now rapidly-a swell now, now a swoon, till every mood of thought found its proper echo in the metre. But such a style of modulation is the last perfection of human language, which none has ever yet reached, perhaps ever will reach. Even to approach it demands much more consummate skill than our two dramatists possessed. Their peculiar rhythm has so little about it Eolian, that it has scarce any music at all except in some petted passages: ease is not music, gracefulness is not music, smoothness-nay suavity, is not music. To ensure music, lines must be full of sound, or soundingness, which results from principles in diametrical opposition to those of our authors,-from single endings, even pauses, sonorous terminative words, sustained tone, and regular cadence or tread of the numbers. Reverse principles are useful now and then to give this system variety, and introduce apt discords, the resolution of which back again into concord, pleases beyond unbroken concord itself. There is more virtue in rhythm than it has credit for,—a virtue productive of secret and remote effects, perhaps seldom thought of. Imagination and passion are beyond doubt the prime constituents of poetry, but to complete its distinct nature, rhythm would seem an attribute, however subordinate, little less useful than either. Thus to specialise man's nature, clay unites with the Spirit of God and the breath; these nobler adjuncts, reason and life, requiring as their presence-room the harmonical system of parts, called human form, ere they can render themselves apparent, like imagination and passion seeking the rhythmical form of language, called Song, wherein their divine properties might be rendered more manifest. Without rhythm,-that is, some obvious law of successive sounds, strict or loose,-how should poetry at once distinguish itself from Oratory, Picturesque History, and so forth? There may be as much imagination and passion in a speech from Demosthenes or Livy, as in one from Homer or Virgil: what except the degree of rhythm* observed, assigns at once the former to rhetorical art, and the latter to poetical? Granted, the kind of imagination and passion used is often a sufficient distinguisher, apart from the absence or presence of rhythm: it constitutes, for example, the address of Brutus after Cæsar's death an oration, Antony's an oratorical-poetic harangue. But neither kind nor measure of these qualities will always furnish a clear test, nor often indeed any: Burke's speeches are not poems, yet imaginative and impassioned in the poetical kind; Bacon's Essays are more imaginative than half the works produced by professed fancy-mongers, yet who calls these Essayst poems, except as a compliment or a feat of logic? Nevertheless, rhythm to poetry is like clay to man—the perishable form, not part of the essence; strip this form from both, and they will both remain immortal things. Rhythm I should maintain was chiefly valuable as an inspirer, and needful to the poet rather than the poem. We must all have remarked the inspiring nature of notemusic-what numberless ideas, visions, emotions, passions, it suggests; what creators it makes us! Every true poet has a song in his mind, the notes of which, little as they precede his thoughts-so little as to seem simultaneous with them-do precede, suggest, and inspire many of these, modify and beautify them. That poet who has none of this dumb music going on within him, will neither produce any by his versification, nor prove an imaginative or impassioned writer: he will want the harmoniser which attunes heart, and mind, and soul, the mainspring that sets them in movement together. Rhythm, thus, as an enrapturer of the poet, mediately exalts him as a creator, and augments all his powers. A good system of rhythm becomes, therefore, momentous both for its own sake to the reader, and because it is the poet's latent inspirer. If this be allowed, choice or change of rhythm may entail important consequences to our National Poetry. We should not therefore, I submit, adopt Beaumont and Fletcher's style, till its superior merits are demonstrated. Now, a Teutonesque consonantal language like ours, will, however polished, * Prose has its rhythm, but of that latent description not recognisable, though its charm peradventure is, by common ears. Hence I use the words "obvious" and "degree." Except in this general way, human powers will, I fear, demarcate the lower from the upper firmament as soon as prose from poetry. ↑ Bacon himself, it is plain, would not call them so, when he pronounced poetry "the shadow of a lie," and quotes with much