They were both extremely remarkable for their ready flow of wit in conversation as well as composition, and gentlemen that remembered them, says Shirley, declare that on every occasion they talked a comedy. As therefore they were so twinned in genius, worth, and wit, so lovely and pleasant in their lives, after death, let not their fame be ever again divided.

And now, reader, when thou art fired into 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 club-room at the Mermaid, on a night when Shakespeare, Donn, 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;

Held

"For wit is like a rest,

up at tennis, which men do the best

With the best gamesters. 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 whence they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolv'd 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 cancell'd; and when that was gone

We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise."

BEAUMONT'S LETTER to JONSON, vol. x.

Hitherto the reader has received only the portraits of our authors without any proof of the similitude and justice of the draught; nor can we hope that will appear just from a mere cursory view of the originals. Many people read plays chiefly for the sake of the plot, hurrying still on for that discovery. The happy contrivance of surprising but natural incidents is certainly a very great beauty in the drama, and little writers have often made their advantages of it; they could contrive incidents to embarrass and perplex the plot, and by that alone have succeeded and pleased, without perhaps a single life of nervous poetry, a single sentiment worthy of memory, without a passion worked up with natural vigour, or a character of any distinguished marks. The best poets have rarely made this dramatic mechanism their point. Neither Sophocles, Euripides, Terence, Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, or Jonson, are at all remarkable for forming a labyrinth of incidents and entangling their readers in a pleasing perplexity: our late dramatic poets learnt this from the French, and they from romancewriters and novelists. We could almost wish the readers of Beaumont and Fletcher to drop the expectation of the event of each story, to attend with more care to the beauty and energy of the sentiments, diction, passions, and characters. Every good author pleases more, the more he is examined; (hence perhaps that partiality of editors to their own authors; by a more intimate acquaintance, they discover more of their beauties than they do of others) especially when the stile and manner are quite oldfashioned, and the beauties hid under the uncouthness of the dress. The

taste

taste and fashion of poetry varies in every age, and though our old dramatic writers are as preferable to the modern as Vandyke and Rubens to our modern painters, yet most eyes must be accustomed to their manner before they can discern their excellencies. Thus the very best plays of Shakespeare were forced to be dressed fashionably by the poetic taylors of the late ages before they could be admitted upon the stage, and a very few years since his comedies in general were under the highest contempt. Few, very few durst speak of them with any sort of regard, till the many excellent criticisms upon that author made people study him, and some excellent actors revived these comedies, which completely opened men's eyes; and it is now become as fashionable to admire as it had been to decry them.

Shakespeare therefore even in his second-best manner being now generally admired, we shall endeavour to prove that his second-rate and our author's first-rate beauties are so near upon a par that they are scarce distinguishable. A preface allows not room for sufficient proofs of this, but we will produce at least some parallels of poetic diction and sentiments, and refer to some of the characters and passions.

The instances will be divided into three classes: the first of passages where our authors fall short in comparison of Shakespeare; the second of such as are not easily discerned from him; the third of those where Beaumont and Fletcher have the advantage.

In The Maid's Tragedy there is a similar passage to one of Shakespeare, the comparison of which alone will be no bad scale to judge of their different excellencies. Melantius the general thus speaks of his friend Amintor.

"His worth is great, valiant he is and temperate,

And one that never thinks his life his own

If his friend need it: when he was a boy

As oft as I returned (as, without boast

I brought home conquest) he would gaze upon me,
And view me round, to find in what one limb
The virtue lay to do those things he heard;
Then would he wish to see my sword, and feel
The quickness of the edge, and in his hand
Weigh it. He oft would make me smile at this;
His youth did promise much, and his ripe years
Will see it all performed."

Vol. i. act i.

A youth gazing on every limb of the victorious chief, then begging his sword, feeling its edge, and poising it in his arm, are attitudes nobly expressive of the inward ardor and ecstasy of soul: but what is most. observable is,

"And in his hand

Weigh it- -He oft, &c."

By this beautiful pause or break, the action and picture continue in view, and the poet, like Homer, is eloquent in silence. It is a species of beauty that shews an intimacy with that father of poetry, in whom it occurs extremely often3. Milton has an exceeding fine one in the description of his Lazar-House.

"Despair

"Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch,

And over them triumphant Death his dart

Shook, but delay'd to strike, &c." PARADISE LOST, book xi. line 489.

3 See two noble instances at I. 141. of the 13th Book of the Iliad, and in the application of the same simile a few lines below.

VOL. I.

As

As Shakespeare did not study versification so much as those poets who were conversant in Homer and Virgil, I do not remember in him any striking instance of this species of beauty. But he even wanted it not, his sentiments are so amazingly striking, that they pierce the heart at once; and diction and numbers, which are the beauty and nerves adorning and invigorating the thoughts of other poets, to him are but like the bodies of angels, azure vehicles, through which the whole soul shines transparent. Of this take the following instance. The old Belarius in Cymbeline is describing the in-born royalty of the two princes whom he had bred up as peasants in his cave.

"This Paladour, (whom

The king his father call'd Guiderius) Jove!
When on my three-foot stool I sit, and tell
The warlike feats I've done, his spirits fly out
Into my story: Say thus mine enemy fell,
And thus I set my foot on's neck-even then
The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats,
Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture
That acts my words."-

-

CYMBELINE, act iii. scene iii.

Much the same difference as between these two passages occurs likewise in the following pictures of rural melancholy, the first of innocence forlorn, the second of philosophic tenderness.

