thus mentioned by Cartwright, in his verses prefixed to the folio collection of 1647:

"Though when all Fletcher writ, and the entire
Man was indulged unto that sacred fire,

His thoughts, and his thoughts' dress, appeared 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 called his judge into his fame,
And, for that aid, allowed 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."

To the same purpose the verses of Harris may be quoted, who, speaking of Fletcher's muse,

says

"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."

These assertions have been very generally considered as injurious to the fame of Beaumont; and Seward, in particular, took up his cause against those, who, in his opinion, wished to enhance their praises of Fletcher at the expence

of his previous associate, with great warmth, but, unfortunately, with little knowledge of the subject. Long before, Dr Mayne, in a decided manner, endeavoured to refute these reports. Addressing the shades of both our poets, he says

"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;
Whether one found the matter, the other dress,
Or the one disposed what the 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.”

Sir John Birkenhead is still more explicit to the

same purpose :—

"Some think your wits of two complexions framed,
That one the sock, th' other the buskin claimed ;
That, should the stage embattle all its force,
Fletcher would lead the foot, Beaumont the horse :
But you were both for both, not semi-wits;
Each piece is wholly two, yet never splits:
Ye are not two faculties, and one soul still,
He th' understanding, thou the quick free-will;
Not as two voices in one song embrace,
Fletcher's keen treble, and deep Beaumont's base;
Two, full, congenial souls; still both prevailed;
His muse and thine were quartered, not empaled:
Both brought your ingots, both toiled at the mint,
Beat, melted, sifted, till no dross stuck in't;

Then in each other's scales weighed every grain,
Then smoothed and burnished, then weighed all again;
Stamped both your names upon't at one bold hit,
Then, then 'twas coin, as well as bullion-wit.",

It must, however, be observed, that a tradition so strongly supported as that of Beaumont's lopping the luxuriances of Fletcher's imagination, must have had some foundation in reality. The powers of judgment which he possessed are often celebrated by his contemporaries; and Dryden says that he was even consulted by Ben Jonson in the plotting of his plays. But to confine Beaumont's talents to that particular is certainly in the highest degree unjust. He undoubtedly produced a great portion of those plays in which his name is joined to that of Fletcher; and amongst these are some of their most masterly productions. The latter certainly run into the extremes of license and carelessness in some of the plays in which he had not the benefit of his friend's superior judgment, though in every other species of poetical talent he equalled, and, in most respects, excelled him. The great demand for the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, as well as the testimony of many writers, prove their great popularity during their lifetime. Some of their dramas, however, and

particularly those of an early date, had to encounter all the severity of the censure of the audience. It has already been observed, that that admirable burlesque, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, was damned, probably by the exertions of the London citizens; and that The Faithful Shepherdess and The Coxcomb met with a similar fate, the latter on account of its length. From Richard Brome's verses on Monsieur Tho mas, it would seem that several other plays of Fletcher's met with an unfavourable reception. Speaking of that comedy, he says→→→

2

"And yet perhaps it did participate
At first presenting but of common fate;
When Ignorance was judge, and but a few
What was legitimate, what bastard, knew.
The world's grown wiser now;3 each man can say,
If Fletcher made it, 'tis an excellent play."

The popularity of our poets was not in the least diminished when the public could no longer expect novelty of entertainment from their pens. A great number of their pieces continued to occupy the stage, and many of their earliest productions were revived for the court, notwith

2 Vol. VI. p. 419.

3 In 1639, when Brome published this comedy.

standing most of the other plays acted before the royal family at Christmas, and other seasons of festivity, were the new performances produced during the year at the public theatres.

When the civil wars destroyed monarchy, the stage, as a kind of appendage to the magnificence of a royal residence, suffered a complete defeat; and the admirers of the theatre were obliged to have recourse to private and illegal opportunities to enjoy their favourite entertainment. Sometimes plays were acted with great caution at the Cock-pit theatre; and sometimes the players bribed the commander of the guard at Whitehall to suffer them to perform for a few days; but they were continually liable to the rude interruptions of Cromwell's independent martialists; and on one occasion, while presenting the tragedy of Rollo, they were surprised and carried to prison. Kirkman, in the preface to The Wits, or Sport upon Sport, a collection of drolls or farces, extracted from the most popular plays, and principally from those of Beaumont and Fletcher," printed in 1672, gives us the following curious and lively ac

• Wright's Historia Histrionica.

Of the twenty pieces collected in Kirkman's volume, ten are taken from the plays of our poets.