complacency one of the Fathers who christened it "vinum dæmonum.” want sufficient melodiousness,-not simply freedom, or ease, or smoothness, but music: in particular does our blank verse want this attribute, as will be plain to any one who considers how few of our great poets besides Shakspeare and Milton have written it with strength free from pompous rattle, and sweetness from drawl. Beaumont and Fletcher, to my sense, have not done so; their style is seldom vigorous except when inflated, nor often melodious without being somewhat mawkish. Besides, their most characteristic verse deserves too much the appellation of blank doggerel, and reminds us of Burletta metre: "Why should he shake at sounds, that lives in a smith's forge?" This is precisely the grotesque metre of "Midas:" Chances, Act V. Sc. 2. "Pan. So, Squire! well met-I flew to know your business. Butler, who admired our poets, and may have taken a hint for "Hudibras" from their "Knight of the Burning Pestle," scarely parodies their favourite rhythm: his is the same, in a shorter measure : "Quoth he, my love, as adamantine As chains of destiny, I'll maintain." Massinger belongs to Beaumont and Fletcher's school, but was a better artist, and modulates with more skill, without almost any music in his verse whatever just as a scientifical pianist can run correctly, nay harmoniously, through all the keys, yet produce no melody. His verse is built up with exquisite colloquial gusto, one pitch above prose. His was the Musa Pedestris, and he himself for prosaic temper, as well as development of deep feeling and dark passion, an earlier Lillo. Fletcher (to judge from his known plays) had a fine natural ear, but fickle taste, and hits off, by a sort of chance-medley, beautiful modulations at times, when he lays aside his mannerism. If Beaumont by his judgment "checked what Fletcher writ," (as Pope says after Langbaine and Aubrey,) if he did indeed check that mannerism, his death, perhaps, deprived us of more works like "Philaster" and the "Maid's Tragedy;" very little of it, and all Fletcher's sweetness concentrated, appears in these dramas.-I submit the foregoing remarks, with much deference, to critical judgment less fallible than mine; but have stated them with frankness, because every man must hold opinions, and they are only blameable, however erroneous, when given with presumption. It now remains for me to offer a few promiscuous observations upon some of our authors' most remarkable works. Their five master-pieces have been noticed already. I must nevertheless quote from one of them, the celebrated "picture," as illustrating Beaumont and Fletcher's best style of sentiment and versification conjoined: Aspatia deserted by her lover, tells her maid thus to delineate in a piece of needlework Ariadne forsaken on a desert island: "Do it by me; Do it again, by me, the lost Aspatia, And you shall find all true but the wild island. Suppose I stand upon the sea-beach now, Mine arms thus, and mine hair blown with the wind, Wild as that desert; and let all about me Be teachers of my story. Do my face (If thou hadst ever feeling of a sorrow) Thus, thus, Antiphila! Strive to make me look Like Sorrow's monument; and the trees about me, Maid's Tragedy, Act II. Sc. 2. Mr. Campbell remarks of this passage, that Aspatia's “fancy takes part with her heart, and gives its sorrow a visionary gracefulness." His just observation might be extended to the whole character, which is the perfect ideal of a love-lorn maiden. Admirable as are these five master-pieces, perhaps the "Knight of the Burning Pestle " exceeds them in one particular-dramatical (distinguished from theatrical) merit. It is composed with an art almost equal to Ben Jonson's; with nativer and mellower humour, though less caustic. The characters are depicted forcibly and naturally, and consistently, from first to last: none by Shakspeare are better sustained than those of the Citizen and his Wife, who patronise a play in the plenitude of purse-pride, and insist on their shopman Ralph being let to perform the chief part, to cut every Gordian knot like an Alexander the Great, and to come forward as a "Dominus-do-all" whenever they please to see him. It combines two different satires-against citizen-ignorance and preposterous chivalry-into one plot, yet keeps them distinct throughout. Butler must have owed as much to the "Knight of the Burning Pestle" as this did to "Don Quixote." It is the first regular Mock-Heroic play in our language. Amongst the other dramas I can discern none of like solid composition and sound humour to what this