of diftinguished merit, and will probably continue to be models to fucceeding dramatifts, while wit and good fenfe fhall be held in any eftimation on the English theatre. Their productions have been copied with abundant freedom by many writers whofe works are confidered as no mean acquifition to the ftage. The obligation hath been frankly acknowledged by fome: while others have left the more curious Reader to make the difcovery for himself. This avowal er concealment of an obligation hath frequently been the effect of pride operating different ways: for we cannot avoid remarking, that it is often as decifive a characteristic of pride to point out the fource of our ideas when we can fhew a fuperior dexterity in the application and management of them, as it is an evidence of the fame principle to endeavour at other times to conceal it with ingenious care, in order to make the whole pafs for a creation of our own fancy.

With respect to our dramatic bards, it is but juftice to acknowledge, that, in general, their plots are regular. Their characters are on the whole well drawn, and properly marked and fupported. Their language is eafy and elegant; clear and perfpicuous. Their plays abound with a variety of beautiful paffages; and a felection might be made out of them to illuftrate every species of compofition, and delineate every emotion of passion.

Mr. Seward, the former Editor, devotes a large part of his preface to a comparison between the language and characters of Beaumont and Fletcher and thofe of Shakespear. The grand characteristic of Shakespear's language is energy-an energy which attonithes the imagination! That of our Authors is elegance-a diffufive elegance, which pleases the fancy and foothes the heart. Shakespear will frequently give more expreffion by a word than Beaumont and Fletcher are capable of affording by many lines. A thousand instances might be given of this, if it were neceffary, to prove Shakespear's fuperiority to his contemporary poets in that which is the very firft excellence of dramatic compofition-an irrefiftible force of language. Mr. Seward hath produced feveral paffages to prove, that in many places Beaumont and Fletcher are fuperior in language, defcrip. tion and fentiment to Shakespear. We think, however, that he might have fupported his comparison by inftances that would have better ferved his purpose. The paffage quoted from the Maid's Tragedy, is indeed exquifitely beautiful, and a painter might well copy from the poet: but in long defcriptions it is not easy to fee the whole at once. The impreffion grows languid and faint, and the principal effect is either weakened or totally lost. An energetic, comprehenfive expreffion gives the whole at one glance, and produces a more powerful, becaufe a more immediate effect. The rainbow is an object the more beautiful, because its impreffion is inftantaneously felt. Divided into fruitrums of a circle, and feen only in small parts, its principal effect would be entirely loft.

We fhall present our Readers with a fpecimen of Mr. Seward's tafle and fagacity in the line of comparifon, by a quotation of the paffages compared, at full length, with the critic's remarks on them.

At the letter end of King John, the King has received a burning poifon and being ask'd

-How

How fares your Majefty?

K. John. Poifon'd! ill fare! dead, forfook, caft off:
And none of you will bid the Winter come
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw;

Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their courfe
Thro' my burnt bofom: nor entreat the North
To make his bleak winds kifs my parched lips
And comfort me with cold. I do not ask you much,
I beg cold comfort.

The first and last lines are to be ranged among the faults that fo much difgrace Shakespear, which he committed to please the corrupt tafte of the age he lived in: but to which Beaumont and Fletcher's learning and fortune made them fuperior. The intermediate lines åre extremely beautiful, and marked as fuch by the late great editor [Mr. Pope] but yet are much improved in two plays of our Authors; the first in Valentinian, where the Emperor, poifoned in the fame manner, dies with more violence, fury and horror, than King John. But the paffage that I fhall quote is from A Wife for a Month; a play which doth not upon the whole equal the poetic fublimity of Valentinian, though it rather excels it in the poifoning fcene. The Prince Alphonfo, who had been long in a phrenzy of melancholy, is poison'd with a hot, fiery potion, under the agonies of which he

raves:

Give me more air, more air, air: blow, blow, blow,
Open, thou eaftern gate! and blow upon me:
Ditil thy cold dews, oh, thou icy moon,

And rivers run thro' my afflicted spirit.

I am all fire, fire, fire; the raging Dog-ftar

Reigns in my blood; oh! which way shall I turn me?
Ætna and all her flames burn in my head.

Fling me into the ocean, or I perish.

