without feeling that he had in him the elements of a great nature, and that he was a magnificent specimen of what is called "irregular genius." And one of his poems, the dedication of his translation of the Iliad to Prince Henry, is of so noble a strain, and from so high a mood, that, while borne along with its rapture, we are tempted to place him in the first rank of poets and of men. You can feel and hear the throbs of the grand old poet's heart in such lines as these : — "O, 't is wondrous much, Though nothing prized, that the right virtuous touch Of a well-written soul to virtue moves; Nor have we souls to purpose, if their loves Of fitting objects be not so inflamed. How much were then this kingdom's main soul maimed, To want this great inflamer of all powers That move in human souls. Through all the pomp of kingdoms still he shines, A prince's statue, or in marble carved, Or steel, or gold, and shrined, to be preserved, Aloft on pillars and pyramides, Time into lowest ruins may depress; But drawn with all his virtues in learned verse, Fame shall resound them on oblivion's hearse, Till graves gasp with their blasts, and dead men rise." BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, MASSIN WE GER, AND FORD. E have seen, in what has been already said of the intellectual habits of the Elizabethan dramatists, that it was a common practice for two, three, four, and sometimes five writers to co-operate in the production of one play. Thus Dekkar and Webster were partners in writing Northward Hoe! and Westward Hoe Ben Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in writing Eastward Hoe! Drayton, Middleton, Dekkar, Webster, and Munday, in writing The Two Harpies. In the case of Webster and Dekkar, this union was evidently formed from a mutual belief that the sombre mind of the one was unsuited to the treatment of certain scenes and characters which were exactly in harmony with the sunny genius of the other; but the alliance was often brought about by the demand of theatre-managers for a new play at a short notice, in which case the dramatist who had the job hurriedly sketched the plan, and then applied to his brother playwrights to take shares in the enterprise, payable in daily or weekly instalments of mirth or passion. But there were two writers of the period, twins in genius, and bound together by more than brotherly affection, whose literary union was so much closer than the occasional combinations of other dramatists, that it is now difficult to dissociate, in the public mind, Francis Beaumont from John Fletcher, or even to change the order of their names, though it can easily be proved that the firm of Beaumont and Fletcher owes by far the greater portion of its capital to the teeming brain of the second partner. The materials for their biographies are scanty. Beaumont was the son of a judge, was born about the year 1586, resided a short period at Oxford, but left without taking a degree, and, at the age of fifteen, was entered a member of the Inner Temple. Fletcher, the son of the "courtly and comely" Bishop Fletcher, was born in December, 1579, and was educated at Cambridge, but seems to have been designed for no profession. At what time and under what circumstances the poets met we have no record. The probability is, that, as both were esteemed by Ben Jonson, it was he who brought them together. It is more than probable that Fletcher, the elder of the two, had written for the theatres before his acquaintance with Beaumont began; and that in The Woman-Hater and in Thierry and Theodoret he had proved his ability both as a comic and as a tragic dra matist before Beaumont had thought of dramatic composition. When they did meet, they found, in Aubrey's words, a "wonderful consimility of phansy" between them, which resulted in an exceeding "dearnesse of friendship"; and the old antiquary adds: "They lived together on the Banke side, not far from the playhouse, both bachelors, lay together," and "had the same cloths and cloak" between them. Their first joint composition was the tragi-comedy of Philaster, produced about the year 1608; and we may suppose that this community of goods as well as thoughts continued until 1613, when Beaumont was married, and that the friendship remained unbroken till it was broken in 1616 by Beaumont's death. Fletcher lived until August, 1625, at which time he was suddenly cut off by the plague, in his forty-sixth year. In regard to the question as to Beaumont's share in the authorship of the fifty-two plays which go under the name of Beaumont and Fletcher, let us first quote the indignant doggerel which Sir Aston Cokaine addressed to the publisher of the first edition, in 1647: "Beaumont of those many writ in few: This gives no information touching the special plays which Beaumont assisted in producing. None of them were published as joint productions during his life, and only three during the nine or ten years that Fletcher survived him. Of the fifty-two dramas in the collection, fifty were written in the eighteen years which elapsed between 1607 and 1625. During the first years of their partnership neither seemed to be dependent on the stage for support; and it is almost certain that Beaumont's income continued to be adequate to his wants, and that his pen was never spurred into action by poverty. The result was that the earlier dramas were composed more slowly and carefully than the later. A year elapsed between the production of their first joint play, Philaster, in 1608, and the Maid's Tragedy, in 1609. In 1610 Fletcher alone brought out The Faithful Shepherdess. In 1611, A King and No King and the Knight of the Burning Pestle were acted. These five dramas one exclusively by Fletcher, the others joint productions - are commonly ranked as their best works, and are considered to include all the capacities of their genius. If we suppose that after 1611 they wrote two plays a year, we have fifteen as the number produced up to the period of Beaumont's death, leaving thirty-five which were written by Fletcher alone in nine years. We do not think that |