Plays published in their lifetime under the joint names of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, or attributed to them: “The Woman Hater” (anon.), 1607; “The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” 1613; “Cupid’s Revenge” (published in Fletcher’s name), 1615; “The Scornful Ladie,” 1616; “A King and no King,” 1619; “The Maid’s Tragedy” (anon.), 1619; “Phylaster,” 1620 (performed 1611); “Tragedy of Thierry, King of France” (anon., possibly by Fletcher alone), 1621. Posthumous: “The Elder Brother” (published in Fletcher’s name), 1637; “The Bloody Brother” (published under initials: B. J. F.), 1639; “Wit Without Money” (probably by Fletcher alone), 1639; “Comedies and Tragedies” (containing the following plays, some of which were subsequently published separately: “The Mad Lover,” “The Spanish Curate,” “The Little French Lawyer,” “The Custome of the Countrey,” “The Noble Gentleman,” “The Captaine,” “The Beggar’s Bush,” “The Coxcombe,” “The False One,” “The Chances,” “The Loyall Subject,” “The Lawes of Candy,” “The Lover’s Progresse,” “The Island Princesse,” “The Humorous Lieutenant,” “The Nice Valour,” “The Maid in the Mill,” “The Prophetesse,” “Bonduca,” “The Sea Voyage,” “The Double Marriage,” “The Pilgrime,” “The Knight of Malta,” “The Woman’s Prize,” “Love’s Cure,” “The Honest Man’s Fortune,” “The Queene of Corinth,” “Women Pleas’d,” “A Wife for a Moneth,” “Wit at severall Weapons,” “Valentinian,” “The Fair Maide of the Inne,” “Love’s Pilgrimage,” “The Masque of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne, etc.,” “Four Plays or Moral Representations in One”), 1647; “The Wild-Goose Chase” (probably by Fletcher alone), 1652. Collected Works: ed. with memoir, by Dyce (11 vols.), 1843–46.

Personal

  He [Fletcher] had an excellent wit, which, the back-friends to Stage-plays will say, was neither idle, nor well imploy’d; for he and Francis Beaumont Esquire, like Castor and Pollux (most happy when in conjunction) raised the English to equal the Athenian and Roman Theater: Beaumont bringing the ballast of judgement, Fletcher the sail of phantasie; both compounding a Poet to admiration.

  Mr. Francis Beaumont was the son of Judge Beaumont. There was a wonderful consimility of phansey between him and Mr. John Fletcher, which caused that dearnesse of friendship between them. I thinke they were both of Queen’s College in Cambridge. I have heard Dr. John Earles (since bishop of Sarum), who knew them, say that his maine businesse was to correct the overflowings of Mr. Fletcher’s witt. They lived together on the Banke side, not far from the Play-house, both batchelors; lay together—from Sir James Hales, etc.; had one wench in the house between them, which they did so admire; the same cloathes and cloake, &c., betweene them.

  How happens it, the reader may ask, that this collection of plays, although not a third part ascribed to Beaumont, should be called “Beaumont and Fletcher” instead of “Fletcher and Beaumont?” A question of mere curiosity rather than of moment fortunately demands no better answer than I have to give—another conjecture. Beaumont, we find reason to believe, was a very precocious writer, published works, and made acquaintances among the Wits, before Fletcher did, who appears in the light of a late genius comparatively. Thus Fletcher would have joined Beaumont, as it were, not Beaumont Fletcher; and Beaumont would have been the paramount name, the one most spoken of at the “Mermaid” among choice spirits. Besides, from the very superior excellence of their earlier joint-essays, “Philaster,” &c., a presumption arises that Beaumont contributed the weightier share of them; else, why did not Fletcher reach the same perfection in some of those many works we know to be by him alone? This also might explain wherefore Beaumont’s name took precedence of Fletcher’s, which it kept afterwards from habit. Or that very simple solution of numberless phenomena, which philosophers puzzle themselves stupid otherwise to account for, may probably resolve the present enigma better than any chain of profound causes we could tie together—videlicet, accident.

  It is somewhat remarkable respecting the Siamese Twins in literature (Beaumont and Fletcher) that although they were both descended from honourable families, and had both received a liberal and collegiate education, the record of their lives does not extend beyond a few unimportant, and mayhap even these not authentic, anecdotes, with a catalogue of their literary compositions.

