only, and by readers such as those to whom the author, on printing it, scornfully appealed, from the common prate of common people.' If we compare it with Jonson's fine fragment, The Sad Shepherd,' we find it, as usual, superior in poetical description, inferior in dramatic strength. Its lyrical beauty had evidently made a deep impression on the youthful mind of Milton; and it is much higher above Guarini's Pastor Fido,' its immediate original, than it is below Tasso's Aminta,' which likewise came before it. We will not compare any of these poems with the Comus,'-the only perfect specimen of this difficult and anomalous kind of dramatic composition.

The Masque of the Inns of Court,' written by Beaumont three years afterwards, was intended to celebrate the inauspicious marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to the Count Palatine. This short sketch is picturesquely conceived; it is full of lively images and felicitous expressions. Nor, can we look with indifference on a piece, in the representation of which it is recorded that Francis Bacon, then Attorney-General, took an active interest. Alas for Bacon! Well would it have been for him had all his acts of courtiership been as innocent as the countenance and loving 'affection' which he here showed to the work of a man of kindred though weaker genius.

Yet Beaumont's Masque will no way bear comparison with Fletcher's Pastoral: and certainly his part in the volume of miscellaneous poems, first published with his name in 1640, and his juvenile attempts formerly described, give no support to those who maintain that Beaumont was the greater genius of the two. But we need not enter too curiously into a question, which their love for each other, and for their common labours, has not chosen, it would seem, to leave us the materials for determining. They were yet young when death dissolved their partnership.

To the period before Beaumont's death may be referred certainly one, and perhaps two tragedies, not yet named. The first is Thierry and Theodoret,' a piece stuffed full of horrors, and abounding in strained situations; but instinct with passion and energy, and presenting one scene, the unveiling of Ordella, which Charles Lamb considered to be the finest the poets ever wrote. Commendation even higher has been given to the death-scene of the princely boy Hengo. The sweet pathos of this scene, the heroism of Caratach, and the occasional bursts of poetry and lofty thought, which animate the tragedy of Bonduca,' redeem it from the neglect to which its ill-contrived plot, and its gross want of harmony and feeling, must otherwise have condemned it.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle,' another of the early works, is a kind of stepping-stone from the tragic to the comic,

a transition-stratum between the primitive simplicity of The Maid's Tragedy,' and the rich but foul commixture of the later comedies. It is a twofold satire. Directly it ridicules the chivalrous romances, striking a note which had scarcely as yet been heard by the people of England; since Don Quixote, although evidently known to the authors of this play, did not appear in the earliest English translation till the year after. Indirectly, but quite unequivocally, it ridicules also the chivalrous dramas of Heywood, especially his Four Prentices of London,' and exhibits in humorous caricature the London citizens who delighted in those representations. The ordinary penalty was paid for an attack on popular delusions. The play was damned. It exhibits, however, an infinity of broad humour, both in character and in incident: its plot is well laid, and is carried out with great skill and consistency; there are some fine descriptions in it; and occasionally, though less clearly than in the romance of Cervantes, it shows an involuntary and interesting sympathy with the attractive extravagances which it was designed to parody.

These works were accompanied and succeeded by several comedies, the best of which were, The Scornful Lady,' and The Honest Man's Fortune.' The tone of the comedies indicated the progress towards that style of thought and composition, by which, when he was left alone, Fletcher was to recommend himself to the equivocal taste of his own age, and that of the Restoration.

And how soon was he to be left alone! The intimate personal communion of the friends had been impaired by the marriage of Beaumont. Three years afterwards he was dead. He died in March 1616, leaving two daughters-one of whom is said to have married a Scottish colonel, and to have lived in Scotland; and the other to have become a dependent, and afterwards a pensioner, of the ducal family of Ormond. At the time of his death, Beaumont was certainly not more than thirtyone years of age, and perhaps even younger. His affectionate brother, and his shrewd friend Corbet, agreed in assigning the same cause for his premature decay. The ever-active mind had worn out its infirm tabernacle. Wit's a disease consumes men ' in few years.'

A generation later, another tribute was paid to his memory; a tribute, too, poor in poetic worth, but precious as coming from a brave and gentle spirit. It was penned by his kinsman the gallant Lisle, him of whom Clarendon says, that he never had an enemy. We think, as we peruse it, of the frightful struggle which was about to convulse England, and of the bloody grave in which, within a few months, the writer was to sleep. When we read some of the

other commendatory verses prefixed to the first collected edition of these dramas, we are painfully reminded of some of the darkest features which must have deformed the face of contemporary society. It is absolutely startling to hear Beaumont and Fletcher commended, not only for poetical and dramatic excellence, but also for moral purity, and for a steady design to promote the cause of virtue. Such praises are lavished on them, not only by Lovelace and other rakish cavaliers, but by thoughtful and serious men like Habington and Thomas Stanley. The verdict of the laity is confirmed by the clerical authority of Cartwright and Mayne, and receives an episcopal sanction from Bishop Earle. We do not know whether Beaumont had been a restraint on his friend; but it is certain that Fletcher afterwards pandered to the evil tendencies of the time with less reserve. There is no ascertained date to The Custom of the Country,' the most immoral play of the series, though at the same time one of the most ingenious. But several pieces, known to belong to Fletcher's later years, display a systematic grossness, of which the earlier works, reprehensible though they are in parts, offer no example. The licentiousness, indeed, is such, that a parallel must be sought, not in the older and higher works of our drama, but in those of its approaching decay; not in the coarsely stern morality of Jonson and Massinger, nor even in the less pure works of Webster, Middleton, and Ford, but in the lubricity of the representations, to which the court of Charles the First appears to have turned aside for relaxation, if not for comfort, when desirous of forgetting for a time the threatening realities out of doors. Indeed, there is but a short step from Shirley, or from Fletcher in his latter days, to Wycherley and Congreve-from the morality of The Spanish Curate' and The Lady of Pleasure,' to that of The Country Wife' and The Double Dealer.' But this is a repulsive theme. It is more pleasant to mark the genius which inspires so warmly the best of Fletcher's later works, and which is never entirely wanting in the very lowest of them.

