This stile runs through many of Beaumont's characters, besides LaWrit's, as Lazarillo, the Knight of the Burning-Pestle, Bessus's two Swordsmen, &c. and he has frequent allusions to and even parodies of the sublimest parts of Shakespeare; which both Mr. Sympson and Mr. Theobold look upon as sneers upon a poet of greater eminence than the supposed sneerer (a very great crime if true) but I believe it an entire mistake. The nature of this burlesque epic requires the frequent use of the most known and most acknowledged expressions of sublimity, which applied to low objects render them, not the author of those expressions, ridiculous. Almost all men of wit make the same use of Shakespeare and Milton's expressions in common conversation without the least thought of sneering either; and indeed if every quotation from Shakespeare thus jocularly applied is a real sneer upon him, then all burlesque sublime is a sneer upon the real sublime, and Beaumont sneered himself as well as Shakespeare.

From these three short specimens the reader will form, we hope, a just idea of the three stiles used in our author's Comedies, the sublime, the droll poetic, and the burlesque sublime. There is indeed a small mixture of prose, which is the only part of our old dramatic poets stile that moderns have vouchsafed to imitate. Did they acknowledge the truth, and confess their inability to rise to the spirit, vigour, and dignity of the other stiles, they were pardonable. But far from it, our reformed taste calls for prose only, and before Beaumont and Fletcher's plays can be endured by such Attic ears, they must be corrected into prose, as if, because well-brewed porter is a wholesome draught, therefore claret and burgundy must be dashed with porter before they were drinkable. For a true specimen of our modern taste, we will give the reader one cup of our author's wine thus porterized, and that by one who perfectly knew the palate of the age, who pleased it greatly in this very instance, and some of whose comedies have as much or more merit than any moderns except Congreve. Mr. Cibber has consolidated two of our author's plays, the Elder Brother, and the Custom of the Country, to form his Love makes a Man; or, the Fop's Fortune. In the former there are two old French noblemen, Lewis and Brisac; the first proud of his family and fortune, the other of his magisterial power and dignity; neither men of learning, and therefore both preferring courtly accomplishments, and the knowledge of the world, to the deepest knowledge of books, and the most extensive literature. Such characters exclude not good sense in general, but in that part of their characters only where their foibles lie; (as Polonius in Hamlet is a fool in his pedantic foibles, and a man of sense in all other instances) accordingly Fletcher makes Brisac and Lewis thus treat of a marriage between their children.

Bri. Good monsieur Lewis, I esteem myself
Much honour'd in your clear intent to join
Our ancient families, and make them one;
And 'twill take from my age and cares, to live
And see what you have purpos'd put in act;
Of which your visit at this present is

"For a further defence of our Authors from this imputation, see note 43 of The Little French Lawyer, and note 32 of The Woman-Hater. In both which there is a mistake with regard to the Author of those Plays. When I wrote the notes, I supposed it Fletcher, til Beaumont's letter at the end of The Nice Valour, gave me a key, which is given to the reader in the first section of the Preface, and which explains the difference of manner between Beaumont and Fletcher.

A hopeful

A hopeful omen; I each minute expecting
Th' arrival of my sons; I have not wrong'd
Their birth for want of means and education,
To shape them to that course each was addicted;
And therefore that we may proceed discreetly,
Since what's concluded rashly seldom prospers,
You first shall take a strict perusal of them,
And then from your allowance, your fair daughter
May fashion her affection.

Lew. Monsieur Brisac,

You offer fair and nobly, and I'll meet you
In the same line of honour; and, I hope,
Being blest with but one daughter, I shall not
Appear impertinently curious,

Though with my utmost vigilance and study,
I labour to bestow her to her worth:
Let others speak her form, and future fortune
From me descending to her, I in that
Sit down with silence.

Bri. You may, my lord, securely,

Since Fame aloud proclaimeth her perfections,
Commanding all mens tongues to sing her praises.

