associate in the richness of fancy, and the delineation of some peculiar descriptions of charac ter, that Beaumont joined great eloquence of language, power of description, and sublimity of diction, to a strong and manly humour, and a powerful and indignant personification of the vices and follies of the time.

The connection between our poets seems to have been of the most amiable nature; indeed, as the writer of their article in the Historical Dictionary has already observed, nothing can be imagined more delightful than this union of genius, and this entire renunciation of individual fame. The gradual structure of the plots, perhaps first suggested in familiar conversation, and matured in subsequent meetings, the distribution of the different parts to be executed by each, and the open and ingenuous submission of their several scenes to the criticism and scrutiny of each other, indicate a degree of literary intimacy, which has, probably, never before, or since, endured for so long a period. We are informed by Aubrey, that "they lived together on the Bankside, not far from the play-house, both bachelors; had one bench in the house between them, which they did so admire; the same clothes, cloak, &c. between them."

Beaumont, however, did not die a bachelor: He married, in what year has not been ascertained, Ursula, daughter and coheir of Henry Isley of Sundridge, in Kent, by whom he left two daughters. One of these, Frances, reached a very advanced age, as she was living in 1700, at which time she enjoyed a pension of one hundred pounds a year from the Duke of Ormond, having lived in his family as a domestic for some years. She is said to have been in possession of several poems of her father's, which were lost during her voyage from Ireland to England.

Beaumont appears to have enjoyed the friendship of Ben Jonson in a very distinguished degree.' Indeed his genius was, in some measure,

The superlative merits of Ben Jonson, in the peculiar walk of comedy, to which he principally confined himself, and the occasional flashes of a higher poetical genius which are to be met with in his works, must be readily acknowledged by every reader who has the faculty of distinguishing the various excellencies of dramatic composition. His humour is harsh and severe, but it is supereminently excellent, and no poet has ever exceeded him in delineating the absurd affectations of folly, or the artful stratagems of impostors, profiting by the credulity of weak minds. This acknowledgment of old Ben's excellencies becomes requisite from every one who ventures to retain a belief in the failings of that great poet, the existence of which Mr Octavius Gilchrist, with a laudable anxiety for his fame, has laboured to disprove. It seems that all who place any degree

assimilated to that of Jonson, and particularly his humour. The Mermaid tavern, in Cornhill, seems to have been the resort of some of the principal wits of the time, chiefly those of the Jonsonian school; and Beaumont gives us the following fascinating account of their meetings, in his poetical epistle to Ben Jonson :

"What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whom 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

Wit able enough to justify the town

For three days past; wit that might warrant be

For the whole city to talk foolishly

Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone
We left an air behind us, which alone

of faith in the testimony of Drummond and Howel, respecting Jonson's self-sufficiency and harsh censure of his contemporaries, and who are not satisfied with the manner in which that gentleman has explained away every passage in old literature, which seems to indicate an enmity, or even coolness, between him and Shakspeare at one part of their lives, (and particularly that very strong passage in The Return from Parnassus,) are set down as despisers of his genius, who find nothing to admire in his works. If we were to regulate our poetical taste according to this standard, and to condemn every production whose author may be charged with some defect, or failing, in the moral constitution of his mind, how many works of genius would be removed from our admiration!

Was able to make the two next companies

Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise.

Seward, in quoting this passage in his preface, exclaims, with considerable eloquence, and certainly with a degree of enthusiasm which is easily communicated to every admirer of our ancient dramatists, C6 Now, reader, when thou art fired with 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 clubroom, 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?" Undoubtedly such an assemblage of wits cannot be paralleled by any succeeding age in this country; nor can the meetings at Will's and Button's in Queen Anne's time, infuriated by party, bear any comparison to the social intercourse at the Mermaid and the Devil taverns in the reign of King James.

The particular intimacy which took place be

tween Beaumont and Ben Jonson seems to have commenced at a very early period. The former addressed a most judicious copy of verses to his friend on his comedy of The Fox, at the early age of nineteen; and the encomiums which he bestowed at subsequent periods of his life on The Silent Woman and on Catiline, as well as the poetical epistle quoted above, indicate the warmest and most genuine attachment to the great dramatic satirist of the manners of his age, which was returned with equal ardour by the latter, as is strongly evinced by the short copy of verses beginning,

"How I do love thee, Beaumont, and thy muse,
That unto me dost such religion use!"

Ben Jonson seems to have had the highest veneration for the genius of his youthful friend; and the manner in which he acknowledges the value he set upon his approbation, proves that he considered it worth more than the most fulsome eulogies of his flatterers and his imitators.

When death had deprived Fletcher of his bosom-friend, and the companion and assistant of his poetical studies, he had an opportunity of proving to the world that his widowed genius was sufficient for the production of numerous drama