"I have a boy

Sent by the gods I hope to this intent,
Not yet seen in the court. Hunting the buck
I found him sitting by a fountain-side,

Of which he borrow'd some to quench his thirst,
And paid the nymph again as much in tears;
A garland lay by him, made by himself
Of many several flowers, bred in the bay,
Stuck in that mystic order that the rareness
Delighted me: but ever when he turn'd
His tender eyes upon them, he would weep,
As if he meant to make them grow again.
Seeing such pretty helpless innocence ⚫
Dwell in his face, I ask'd him all his story;
He told me, that his parents gentle died,
Leaving him to the mercy of the fields,

Which gave him roots, and of the crystal springs
Which did not stop their courses; and the sun

Which still he thank'd him, yielded him his light.

Then took he up his garland, and did shew,

What every flower, as country people hold,

Did signify; and how all, order'd thus,

Exprest his grief; and to my thoughts did read

The prettiest lecture of his country art

That could be wish'd, so that methought I could
Have studied it."—

PHILASTER, vol. i. act i.

Jaques, in As You Like It, is moralizing upon the fate of the deer goared by the hunters in their native confines.

"The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,

To day my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him, as he lay along

Under

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequestered stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th' extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Duke. But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

1 Lord. Oh, yes, into a thousand similies.
First, for his weeping in the needless stream;
Poor deer, quoth he, thou mak'st a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much; then being alone
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends:
'Tis right, quoth he, thus misery doth part
The flux of company: Anon a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,
And never stays to greet him: Ay, quoth Jaques,
Sweep on, ye fat and greasy
fat and greasy citizens,
"Tis just the fashion, &c."

AS YOU LIKE IT, act ii. scene i.

Shakespeare is certainly much preferable, but 'tis only as a Raphael is preferable to a Guido-Philaster alone would afford numbers of passages similar to some of Shakespeare's, upon which the same observation will hold true, they are not equal to his very best manner, but they approach near it. As I have mentioned Jonson being in poetic energy about the same distance below our authors, as Shakespeare is above them, I shall quote three passages which seem to me in this very scale. Jonson translates verbatim from Sallust great part of Catiline's speech to his soldiers,

but adds in the close:

"Methinks I see Death and the Furies waiting

What we will do; and all the Heaven at leisure
For the great spectacle. Draw then your swords;
And if our Destiny envy our Virtue

The honour of the day, yet let us care

To sell ourselves at such a price, as may

Undo the world to buy us; and make Fate

While she tempts ours, fear for her own estate."

CATILINE, act v.

Jonson has here added greatly to the ferocity, terror, and despair of Catiline's speech, but it is consonant to his character both in his life and death. The image in the three first lines is extremely noble, and may be said to emulate though not quite to reach the poetic ecstasy of the following passage in Bonduca. Suetonius the Roman general having his small army hemmed round by multitudes, tells his soldiers that the number of the foes,

"Is but to stick more honour on your actions,

Load you with virtuous names, and to your memories
Tie never-dying Time and Fortune constant.

Go on in full assurance, draw your swords

As daring and as confident as Justice.

The Gods of Rome fight for ye; loud Fame calls ye
Pitch'd on the topless Apennine, and blows

The

To all the under world, all nations, seas,
And unfrequented desarts where the snow dwells;
Wakens the ruin'd monuments, and there

Informs again the dead bones with your virtues

The four first lines are extremely nervous, but the image which appears to excel the noble one of Jonson above, as Fame pitched on mor at Apennine (whose top is supposed viewless from its stupendous height) and from thence sounding their virtues so loud that the dead awake and are reanimated to hear them. The close of the sentiment is extremely in the spirit of Shakespeare and Milton; the former says of a storm-

"That with the hurly Death itself awakes;"

Milton in Comus, describing a lady's singing, says;

He took in sounds that might create a soul

Under the ribs of Death."

To return to Shakespeare-With him we must soar far above the topless Apennine, and there behold an image much nobler than our author's Fame.

"For now sits Expectation in the air 4,

And hides a sword from hilts unto the point
With crowns imperial."-

CHORUS in HENRY V. act ii. scene i.

As we shall now go on to the second class, and quote passages where the hand of Shakespeare is not so easily discerned from our author's, if the reader happens to remember neither, it may be entertaining to be left to guess at the different hands. Thus each of them describing a beautiful boy.

The other is

"Dear lad, believe it,

For they shall yet belie thy happy years

That say thou art a man: Diana's lip

Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe
Is as the maidens organ, shrill, and sound,
And all is semblative a woman's part."

"Alas! what kind of grief can thy years know?

Thy brows and cheeks are smooth as waters be
When no breath troubles them: believe me, boy,
Care seeks out wrinkled brows and hollow eyes,
And builds himself caves to abide in them."

[* Is but to stick, &c.]—Mr. Seward has in this passage amended the punctuation, which in the former copies materially injured the sense. The reader is desired to consult the lection of the present edition, and note 41 act iii. scene ii. of The Tragedy of Bonduca, vol. ii. p. 323-4.

4 For now sits Expectation, &c.] See Mr. Warburton's just observation on the beauty of the imagery here. But, as similar beauties do not always strike the same taste alike, another passage in this play that seems to deserve the same admiration is rejected by this great man as not Shakespeare's. The French King speaking of the Black Prince's victory at Cressy, says, "While that his mountain Sire, on mountain standing, Up in the air crown'd with the golden sun,

Saw his heroic seed, and smil'd to see him
Mangle the work of Nature."

HENRY V. act ii. scene 4.

I have marked the line rejected, " and which seems to breathe the full soul of Shakespeare.” The reader will find a defence and explanation of the whole passage in note 43 act iv. scene i. of Thierry and Theodoret, vol. iii, of this edition.

The