Dig, dig, dig, dig, until the springs fly up-
The cold, cold fprings, that I may leap into them

And bathe my fcorch'd limbs in their purling pleasures :
Or fhoot me into the higher region,

Where treasures of delicious fnow are nourish'd,
And banquets of sweet hail.

Rug.

Oh! how he burns!

Alph.

Hold him faft, friar.

What, will ye facrifice me?

Upon the altar lay my willing body,

And pile your wood up, fling your holy incense:
And as I turn me, you shall fee all flame,

Confuming fame. Stand off me, or you're afhes.

*

Mart. To bed, good Sir.

Alpb.

My bed will burn about me.
Like Phaeton, in all-confuming flashes

Am I inclos'd let me fly, let me fly, give room;
'Twixt the cold Bears, far from the raging Lion,
Lies my fafe way: oh, for a cake of ice now
To clap into my heart to comfort me.
Decrepit Winter hang upon my shoulders
E e 2

And

And let me wear thy frozen icicles,

Like jewels round about my head, to cool me.
My eyes burn out, and fink into their fockets,
And my infected brain like brimstone boils.
I live in hell, and feveral furies vex me.
Oh! carry me where never fun e'er shew'd yet
A face of comfort, where the earth is chrystal
Never to be diffolved, where nought inhabits
But night, and cold, and nipping frofts and winds,
That cut the ftubborn rocks, and make them shiver;
Set me there, friends.

Every man of taste will fee how fuperior this is to the quotation from Shakespear. The images are vaftly more numerous, more judicious, more nervous, and the paffions are wrought up to the highest pitch.'

The images, indeed, are, as this critic obferves, vaftly more numerous; and on that very account the whole defcription becomes, in our eftimation, les judicious and les nervous. Fletcher, or whoever was the writer, difcovers an exuberant fertility of invention. But in the prodigality of metaphors, allufions and images, the description lofes much of the beautiful fimplicity of nature, and looks too much like the gaudy picture of art. Ice-water, and cold air, easily fuggeft themselves to a perfon who (to ufe Seward's words) hath been ⚫ poisoned with a hot, fiery potion. But the Dog-ftar, Mount Etna, and the different regions of the atmosphere; Phaeton, the cold Bears, and the raging Lion (or the conftellations to which aftronomy hath fancifully applied thefe terms); and above all, a fine, but artificial and highly metaphorical defcription of a country where fun ne'er fhew'd yet a face of comfort,' is entirely inconfiftent with that intoxication of agony and diftrefs under which Alphonfo is fuppofed to labour at the moment when thefe expreffions are uttered.

In the tragedy of Philafter there is a beautiful defcription of rural melancholy

I have a boy,

Sent by the Gods I hope to this intent,

Not yet feen in the court. Hunting the buck,
I found him fitting by a fountain side,

Of which he borrow'd fome to quench his thirst.
And paid the nymph again as much in tears,
A garland lay by him, made by himself
Of many feveral flowers, bred in the bay,
Stuck in that myftic 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 fuch pretty, helpless innocence
Dwell in his face, I afk'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 chryftal fprings
Which did not stop their courfes; and the fun

Which ftill, he thank'd him, yielded him his light:
Then up he took his garland, and did fhew
What every flower, as country people hold,

Did fignify and how all order'd thus

Expreft his grief: and to my thoughts did read
The prettiest lecture of his country art

That could be wifh'd, fo that methought

I could have ftudied it.'

This paffage is compared with that well known defcription which is given in Shakespear of the melancholy Jacques,

Under an oak,' &c. &c.

as he lay along

and moralized in a strain of the most exquifite fenfibility on the fate
of the hunted deer. Seward, indeed, gives the preference to Shake-
fpear in this inftance, juft as he would give it to a Raphael when
compared to a Guido.' A man pitying and lamenting over the misfor-
tunes of a timorous and forlorn brute, fhews a degree of tenderness and
fenfibility of fpirit vaftly fuperior to that of a human creature melted
only by the feelings of his own diftreffes. It touches the heart, and in-
terefts every gentle paffion in a very high degree. The reflections
which the penfive moralift makes, when he fees the poor animal 'left
and abandon'd of his velvet friends,' are beautiful and affecting.
'Tis right, quoth he; thus mifery 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 Jacques,
Sweep on, ye fat and greafy citizens,

'Tis juft the fashion!'