  A student of physiognomy will not fail to mark the points of likeness and of difference between the faces of the two friends; both models of noble manhood, handsome and significant in feature and expression alike;—Beaumont’s the statelier and serener of the two, with clear thoughtful eyes, full arched brows, and strong aquiline nose; a grave and beautiful mouth, with full and finely curved lips; the form of face a long pure oval, and the imperial head with its “fair large front” and clustering hair set firm and carried high with an aspect at once of quiet command and kingly observation: Fletcher’s a more keen and fervid face, sharper in outline every way, with an air of bright ardour and glad fiery impatience; sanguine and nervous, suiting the complexion and colour of hair; the expression of the eager eyes and lips almost recalling that of a noble hound in act to break the leash it strains at;—two heads as lordly of feature and as expressive of aspect as any gallery of great men can show.

General

  Whom but to mention is to throw a cloud upon all former names, and benight posterity; this book being, without flattery, the greatest monument of the scene that time and humanity have produced, and must live, not only the crown and sole reputation of our own, but the stain of all other nations and languages…. Infinitely more might be said of these rare copies; but let the ingenuous reader peruse them, and he will find them so able to speak their own worth, that they need not come into the world with a trumpet, since any one of these incomparable pieces, well understood, will prove a preface to the rest; and if the reader can taste the best wit ever trod our English stage, he will be forced himself to become a breathing panegyric to them all.

  Their plots were generally more regular than Shakespeare’s, especially those which were made before Beaumont’s death; and they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better; whose wild debaucheries, and quickness of wit in repartees, no poet before them could paint as they have done. Humour, which Ben Jonson derived from particular persons, they made it not their business to describe: they represented all the passions very lively, but above all, love. I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived to its highest perfection; what words have since been taken in, are rather superfluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage; two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakespeare’s or Jonson’s: the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with all men’s humours. Shakespeare’s language is likewise a little obsolete, and Ben Jonson’s wit comes short of theirs.

  To speak first of Mr. Beaumont, he was Master of a good Wit, and a better Judgment; he so admirably well understood the Art of the Stage, that even Johnson himself thought it no disparagement to submit his Writings to his Correction…. Mr. Fletcher’s Wit was equal to Mr. Beaumont’s Judgment, and was so luxuriant, that like superfluous Branches, it was frequently prun’d by his Judicious Partner. These Poets perfectly understood Breeding, and therefore successfully copy’d the Conversation of Gentlemen. They knew how to describe the Manners of the Age; and Fletcher had a peculiar tallent in expressing all his thoughts, with Life and Briskness. No Man ever understood, or drew the Passions more lively than he; and his witty Raillery was so drest, that it rather pleas’d than disgusted the modest part of his Audience. In a word, Fletcher’s Fancy, and Beaumont’s Judgment combin’d, produc’d such Plays, as will remain Monuments of their Wit to all Posterity. Nay, Mr. Fletcher himself after Mr. Beaumont’s Decease, compos’d several Dramatick Pieces, which were well worthy the Pen of so great a Master.

  Beaumont and Fletcher, with many fair pretensions to theatrical reputation, never could fix a foundation solid enough to establish that sort of fame which commands legitimate suffrage upon the spot, and challenges the award of posterity. They were rather amateurs than writers, rather gentlemen than professors; yet has the stage many obligations to them.

  After all, Beaumont and Fletcher were but an inferior sort of Shakespeares and Sidneys.

  Beaumont and Fletcher were in fact men of the most distinguished talents; they scarcely wanted any thing more than a profounder seriousness of mind, and that artistic sagacity which every where observes a due measure, to rank beside the greatest dramatic poets of all nations. They possessed extraordinary fecundity and flexibility of mind, and a facility which, however, too often degenerated into carelessness. The highest perfection they have hardly ever attained; and I should have little hesitation in affirming that they had not even an idea of it: however, on several occasions they have approached quite close to it. And why was it denied them to take this last step? Because with them poetry was not an inward devotion of the feeling and imagination, but a means to obtain brilliant results. Their first object was effect, which the great artist can hardly fail of attaining if he is determined above all things to satisfy himself.

  Beaumont and Fletcher have still a high poetical value. If character be sometimes violated, probability discarded, and the interest of the plot neglected, the reader is, on the other hand, often gratified by the most beautiful description, the most tender and passionate dialogue; a display of brilliant wit and gaiety, or a feast of comic humour. These attributes had so much effect on the public, that, during the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, many of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays had possession of the stage, while those of Shakspeare were laid upon the shelf.