I quote not this as an instance of the sublime, but of our authors genteel dialogue enlivened by a few poetic figures, as in the last lines Fame is personised and commands the tongues of men. Now let us see this dialogue modernized: The names of the old gentlemen being changed to Antonio and Charino, they thus confer.

Ant. Without compliment, my old friend, I shall think myself much honour'd in your alliance; our families are both ancient, our children young, and able to support 'em; and I think the sooner we set 'em to work the better.

Cha. Sir, you offer fair and nobly, and shall find I dare meet you in the same line of honour; and I hope, since I have but one girl in the world, you won't think me a troublesome old fool, if I endeavour to bestow her to her worth; therefore, if you please, before we shake hands, a word or two by the bye, for I have some considerable questions to ask you.

Ant. Ask 'em.

Cha. Well, in the first place, you say you have two sons.

Ant. Exactly.

Cha. And you are willing that one of 'em shall marry my daughter?

Ant. Willing.

Cha. My daughter Angelina?

Ant. Angelina.

Cha. And you are likewise content that the said Angelina shall survey 'em both, and (with my allowance) take to her lawful husband, which of 'em she pleases?

Ant. Content.

Cha. And you farther promise, that the person by her (and me) so chosen (be it elder or younger) shall be your sole heir; that is to say, shall be in a conditional possession, of at least three parts of your estate. You know the conditions, and this you positively

promise?

Ant. To perform.

Cha. Why then, as the last token of my full consent and approbation, I give you my hand. Ant. There's mine.

Strike out an expression or two of Fletcher's, and a couple of grasiers would have put more sense into an ox-bargain. I blame not the Author,

if a man's customers resolve to pay the price of Champaign, and yet insist upon mild and stale, who would refuse it them? This is only a specimen of the taste of the late wonderfully enlightened age. But as Shakespeare and Milton have already in a good measure dispersed the clouds of prejudice which had long obscured their excellencies; it is to be hoped that our eyes are now inured to bear the lustre of such poets, who most resemble these suns of Britain. To such readers therefore who are desirous of becoming acquainted with the excellencies of Beaumont and Fletcher, I shall beg leave to recommend their plays to be read in the following order, beginning with which species they like best.*

[* Whimsical as this classing of our Authors' plays must appear, it is surely more whim`sical that Mr. Seward could not find a place in either class for those excellent comedies, The Mad Lover, and The Humorous Lieutenant.]

The

The reader will find many excellent things in this last class, for the plays of our authors do not differ from each other near so much as those of Shakespeare. The three last tragedies are detruded so low on account of their magic and machinery, in which our authors fall shorter of Shakespeare than in any other of their attempts to imitate him. What is the reason of this? Is it that their genius improved by literature and polite conversation, could well describe men and manners, but had not that poetic that creative power to form new beings and new worlds,

"and give to airy nothings

A local habitation and a name"

as Shakespeare excellently describes his own genius? I believe not. The enthusiasm of passions which Beaumont and Fletcher are so frequently rapt into, and the vast variety of distinguished characters which they have so admirably drawn, shew as strong powers of invention as the creation of witches and raising of ghosts. Their deficiency therefore in magic is accountable from a cause far different from a poverty of imagination; it was the accidental disadvantage of a liberal and learned education: Sorcery, witchcraft, astrology, ghosts, and apparitions, were then the universal belief of both the great vulgar and the small, nay they were even the parliamentary, the national creed; only some early-enlightened minds saw and contemned the whole superstitious trumpery: among these our authors were probably initiated from their school-days into a deep-grounded contempt of it, which breaks out in many parts of their works, and particularly in The Bloody Brother and The Fair Maid of the Inn, where they began that admirable banter which the excellent Butler carried on exactly in the same strain, and which, with such a second, has at last drove the bugbears from the minds of almost all 'men of common understanding. But here was our authors disadvantage; the taste of their age called aloud for the assistance of ghosts and sorcery to heighten the horror of tragedy; this horror they had never felt, never heard of but with contempt, and consequently they had no arche-types in their own breasts of what they were called on to describe, Whereas Shakespeare from his low education 12 had believed

