praise
His brows admitted the unsought-for bays.
Nor would he ravish Fame; but left men free
To their own vote and ingenuity.

When his fair Shepherdess, on the guilty stage,
Was martyr'd between ignorance and rage;

At which the impatient virtues of those few

Could judge, grew.high, cried murder! though he knew
The innocence and beauty of his child,

He only, as if unconcerned, smiled.

Princes have gather'd since each scatter'd grace,
Each line and beauty of that injured face;"
And on th' united parts breathed such a fire
As, spite of malice, she shall ne'er expire.
Attending, not affecting, thus the crown,
Till every
hand did help to set it on,
He came to be sole monarch, and did reign
In Wit's great empire, absolute sovereign.

JOHN HARRIS.3

2 Princes have gather'd since each scatter'd grace,

Each line and beauty of that injured face.] This relates to King Charles the First causing the Faithful Shepherdess to be revived, and acted before him. The lines are extremely beautiful, and do honour to the king's taste in poetry, which, as it comes from an adversary (though certainly a very candid one, and who before condemned the fire-brandscribblers and meteor-wits of his age) is a strong proof of its being a very good one. Queen Elizabeth may be called the mother of the English poets; James the First was a pedagogue to them, encouraged their literature, but debased it with puns and pedantry; Charles the First revived a good taste, but the troubles of his reign prevented the great effects of his patronage.-Seward.

3 John Harris was of New-College, Oxford, Greek professor of the university, and so eminent a preacher that he was called a second Chrysostom. In the civil wars he sided with the presbyterians, and was one of the Assembly of Divines, and is the only poet in this collection whom we certainly know to have been for the parliament against the king. His poem has great merit; the fine break after the mention of the Earl of Es