  In Beaumont and Fletcher you have descriptions of characters by the poet rather than the characters themselves; we are told and impressively told, of their being; but we rarely or never feel that they actually are. Beaumont and Fletcher are the most lyrical of our dramatists. I think their comedies the best part of their works, although there are scenes of very deep tragic interest in some of their plays. I particularly recommend Monsieur Thomas for good pure comic humour. There is, occasionally, considerable license in their dramas; and this opens a subject much needing vindication and sound exposition, but which is beset with such difficulties for a Lecturer, that I must pass it by.

  There are such extremes of grossness and magnificence in their drama, so much sweetness and beauty interspersed with views of nature either falsely romantic, or vulgar beyond reality; there is so much to animate and amuse us, and yet so much that we would willingly overlook, that I cannot help comparing the contrasted impressions which they make, to those which we receive from visiting some great and ancient city, picturesquely but irregularly built, glittering with spires and surrounded with gardens, but exhibiting in many quarters the lanes and hovels of wretchedness. They have scenes of wealthy and high life which remind us of courts and palaces frequented by elegant females and high-spirited gallants, whilst their noble old martial characters, with Caractacus in the midst of them, may inspire us with the same sort of regard which we pay to the rough-hewn magnificence of an ancient fortress. Unhappily, the same simile, without being hunted down, will apply but too faithfully to the nuisances of their drama. Their language is often basely profligate. Shakspeare’s and Jonson’s indelicacies are but casual blots; whilst theirs are sometimes essential colours of their painting, and extend, in one or two instances, to entire and offensive scenes. This fault has deservedly injured their reputation; and, saving a very slight allowance for the fashion and taste of their age, admits of no sort of apology.

  Beaumont and Fletcher, with all their prodigious merits, appear to me the first writers who in some measure departed from the genuine tragic style of the age of Shakspeare. They thought less of their subject, and more of themselves, than some others. They had a great and unquestioned command over the stores both of fancy and passion; but they availed themselves too often of common-place extravagances and theatrical trick…. Beaumont and Fletcher were the first also who laid the foundation of the artificial diction and tinselled pomp of the next generation of poets, by aiming at a profusion of ambitious ornaments, and by translating the commonest circumstances into the language of metaphor and passion.

  Will you let Vincent bring me another volume of “Beaumont and Fletcher?” for I have read two-thirds of the one I have, and suspect I shall not be able to resist going all through with them. Am astonished at what they would have said to you, had you been at their side, insisting upon advance of story, non-superfluities, &c. Am more astonished (ever) at the amazing coarseness they mingle with their delicacies, and the true love they mingle with their false; am delighted with their wit, poetry, and high gentlemanly style, &c. &c. But Lord! what a gentleman, after all, was Shakspeare, even to their gentlemen! &c. &c. &c. &c. The woolstapler’s son, by some divine right of love on the part of father and mother, or whatsoever mystery it was, was a born prince compared with the bishop’s and judge’s sons.

  Of all our early dramatic poets, none have suffered such mangling by the printer as Beaumont and Fletcher. Their style is generally elliptical, and not very perspicuous; they use words in peculiar senses; and there seems often an attempt at pointed expression, in which its meaning has deserted them. But, after every effort to comprehend their language, it is continually so remote from all possibility of bearing a rational sense, that we can only have recourse to one hypothesis,—that of an extensive and irreparable corruption of the text…. The comic talents of these authors far exceeded their skill in tragedy. In comedy they founded a new school, at least in England, the vestiges of which are still to be traced in our theatre. Their plays are at once distinguishable from those of their contemporaries by the regard to dramatic effect which influenced the writer’s imagination. Though not personally connected with the stage, they had its picture ever before their eyes. Hence their incidents are numerous and striking; their characters sometimes slightly sketched, not drawn, like those of Jonson, from a preconceived design, but preserving that degree of individual distinctness which a common audience requires, and often highly humorous without extravagance; their language brilliant with wit; their measure, though they do not make great use of prose, very lax and rapid, running frequently to lines of thirteen and fourteen syllables. Few of their comedies are without a mixture of grave sentiments or elevated characters; and, though there is much to condemn in their indecency and even licentiousness of principle, they never descend to the coarse buffoonery not unfrequent in their age.