This is a natural, rural fcene. That of Fletcher's is a scene of the fame rural character: but it is a scene more artificially laid out: it is a fcene in a picture heightened by a better difpofition and arrangement of the objects; but leffened by a weaker and less interesting reprefentation of the original.

It would extend this article beyond its proper length, if we entered into a particular examination of the moft diftinguished characters in thefe plays. But we cannot avoid remarking, that in the King and no King,' two characters are introduced (viz. Arbaces and Beffus), which have been by fome critics exalted into a rival hip, at least, with the Hotfpur and Falstaff of Shakespear. We think that this drama is a moft excellent one, and that the poets difcovered great ingenuity in those two characters in particular. But Arbaces is not equal to Hotfpur; nor can Beffus rival Falstaff with any fuccefs. In the former character we perceive the fame fault that generally marks the language of thefe plays. Beauties are heaped on beauties with a prodigality that (as one of his encomiafts fays, by way of compliment as he imagined) furfeits with good things.' Arbaces, instead of being a fiery and impatient hero, is a petulant, and on the whole rather a puerile than manly character. Hotfpur, the Achilles of the English ftage, is fierce and violent-impatient of controul or contradiction-impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer, But he is not ridiculously whirled about by every blat of paffion. In short, by making Arbaces too violent and headstrong, the poets have divested him of all dignity, and destroyed thofe parts of Shakespear's character that make Hotspur refpectable. The fame fault is committed in Beffus, Falftaff is always laughable: but feldom defpicable, He fets hin

felf in the true point of ridicule; and being the first to raise a laugh at his own expence, we are ready to forgive him the occafion of it. Beffus is a greater coward than Falstaff, and he is not poffeffed of fuch truly laughable qualities as are fufficient to compensate for his want of courage, and the abfurdities and irregularities of his conduct. Theobald, who confidered the character of Belus as a fine copy from Shakespear's inimitable Falfaff,' very july obferves, that as to his wit and humour, the precedence mult certainly be adjudged to Falstaff, the great original.'

The prefent edition is introduced by the original dedication of the players to the folio of 1647. That is fucceeded by Shirley's preface to the fame edition and that by the ftationer's addrefs. Next follows the addrefs of the bookfellers who published another folio edition in 1679. The preface to the octavo edition 1711 is here reprinted, in which we have a fhort account of the Authors and their writings. Though Beaumont was the fon of a judge, and Fletcher of a bishop, and both authors of diftinguished fame, yet all we know of them is so very inconfiderable, that fcarce any memorials are left of them, except in their writings. Mr. Seward's preface to the edition in octavo 1750 is in part reprinted. A long and impertinent criticism on some fcriptural topics is very properly omitted: fome mistakes are rectified by the prefent Editor; and a few of his obfervations confirmed and illuftrated. The commendatory poems, with notes and illustrations, follow Seward's preface; to which are added, fome verfes by Fletcher upon an honeft man's fortune,' and a poetical letter from Beaumont to Ben Jonfon. After a general table of contents, we are prefented with a new preface, and a curious extract from Mr. Capell's notes on Anthony and Cleopatra, relating to fome theatrical cuftoms in Shakespear's age.

The new preface to this edition is evidently the production of a very ingenious writer, and bears fome ftriking marks of Mr. Colman's pen. We fhall, we are perfuaded, gratify our Readers, by prefenting them with one or two extracts from it.

To the popularity of a dramatic writer, nothing more immediately contributes than the frequency of theatrical reprefentation. Common readers, like barren fpectators, know little more of an author, than what the actor, not always his happiest commentator, prefents to them. Mutilations of Shakespear have been recited and even quoted as his genuine text; and many of his dramas, not in the courfe of exhibition, are by the multitude not honoured with a perufal. On the flage, indeed, our Authors formerly took the lead, Dryden having informed us, that in his day two of their plays were performed to one of Shakefpear. The flage, however, owes its attraction to the actor as well as author; and if the able performer will not contribute to give a polish and brilliancy to the work, it will lie like the rough diamond, obfcured and difregarded. The artists of former days worked the rich mine of Beaumont and Fletcher and Betterton, the Rofcius of his age, enriched his catalogue of characters from their dramas as well as thofe of Shakespear. Unfortunately for our Authors, the Rofcius of our day confined his round of characters in old plays too clofely to Shakespear. We may almost say of him indeed in this refpect, as Dryden fays of Shakespear's fcenes of magic, • Within