piece exhibits, unless it be "The Scornful Lady." Judging from internal evidence, both these comedies appear to be written for the most part by one hand, and that not the hand of Fletcher, if we take our idea of his style from his known productions. I should therefore guess these two works by Beaumont chiefly. The latter was once very popular: I suspect it to have been a mine of valuable hints to various plagiarists. Addison, as he himself confessed, took his character of Vellum in the "Drummer" from Savil in this play. Swift's humorous notion of spendthrifts stretching a Will to suit their desires (see "Tale of a Tub,") is precisely similar to Young Loveless's interpretation for like purposes of his brother's living testament (Act I. Scene 2). Boniface's encomium upon Ale, in the "Beaux Stratagem," seems, as Farquhar was a notorious imitator of our poets, inspired by Young Loveless's upon the same beverage : Nat. Lee's celebrated interjection-"Then he would talk, good gods! how he would talk!" is almost identical with the Elder Loveless's Massinger's still more famous "Kiss close!" occurs in Act II., Sc. 2. So many coincidences suggest the belief of plagiarisms, if they do not establish it. As I am upon this subject, let me cite another coincidence between Pope and Fletcher, not to my knowledge pointed out before. Pope, in his "Essay on Man," has the well-known line "An honest man's the noblest work of God." Fletcher, in his poem on "An Honest Man's Fortune," gave the same criterion for human perfection "Man is his own star; and that soul that can Be honest, is the only perfect man." This poem contains many beautiful expressions and elevated thoughts, among which latter I cannot place the above-said aphorism: if Pope stole, he should have improved it, for it is false, and degrading to man, derogatory to God. An honest man is no more the noblest work of God than an honest book is the noblest of a writer: an honest able book is nobler than a dull book were it ever so honest, and Aristides nobler with the genius of a Homer or the wisdom of a Solon than Aristides with a clown's ignorance or a blockhead's understanding. Fletcher came nearer the truth elsewhere "An honest wise man is a prince's mate."-Triumph of Love. Sc. 2. I have before mentioned that Farquhar took his "Inconstant" from Fletcher's "Wildgoose Chase," a production which responds well to its name, being a wild-witted, mercurial comedy, the scenes running away after one another with agreeable swiftness. Various parts of the "Humorous Lieutenant" are well written, but the character that gives name to the play is somewhat fantastic and exaggerated-Lucullus's soldier in masquerade : Celia has more natural spirit, and completes herself as a portrait of hot-brained, high-souled Devotedness without caricature.* "Monsieur Thomas," "The Chances," ""Rule a Wife and Have a Wife," are dramas which will keep a careless temper in a state of perpetual exhilaration, and a fastidious one in a state of as perpetual regret that so much vis comica had been frittered away instead of rendered more effective by compactness. This indeed we might pronounce of almost all Beaumont and Fletcher's comedies; they appear scratched off each with the same unmended pen, wonderful for rough draughts, but requiring to be every one re-written-provisional pieces, like Shakspeare's first "Merry Wives of Windsor," not finished plays like his second. La Writ in "The Little French Lawyer," seems a character naturally conceived, extravagantly developed the pettifogger, from hap-hazard success as a combatant setting up as a duellist, has many a real prototype, but to represent him insane is not to show him infatuated. "The Spanish Curate" comprises several characters-Bartolus a covetous lawyer, Lopez the curate, Diego his sexton-of clear outline and skilful contexture; if less striking than those of "Rule a Wife and Have a Wife," they are, I think, less over-strained: it may perhaps on the whole be numbered amongst our author's wittiest comedies. Mr. Hallam observes that Congreve borrowed the under-plot of his "Old Bachelor" from that of Bartolus and his Wife, "without by any means equalling it." Most critics have ranked "The Elder Brother" as a first-rate effort, some have found it very elegant and poetical; I fear to say the reader will find it more than tolerable. Dryden's "Cymon and Iphigenia" resembles it in plot; Cibber composed his "Love Makes a Man" out of it and "The Custom of the Country," which latter has been also given much applause by classical taste, and therefore can dispense with my scantier