  The verse of Beaumont and Fletcher has often more freedom and variety of rhythm than that of Shakspeare, but seldom do they display an equal mastery over accents and pauses. They have not his precision, his dignity, and breadth. Their variations of rhythm are of a kind to change the heroic verse into a blank verse metre of a different kind, which may nevertheless be admirably suited to passages of a wild and joyous character, or to convey emotions of excessive and ungovernable passion. But they use it on all occasions, and this weakens the effect of their versification,—the variation almost becoming the metre, and therefore no variation.

  It is generally conceded that Beaumont and Fletcher are more effeminate and dissolute than the band of dramatic authors to which they must be still considered to belong. Their minds had not the grasp, tension, insight, and collected energy, which characterized others who possessed less fertility. Their tragic Muse carouses in crime, and reels out upon us with bloodshot eyes and dishevelled tresses. From this relaxation of intellect and looseness of principle comes, in a great degree, their habit of disturbing the natural relations of things in their representations of the sterner passions. The atmosphere of their tragedy is too often hot, thick, and filled with pestilential vapors. They pushed everything to excess. Their weakness is most evident when they strain the fiercest after power. Their strength is flushed, bloated, spasmodic, and furious. They pitch everything in a high key, approaching to a scream.

  Their comic characters, though generally very unnatural, and devoid of that rich internal humour—that luce di dentro, as the Italian artists phrase it—which makes Shakspeare’s so admirable, are written with a droll extravagance and fearless verve which seldom fail to excite a laugh.

  We may once for all tell the uninitiated that more beastly, elaborate, and incessant filth and obscenity are not to be found in all literature, than in the plays of these three dramatists; and that we, at least, could only read one or two of them through. They repelled us by the strong shock of disgust, and we have never since been able to understand of what materials the men are made who have read and re-read them, paused and lingered over them, dwelt fondly on their beauties, and even ventured to compare them to the plays of Shakspeare; the morality of which, considering his age, is as wonderful as the genius.

  The names of the dramatic writers of the present period that hold rank the nearest to Shakspeare still remain to be mentioned. Those of Beaumont and Fletcher must be regarded as indicating one poet rather than two, for it is impossible to make anything of the contradictory accounts that have been handed down as to their respective shares in the plays published in their conjoint names, and the plays themselves furnish no evidence that is more decisive…. They have given us all sorts of writing, good, bad, and indifferent, in abundance. Without referring in particular to what we now deem the indecency and licentiousness which pollutes all their plays, but which, strange to say, seems not to have been looked upon in that light by anybody in their own age, simply because it is usually wrapped in very transparent double entendre, they might, if judged by nearly one-half of all they have left us, be held to belong to almost the lowest rank of our dramatists instead of to the highest. There is scarcely one of their dramas that does not bear marks of haste and carelessness, or of a blight in some part or other from the playhouse tastes or compliances to which they were wont too easily to give themselves up when the louder applause of the day and the town made them thoughtless of their truer fame. But fortunately, on the other hand, in scarcely any of their pieces is the deformity thus occasioned more partial: the circumstances in which they wrote have somewhat debased the produce of their fine genius, but their genius itself suffered nothing from the unworthy uses it was often put to. It springs up again from the dust and mud, as gay a creature of the element as ever, soaring and singing at heaven’s gate as if it had never touched the ground. Nothing can go beyond the flow and brilliancy of the dialogue of these writers in their happier scenes; it is the richest stream of real conversation, edged with the fire of poetry.

  There is much fine writing in these plays; but they are marred even for reading, much more for acting, by their utter want of measure and sobriety; a defect partly due, perhaps, to the predilection of the authors for Spanish plots.

  Beaumont and Fletcher are generally allowed to have made a nearer approach to Shakespeare than did any other dramatist either before or after. This may be true in general. No doubt in the construction of their plays, the smoothness, correctness, and general richness of their language, the reckless abundance of their fancy, and the occasional depth of passion, they do often remind one of the unapproachable master; as they likewise do by the occasional cropping out of an everlasting thought divinely worded. Still, the intelligent reader must feel that their dramas are characterized by weakness, crudeness, want of strength and point, and a certain effeminate softness often not unpleasing. Nearly all their productions bear the marks of haste and carelessness; they seem to have revelled in composition, to have delighted in throwing off drama after drama, giving themselves little trouble about perfection in details.