12 Shakespeare from his low education, &c.] The gentleman who is most obliged to Shakespeare, and to whom Shakespeare is most obliged of any man living, happening to see the sheet of the Preface where Shakespeare's peculiar superiority over our authors in his magic, is ascribed to the accidental advantage of a low education, he could not well brook a passage which seemed to derogate from his favourite. As Shakespeare had as good sense as our authors, he thought, he would be as free from real superstition. This does not always follow. Education will tincture even the brightest parts. There is proof that our authors held all Sorcery, witchcraft, &c. as mere juggler's tricks, but not the least room to doubt of Shakespeare's having believed them in his youth, whatever he did afterwards; and this is all that is asserted. Is this therefore a derogation? No, it only shews the amazing power of his genius; a genius which could turn the bugbears of his former credulity into the noblest poetic machines. Just as Homer built his machinery on the superstitions which he had been bred up to. Both indeed give great distinction of characters, and great poetic dignity to the dæmons they introduce; nay, they form some new ones; but the system they build on is the vulgar creed. And here (after giving due praise to the gentleman above, for restoring Shakespeare's magic to its genuine horror, out of that low buffoonery which former actors and managers of theatres had flung it into) I shall shew in what light Shakespeare's low education always appeared to me by the following epitaph wrote many years since, and published in Mr. Dodsley's Miscellany. VOL. I,

Upon

believed and felt all the horrors he painted; for though the universities and inns of court were in some degree freed from those dreams of superstition, the banks of the Avon were then haunted on every side.

So that Shakespeare can scarcely be said to create a new world in his magic; he went but back to his native country, and only dressed their goblins in poetic weeds; hence even Theseus is not attended by his own deities, Minerva, Venus, the fauns, satyrs, &c. but by Oberon and his fairies: Whereas our authors, however aukwardly they treat of ghosts and sorcerers, yet when they get back to Greece (which was as it were their native soil) they introduce the classic deities with ease and dignity, as Fletcher in particular does in his Faithful Shepherdess, and both of them in their Masques; the last of which is put in the third class, not from any deficiency in the composition, but from the nature of the allegorical Masque, which, when no real characters are intermixed, ought in general to rank below Tragedy and Comedy. Our authors, who wrote them because they were in fashion, have themselves shewed how light they held

them.

"They must commend their king, and speak in praise
Of the assembly; bless the bride and bridegroom
In person of some god; they're tied to rules

Of flattery.".

MAID'S TRAGEDY, act i. scene 1.

This was probably wrote by Beaumont with an eye to the Masque at Gray's Inn, as well as masques in general. The reader will find a farther account of our Authors' Plays, and what share Mr. Shirley is supposed to have had in the completion of some that were left imperfect in Mr.

Upon Shakespeare's Monument at Stratford upon Avon.

"Great Homer's birth sev'n rival cities claim,
Too mighty such monopoly of Fame:

Yet not to birth alone did Homer owe

His wondrous worth; what Ægypt could bestow,
With all the schools of Greece and Asia join'd,
Enlarg'd th' immense expansion of his mind,
Nor yet unrival'd the Mæonian strain,

*

The British eagle and the Mantuan swan,
Tow'r equal heights. But happier Stratford, thou

With incontested laurels deck thy brow;

Thy bard was thine unschool'd, and from thee brought
More than all Egypt, Greece, or Asia, taught;
Not Homer's self such matchless laurels won,

The Greek has rivals, but thy Shakespeare none."

[The above Note was inserted as a Postscript to Seward's Preface.]

[* Mr. Seward does not seem to have recollected, that in the Two Noble Kinsmen there is an equal mixture of Gothic and Grecian manners. It was the common error of all our old Eng lish writers, from Chaucer to Milton, who has introduced chivalry even into Paradise Lost.]

* Milton.

Sympson's