tribute. No one vaunts its decorousness, except Lovelace, who considers it as fit reading for a college of Seraphic Doctors: "View here a loose thought said with such a grace, So well disguised that 'twas conceived by none, "Bonduca "-"Wit without Money' "The Beggars' Bush "The Loyal Subject ""Rollo, or the Bloody Brother "_" Women Pleased "-may be cited as works of particular merit. Amidst much rant and flutter, "Bonduca" contains some fine poetry; amidst a mob of undistinguishable, over-drawn characters, one good one-Caratach-whose name the drama should rather assume, as he is the chief personage, and his actions form the chief subject. I cannot resist giving here from this work probably the sublimest effort of poetical imagination in Beaumont and Fletcher: Suetonius addresses his soldiers before battle ⚫ I had no control over the text of these volumes, which were printed from Weber's edition, but several passages of The Humorous Lieutenant," given in italics, were taken from the Rev. A. Dyce's edition of it, under another name, "Demetrius and Enanthe," published by Rodd, 1830. d We may observe how the music of this passage is marred by that heretical rhythm in two lines (fourth and sixth), against which I ventured a protest. Mr. Campbell commends "The Double Marriage," and describes Juliana, the heroine, as "a fine idol of imagination, rather than a probable type of nature." Her self-sacrifice approaches yet nearer to idiotism, and her humble-mindedness to meanness, than these qualities of our authors' idols do generally they seldom make me, so much as I should wish, a worshipper. He quotes, also, the scene from "Rollo," of Edith pleading for her father's life; and Charles Lamb, that of her revenge against the tyrant. If I am frugal in panegyric, these references to abler, as well as more liberal judges, will supply the defect. "Wit without Money" has a solid, Beaumontesque air; "The Loyal Subject," a Fletcher-like freedom, with some vigour, and more exaggeration.* In "The Beggars' Bush," a play of too melodramatic a cast, we find Thieves' gibberish, or Newgate cant, introduced. Shakspeare has been deemed part-author, with Fletcher, of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," from a superiority to Fletcher's usual style, and a resemblance to Shakspeare's. Imitation of the latter poet by the former might account in some degree for both these facts, if such a lower artist imitating a higher, will often surpass himself; he makes a greater effort, and has a nobler model, than usual. The other Fine Arts offer frequent examples of this. But it is quite possible, also, that Shakspeare may have contributed towards "The Two Noble Kinsmen:" not only are several speeches (vide Act V. sc. 1, 2, 3) after his "enormous" style of conception, but his enormous style of handling or versification, so different from Fletcher's. Palamon supplicates the statue of Mars : "O great corrector of enormous times, Shaker of o'er-rank states, thou grand decider Thy signs auspiciously, and in thy name "Thou mighty one, that with thy power hast turn'd The teeming Ceres' foyzon; who dost pluck With hand omnipotent from forth blue clouds The mason'd turrets; that both mak`st and break st The stony girths of cities; me thy pupil, Youngest follower of thy drum, instruct this day With military skill, that to thy laud I may advance my streamer, and by thee Be styled the lord o' the day! Give me, great Mars, Act V. Sc. 1. Act V. Sc. 1. In "The Wife for a Month," Naples is called an island, which parallels the maritime Bohemia of Shakspeare. I have nothing better to say, yet perhaps this is enough, of "The Nice Valour," than that it contains a sentimental Song which suggested Milton's Penseroso "Hence, all you vain delights," &c. This song may be taken as an epitome of the valetudinarian interestingness, the delicateness implying want of perfect wholesomeness, which hangs about all Beaumont and Fletcher's more serious productions. Certain of their Lyrics are very good, especially the Anacreontic. "God Lyæus ever young" in "Valentinian," breathes a fine spirit of Bacchanalian enthusiasm. But the string our lyrists touched most often, was that which, like the Teian bard's, "responded love;" and which often did so with exquisite sweetness "The very twang of Cupid's bow sung to it." This play contains a singular anticipation: the Scene is at Moscow, and an Ancient observes "This city would make a marvellous fine bonfire, Act I. Sc. 3. Pope "stole wisely" a remarkable idea concerning the transformation of Maids, in his "Rape of the Lock,' from Act IV. Sc. 2. |