  They were endowed with an imperial command of language, an almost unlimited gift of imagination, a remarkable store of fancy as associated with wit and humour, not so high a judgment in connecting and conducting the plots of their dramas, a quick but extravagant vision in the perception and delineation of character, and little or very moderate power in forming creations of dramatic fancy beyond the confines of their world at the Mermaid or the Actors’ Society at Lincoln’s Inn; and the tradition exists that at their club-meeting the conversations of the two brother-friends were wont to be as entertaining as “comedies.” They, however, who search for, expecting to find, grand aphorisms of human experience or quintessential drops of human wisdom, cordials of thought and sentiment that quicken the pulse and make us gladder and better men as often as we revert to and reflect upon them, will return from their travail with Beaumont and Fletcher lightly laden.

  The dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher stand higher than those even of Ben Jonson, and, of all the dramatic writings of that day, come nearest to the magic circle which encloses Shakespeare. Their wonderful knowledge of stage effect doubtless helped their popularity. They catered also, to some extent, to the low taste of the age, by introducing licentious scenes and expressions which exclude their plays both from the stage and from the domestic circle at the present day. At the same time, they abound in striking beauties, both of thought and language, and the general tone of their works is of an elevating character.

  I am not aware that any of Fletcher’s unassisted plays are in some respect more devoid of “judgment” than certain of those in which Beaumont is held to have taken part; while on the other hand I doubt whether any of the joint plays surpass in cleverness of construction some in which Fletcher worked alone. Cavils of this kind might be multiplied; but I am at a loss to see in what respect it would prove possible to show that the co-operation of Beaumont either enhanced or impeded the creative powers of Fletcher. Doubtless their joint productions are not disfigured by such offences against a high standard of dramatic morality as those which disfigure certain plays written independently by Fletcher only; but he would be a rash judge who, with some of the joint plays before him, should conclude Beaumont to have acted in this respect as a “check” upon his friend. For all we know to the contrary, Beaumont and Fletcher were alike dramatic poets of so high an ability as to be able to work on terms of equality, and to conceive in thorough harmony with one another what in certain respects of form they may have to a great degree executed independently; while it is evident that neither of them was possessed of creative powers with which capabilities of an inferior order could under no circumstances be fused in authorship.

  Beaumont and Fletcher are great names in the English Drama, but the demands commonly made by critics in their favour hardly seem to be justified if we are to apply to them the canons derived from the works of admitted masters of the stage. That Beaumont at least was a great poet his exquisite lyrics—hardly below Shakspere’s own—abundantly testify. In romantic tragedy, too, the joint work of these great men was assuredly of the highest class, but I find little in their comedy-writings which is fit to stand on a level with their “Philaster,” or their “Maid’s Tragedy.” Their comic method at its best was Jonson’s method, but their work in this line will bear no sort of comparison with Jonson’s…. The reader of the comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher is for ever brought up by bits of coarse, rough, gross, or careless handiwork, far below the standard of the best work of the period.

  Here we meet with Beaumont and Fletcher, inventors of heroical romance, gifted with inexhaustible resources in the rhetoric of tragical and comical situations, abounding in exquisite lyrical outpourings of unpremeditated song.

  Beaumont and Fletcher kept the stage—kept it constantly and triumphantly—till almost, if not quite, within living memory; while since the seventeenth century, and since its earlier part, I do not know that any play of Dekker’s or Middleton’s, of Webster’s or of Ford’s, has been presented to an English audience. This of itself constituted at the great revival of interest in Elizabethan literature something of a prejudice in favour of les oubliés et les dédaignés, and this prejudice has naturally grown stronger since all alike have been banished from the stage. The Copper Captain and the Humorous Lieutenant, Bessus and Monsieur Thomas, are no longer on the boards to plead for their authors. The comparative depreciation of Lamb and others is still on the shelves to support their rivals…. It used to be fashionable to praise their “young men,” probably because of the agreeable contrast which they present with the brutality of the Restoration hero; but their girls are more to my fancy…. Of the highest and most terrible graces, as of the sweetest and most poetical, Beaumont and Fletcher may have little to set beside the masterpieces of some other men; for accomplished, varied, and fertile production, they need not fear any competition.

  But whatever helping touches or of outside journey-work may have been contributed to that mass of plays which bears name of Beaumont and Fletcher, it is certain that they hold of right that brilliant reputation for deft and lively and winning dramatic work which put their popularity before Jonson’s, if not before Shakespeare’s.