The list contains several tragedies. Of these 'The Bloody Brother,' The False One,' and The Double Marriage,' are the most attractive. Some of the later plays, while essentially comic, trespass on the domain of tragedy. Women Pleased,' and A Wife for a Month,' are among the best. The worst pieces of this class are, The Sea-Voyage' and The Island Princess.' The poet's tendencies, both to good and to evil, are very characteristically displayed in another group, which may be described as romantic or poetical comedies. They are, one and all of them, novels thrown into a dramatic form. They contain

much poetic fire and beauty, and much also that is interesting in character and in story. The most successful of these are the pleasingly conceived plays of The Pilgrim' and 'The Beggars' Bush.'

There remains to be mentioned among Fletcher's later pieces, another class, distinct from the two last-his comedies of intrigue. No plays of the series were so popular in their own day, and in the time of Charles II. ; none have contributed so much to maintain the name of Fletcher on the stage; and none are so well known to casual readers of the old English drama. These comedies present us with humorous scenes and personages modelled from ordinary life. Considered in their poetical aspect, they possess little value; they are not remarkable either for the nature or consistency of their characters, or for skill in the management of the plots. Several of them, however, make a nearer approach to excellence in their class, than our authors could attain while serving a more severe and ambitious muse. Accordingly, two or three of these plays have been held, by many critics, to be the best of the collection. The stories are felicitously selected for exciting a light and passing interest; and they abound in striking situations, successfully carried through for the purposes of the stage. With their airy wit, their overflowing animal spirits, their colloquial diction, and their playful characters, what more can the regular frequenters of a theatre desire ? We will mention some of them: For instance, The Woman's Prize,' in which the woman-tamer Petruchio is resuscitated in order to meet with his match; The Chances,' perhaps the best acting play of the series; Monsieur Thomas,' which is full of jovial humour and broad drollery; The Wildgoose Chase,' plundered and transprosed by Farquhar; The Spanish Curate,' a comedy of remarkable merit in point of art, and of very great demerit in point of morality; The Elder Brother,' converted with another of our plays into a comedy by Cibber; Rule a Wife and have a Wife,' which, with a few needful alterations, keeps its place on the stage, in virtue of the acting capabilities of the character of Leon.

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Fletcher's life of labour closed in his forty-sixth year. In August 1625, designing to pay a visit in Norfolk, he delayed his journey till he should be furnished with a suit of new clothes. The plague then raged in London; he was seized with it and died. He was buried, without monument or inscription, in the church of Saint Saviour's in Southwark. Not twenty years afterwards, the unfortunate Massinger was buried in the same cemetery; and, if we are to accept literally the assertion of one of their admirers, the two poets now lie together in the same unknown grave!

Fletcher had toiled in his vocation till his dying hour. In the last three years of his life, he certainly brought upon the stage twelve or thirteen plays; and he appears also to have been occupied in the composition of others, which, finished perhaps by surviving writers, were not produced till after his death. In one of these, The Lover's Progress,' which in its present shape contains passages that have been attributed to Massinger, there is a scene that of the merry ghost of the innkeeper-which used to be read with great delight by Sir Walter Scott.

The dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher continued long to be the most popular, or rather perhaps the most fashionable, of all stage-pieces. They were in high favour till the shutting of the theatres on the breaking out of the civil war; and, after the Restoration, we are told, that two of them were acted for one of Shakspeare's or of Jonson's. Dryden assigns, as the reason, the sprightliness of the comedies, and the pathos of the tragedies; but there were other causes less creditable to the works and to the age. In fact, they were displaced from the stage only by plays surpassing them in those moral defects, by which, we fear, much more than by their genius, they were recommended to the playgoers of the time of Charles the Second.

Meanwhile, a large proportion of the plays were known only to the frequenters of the theatres. Nine of the earlier of them, and no others, were printed successively in quarto, during Fletcher's lifetime; and seven others were subsequently printed in the same form before 1647. In this year, the theatres being closed, (a fortunate event for the preservation of many of our old dramas,) the players published a folio volume, containing thirty-four plays not previously printed, with a preface by the dramatist Shirley; which has severely tantalized later editors, by the writer's profession of possessing information which he does not condescend to communicate. Another play having afterwards appeared separately, the list was made up to fifty-one in the folio edition of 1679. This edition was reprinted in 1711, in seven octavo volumes, with the addition of the tragi-comedy of The Coro'nation,' now attributed to Shirley. In 1750 appeared the earliest critical edition, in ten octavo volumes. It was begun by Theobald, and completed by Sympson and Seward. Most of the notes and criticisms are feeble; and the editors are justly declared by Mr Dyce to have taken the most unwarrantable 'liberties with the text'-liberties, however, which, like Theobald's emendations on Shakspeare, include two or three lucky conjectures. A second critical edition, that of 1778, in ten volumes, was chiefly edited by George Colman the elder. Its

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