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John Earle (since Bishop of Sarum) say, who knew thaw, 

 that his (Beaumont's) maine business was to correct the 

 overflowings of Mr. Fletcher's \vitt.' Yet Earle, in his 

 verses upon Beaumont, expressly attributes to him whole 

 plays, in which his genius is quite as exuberant as Fletcher's. 

 Their editors in general are divided as to the property ; tradi- 

 tion seems to have distributed it between them at random ; 

 and Mr. Seward, in an elaborate attempt to discriminate it, 

 bewilders himself in refinements which end in giving them 

 each other's qualities interchangeably, and protesting against 

 his own distinction. If the miscellaneous poems attri- 

 buted to Beaumont be his, especially the Hermaphrodite, 

 (which Cleaveland claimed as a joint composition of himself 

 and Randolph), there would be reason to suspect that his 

 genius was naturally more exuberant than Fletcher's : and 

 'udging from the works which they are known to have pro- 

 duced separately, such as the Faithful Shepherdess, the 

 Alasque, and the Epistle just quoted, it appears to us that 

 there is nothing to show for concluding that each might not 

 have written either ; except, indeed, that in the only undra- 

 matio copy of verses extant in Fletcher's name (Upon an 

 Honest Man's Fortune), his muse is the graver of the two. 

 The Masque is shorter than the Pastoral; but contains 

 evidences of precisely the same moral and poetical ten- 

 dencies, such as we shall speak of presently, when we cha- 

 racterize their common genius. Perhaps Beaumont, upon 

 the whole, was the less lively of the two in company ; and 

 hence a fallacious conclusion might have been drawn, that 

 he was the more critically judicious. The verses we have 

 quoted do not look like it ; and Shirley has left a testimony 

 which argues for an equal division of property, even in talk. 

 ' Gentlemen that remembered them,' he says, ' declare, 

 that on every occasion they talked a comedy.' We are 

 therefore inclined to think, that the reason which Aubrey 

 gave for their strong personal attachment, applies with 

 equal force to this question, and settles it in favour of our 

 conclusion. ' There was a wonderful consimility of phansy,' 

 he says, ' between him (Beaumont) and Mr. John Fletcher, 

 which caused the dearenesse of friendship between them.' 

 The ' wonderful consimility of phansy' was seen in their 

 friendship, and in their plays. They loved one another fully 

 and entirely, and exhibited the only great spectacle existing 

 of two men writing in common, and puzzling posterity to 

 know which was which, precisely because their faculties 

 were identical. The case may be thought unlikely ; in other 

 words, the coincidence is unique; but who will deny that 

 such chances of coincidence must exist ? In this instance 

 the two men actually happened to meet ; and here, we think, 

 ends the whole mystery. 



Mr. Lamb, in his Dramatic Specimens, has assumed that 

 Fletcher is the author of many plays which have been attri- 

 buted to both writers ; and he has criticised him by himself 

 accordingly ; we know not on what ground ; probably from 

 taking the authority of some edition for granted, fur he is 

 not likely to have read all the plays through, as Seward did, 

 for the purpose of assigning the respective property ; though 

 nobody could have brought the question to a likelier con- 

 clusion, had he done so. 



Another, and apparently more perplexing mystery re- 

 mains, in the wonderful praises lavished by the writers of 

 those times upon the decency and chastity of a muse, which 

 to our eyes appears the strangest mixture of delicate sen- 

 timent and absolute prostitution. Beaumont and Fletcher 

 are the dramatists of all others whom a liberal modern 

 reader could the best endure to see in a castigated edition. 

 Their ideas are sometimes even as loathsome as they are 

 licentious. Schlegel has expressed his astonishment, how 

 two poets and gentlemen could utter the things they do, 

 nay, whole scenes ; in some measure, whole plays ; and 

 Dr) den, who availed himself in his dramas of all the license 

 of the time of Charles II., said, in defending himself on 

 that point, that one play of Beaumont and Fletcher's (the 

 irn of the Country) contained more indecency than all 

 his put together. Yet these are the writers whom their 

 contemporaries, including divines as well as fine gentlemen, 

 compliment in the most emphatic manner upon their de- 

 corum and purity. Harris, then or subsequently Greek 

 professor at Oxford, and called a ' second Chrysostom,' 

 panegyrizes their muse for being ' chaste.' Dr. Maine, cele- 

 brated for his piety as well as wit, speaks of their 'chaste 

 scene,' which 



' Tauclit love* no nohlc, so ri-form'il. to el'-nti. 