  In short, I am inclined to think Fletcher the more poet of the two. Where there is pathos or humor, I am in doubt whether they belong to him or his partner, for I find these qualities both in the plays they wrote together and in those which are wholly his. In the expression of sentiment going far enough to excite a painless æsthetic sympathy, but stopping short of tragic passion, Beaumont is quite the equal of his friend. In the art of heightening and enriching such a sentiment by poetical associations and pictorial accessories, Fletcher seems to me the superior. Both, as I have said, have the art of being pathetic, and of conceiving pathetic situations; but neither of them had depth enough of character for that tragic pathos which is too terrible for tears; for those passionate convulsions when our human nature, like the sea in earthquake, is sucked away deep down from its habitual shores, leaving bare for a moment slimy beds stirring with loathsome life, and weedy tangles before undreamed of, and instantly hidden again under the rush of its reaction. Theirs are no sudden revelations, flashes out of the very tempest itself, and born of its own collisions; but much rather a melancholy Ovidian grace like that of the Heroic Epistles, conscious of itself, yet not so conscious as to beget distrust, and make us feel as if we had been cheated of our tenderness. If they ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears, it is not without due warning and ceremonious preparation. I do not mean to say that their sentiment is not real because it is pensive, and not passionate. It is real, but it is never heart-rending. I say it all in saying that their region is that of fancy…. Of the later dramatists, Beaumont and Fletcher, I think, rank next to Shakespeare in the amount of pleasure they give, though not in the quality of it, and in fanciful charm of expression. In spite of all their coarseness, there is a delicacy, a sensibility, an air of romance, and above all a grace, in their best work that make them forever attractive to the young, and to all those who have learned to grow old amiably.

  The perfect union in genius and in friendship which has made one name of the two names of these great twin brothers in song is a thing so admirable and so delightful to remember, that it would seem ungracious and unkindly to claim for either a precedence which we may be sure he would have been eager to disclaim. But if a distinction must be made between the Dioscuri of English poetry, we must admit that Beaumont was the twin of heavenlier birth. Only as Pollux was on one side a demigod of diviner blood than Castor can it be said that on any side Beaumont was a poet of higher and purer genius than Fletcher; but so much must be allowed by all who have eyes and ears to discern in the fabric of their common work a distinction without a difference. Few things are stranger than the avowal of so great and exquisite a critic as Coleridge that he could trace no faintest line of demarcation between the plays which we owe mainly to Beaumont and the plays which we owe solely to Fletcher. To others this line has always appeared in almost every case unmistakable…. The genius of Beaumont was deeper, sweeter, nobler than his elder’s: the genius of Fletcher more brilliant, more supple, more prodigal and more voluble than his friend’s. Without a taint or a shadow on his fame of such imitative servility as marks and degrades the mere henchman or satellite of a stronger poet, Beaumont may fairly be said to hold of Shakespeare in his tragedy, in his comedy of Jonson; in each case rather as a kinsman than as a client, as an ally than as a follower: but the more special province of Fletcher was a land of his own discovering, where no later colonist has ever had power to settle or to share his reign.

  The aims which actuated Beaumont and Fletcher were so lofty, and their actual performance so huge in extent, and uniformly ambitious in effort, that we are bound to judge them by no standard less exacting than the highest. Their resolute intention was to conquer a place in the very forefront of English literature, and for a time they seemed unquestionably to have succeeded in so doing. For a generation after the death of Fletcher, it might reasonably be mooted whether any British writer of poetry had excelled them. After the Restoration, although their popularity continued, their reputation with the critics began to decline, and no one will again name them with poets of the first class. They take, and will retain, an honourable position in the second rank, but in the first they can never again be placed. The conditions of their time seriously affected them. The highest point of poetic elevation had been reached, and the age, brilliant as it was, was one of decadence. It would have been possible to Beaumont and Fletcher—as still later on, when the incline was still more rapid, it yet was to Milton—to resist the elements of decay, to be pertinaciously distinguished, austere, and noble. But they had not enough strength of purpose for this; they gave way to the stream, and were carried down it, contenting themselves with flinging on it, from full hands, profuse showers of lyrical blossoms. They had to deal with a public which had cultivated a taste for the drama, and liked it coarse, bustling, and crude. They made it their business to please this public, not to teach or lead it, and the consequence was that they sacrificed to the whimsies of the pit all the proprieties, intellectual, moral, and theatrical.