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the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.

NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND

FLETCHER.

SEWARD'S Preface. 1750.

The King And No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigour, chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn,

&c.

THE

HESE are among the endless instances of the abject state to which psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking.

Ib. Seward's comparison of Julia's speech in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. last scene— Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning, &c.

with Aspatia's speech in the Maid's Tragedy—

I stand upon the sea-beach now, &c. Act. ii.

and preference of the latter.

It is strange to take an incidental passage

of one

writer, intended only for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure.

Ib. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in A Wife for a Month, act i. sc. 1, to the passage in King John, act v. sc. 7,—

Poison'd, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off!

Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but you were an ass.

Ib.

Every reader of taste will see how superior this is to the quotation from Shakspeare.

Of what taste?

Ib. Seward's classification of the plays :

Surely Monsieur Thomas, the Chances, Beggar's Bush, and the Pilgrim, should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole attempt ends in a woful failure.

HARRIS'S COMMENDATORY POEM ON
FLETCHER.

I'D have a state of wit convok'd, which hath
A power to take up on common faith:-

HIS is an instance of that modifying of quan

THIS

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tity by emphasis, without which our elder poets cannot be scanned. Power,' here, instead of being one long syllable-pow'r-must be sound

ed, not indeed as a spondee, nor yet as a trochee; but as the first syllable is 14.

We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of our elder dramatic poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found the main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley, Porson, and their followers ; - how much more, then, in writers in our own language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek, is in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law or even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent; secondly, emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the times of syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion that accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses them. With due attention to these, above all, to that, which requires the most attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for example, might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the regule must be first known ; - though I will venture to say, that he who does not find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger's flow to the time total of a trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But by virtue of the last principle — the retardation or acceleration of time we have the proceleusmatic foot o u u u, and the dispondensnot to mention the choriambus, the

ionics, pæons, and epitrites. Since Dryden, the metre of our poets leads to the sense: in our elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the passion, leads to the metre. Read even Donne's satires as he meant them to be read, and as the sense and passion demand, and you will find in the lines a manly harmony.

LIFE OF FLETCHER IN STOCKDALE'S

EDITION.

1811.

In general their plots are more regular than Shakspeare's.—

HIS is true, if true at all, only before a court

THIS

of criticism, which judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse one. Shakspeare's plots have their own laws or regulæ, and according to these they are regular.

A

MAID'S TRAGEDY.

CT I. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout.

Strat. As well as masque can be, &c.

and all that follows to 'who is return'd'—is plainly blank verse, and falls easily into it.

Ib. Speech of Melantius :—

These soft and silken wars are not for me:
The music must be shrill, and all confus'd,

That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms.

What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers of Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the fashion of the age from the Soldier's speech in the Counter Scuffle; and deeper than the fashion B. and F. did not fathom.

Ib. Speech of Lysippus :

Yes, but this lady

Walks discontented, with her wat❜ry eyes
Bent on the earth, &c.

Opulent as Shakspeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would not have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a no-character, or as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had written poems instead of tragedies.

Ib.

Read

Mel. I might run fiercely, not more hastily,
Upon my foe.

I might run more fiercely, not more hastily.—

Ib. Speech of Calianax :

Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite through my office!

The syllable off reminds the testy statesman of

his robe, and he carries on the image.

Ib. Speech of Melantius :—

-Would that blood,

That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight, &c.

All B. and F.'s generals are pugilists, or cudgel

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