 Thai they wtiu brought foul tires, mill tlutlu-r cixnto 

 To bargain, went Ihetico vMth a holy flame,' 



Sir John Birkenhead says that Fletcher (who was son of 

 a bishop) wrote 



' As if his father's crosier awed the stage ;' 



and Dr. Earle (afterwards a bishop himself), not content 

 with declaring that Beaumont's wit is ' untainted with ob- 

 scenity,' protests that his writings are too 'pure,' and 

 ' chaste,' and ' sainted,' to be called plays. 



The solution of this mystery gives us an extraordinary 

 idea of such plays of the time as have not come down to 

 posterity, and of the distinction drawn by our ancestors be- 

 tween license of speech and conduct ; for the panegyric ap- 

 pears to be almost wholly founded upon the comparative 

 innocence of double meanings. 



' Here, ye foul speakers, that pronounce the air 

 Of stews and sewer*,' 



cries the gallant Lovelace, the Sir Philip Sydney of his 

 day, speaking of the very comedy above-mentioned, 



View here a loose thought said with such a grace, 

 Minerva might have spoke in Venus' fafe ; 

 So ut-il dismiis'd, that 'tw ns conceived by none, 

 But Cnp:d had Diana's linen on ;' 



and so he goes on, objecting nothing to the thought, but 

 holding the example to be spotless, and desiring it to spread, 

 as if for its own sake. It thus appears, that other writers 

 used language, homely words, or grosser images, such 

 as Beaumont and Fletcher never uttered ; and if it were ob- 

 jected that Shakspeare, as well as several other dramatists, 

 did not allow themselves a twentieth part of the license 

 even of Beaumont and Fletcher, the reply would be, that 

 the accomplished duumviri more expressly set themselves 

 to represent the manners and conversation of high life and 

 the town elegance, and that their ingenuity in avoiding 

 cause of offence was therefore the more singular and me- 

 ritorious. In truth, the language permitted in the circles of 

 those days was very gross, and the license of behaviour cor- 

 responding. It is a great fallacy to suppose that loose 

 manners among the English gentry originated with the 

 court of Charles II. That of James I. was extremely 

 licentious ; and the consequences of it were only suppressed, 

 and that chielly in appearance, by the greater personal de- 

 corum of his son, and the powerful discountenance of the 

 Puritans. It was nothing but the old stream that burst 

 forth in the reign of Charles II., taking advantage of the 

 weak points and fallen influence of the Puritans, to contrast 

 its candour with their alleged hypocrisy, and pretend that 

 impudence itself was a virtue. 



Beaumont and Fletcher were two open-hearted men and 

 genuine poets, spoilt by town breeding and the love of ap- 

 plause. It is a pity that two such poets could have been so 

 spoilt ; but still, in the best part of their genius, they sur- 

 vived the contamination, strong in their sympathy with 

 the great nature that bestowed it, and 'pure in the last 

 recesses of the mind.' Their muse is like some fair creature 

 of exuberant temperament but invincibly good heart, who 

 has retained the fineness of her disposition in spite of her 

 bad habits and of the very superiority of her animal spirits 

 to remorse, and who, in the midst of a vicious life, has still a 

 belief in innocence and virtue. Even the purest characters 

 in their plays are not free from an intermixture of things 

 which they ought not to know or talk about ; while the 

 practical chastity is overwrought, and put to absurd and 

 gratuitous trials, as if there could be no faith in it but from 

 the most extravagant proof. In short, a something not en- 

 tirely true to nature pervades almost all their writings, 

 running side by side with the freshest and loveliest passages ; 

 and while one half of a scene, or sometimes of a sprei-h, or 

 even a couple of sentences, gushes out from the authors' 

 heart, the other is brought from some fantastic fountain of 

 court manners and talk, and produced for the sake of town 

 effect. In this, we conceive, lies the whole secret of the 

 inferiority of Beaumont and Fletcher to Shakspeare, and 

 in some respects to Webster and others. To be sure, they 

 may have wanted, by nature, a certain robustness of moral 

 constitution like his, not unconnected perhaps with physical ; 

 but unlike any other great dramatists of their time, they 

 were born and bred ' fine gentlemen,' educated in all the 

 conventionalities and artificial manners of their time; and 

 the applause that they gained from the world of fashion 

 had too great an effect upon them, and divided their inspira- 

 tion with nature. 



A selection from the works of Beaumont and Fletcher 

 would make as exquisite a volume, or two volumes, of refined 

 sentiment, lofty and sweet poetry, excellent sense, humour 

 and pathos, as any in the language, excepting Shakspeare 



