The First Part of Jeronymo* is an indifferent piece of work, and the Second, or the Spanish Tragedy † by Kyd, is like unto it, except the interpolations idly ‡ said to have been added by Ben Jonson, relating to Jeronymo's phrensy, "which have all the melancholy madness of poetry, if not the inspiration." * No earlier edition than that of 1605 is at present known.-ED. † The earliest known impression is undated; the oldest with a date, which has been hitherto met with, is that of 1599.-Ed. Scarcely so; both Jonson and Middleton were paid at different times by Henslowe to make alterations and additions to this performance.-ED. LECTURE VI. ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS; F. BEAUMONT, P. FLETCHER, DRAYTON, DANIEL, ETC.; SIR P. SIDNEY'S " ARCADIA," AND OTHER WORKS. I SHALL in the present Lecture attempt to give some idea of the lighter productions of the Muse in the period before us, in order to show that grace and elegance are not confined entirely to later times, and shall conclude with some remarks on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. I have already made mention of the lyrical pieces of Beaumont and Fletcher. It appears from his poems, that many of these were composed by Francis Beaumont, particularly the very beautiful ones in the tragedy of the False One, the Praise of Love in that of Valentinian and another in the Nice Valour, or Passionate Madman, an address to Melancholy, which is the perfection of this kind of writing: "Hence, all you vain delights; Wherein you spend your folly : Oh, sweetest melancholy. Welcome folded arms and fixed eyes, Fountain heads, and pathless groves, Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley; "most It has been supposed (and not without every appearance of good reason) that this pensive strain, musical, most melancholy," gave the first suggestion of the spirited introduction to Milton's Il Penseroso : "Hence, vain deluding joys, The brood of folly without father bred! . Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight," &c. The same writer thus moralises on the life of man, in a set of similes, as apposite as they are light and elegant : "Like to the falling of a star, Or as the flights of eagles are, Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue, Or silver drops of morning dew, Or bubbles which on water stood: Is straight call'd in and paid to night :- The flight is past, and man forgot." "The silver foam which the wind severs from the parted wave" is not more light or sparkling than this: the dove's downy pinion is not softer and smoother than the verse. We are too ready to conceive of the poetry of that day, as altogether old-fashioned, meagre, squalid, deformed, withered and wild in its attire, or as a sort of * [Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher, x. 335–6.] uncouth monster, like "grim-visaged comfortless despair," mounted on a lumbering, unmanageable Pegasus, dragon-winged and leaden-hoofed; but it as often wore a sylph-like form with Attic vest, with faëry feet, and the butterfly's gaudy wings. The bees were said to have come, and built their hive in the mouth of Platc when a child; and the fable might be transferred to the sweeter accents of Beaumont and Fletcher! Beaumont died at the age of five-and-twenty. One of these writers makes Bellario the Page say to Philaster, who threatens to take his life: ""Tis not a life; "Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away." But here was youth, genius, aspiring hope, growing reputation, cut off like a flower in its summer pride, or like "the lily on its stalk green," which makes us repine at fortune and almost at nature, that seem to set so little store by their greatest favourites. The life of poets is or ought to be (judging of it from the light it lends to ours) a golden dream, full of brightness and sweetness, "lapt in Elysium;" and it gives one a reluctant pang to see the splendid vision, by which they are attended in their path of glory, fade like a vapour, and their sacred heads laid low in ashes, before the sand of common mortals has run out. Fletcher too was prematurely cut off by the plague. Raphael died at four-and-thirty, and Correggio at forty. Who can help wishing that they had lived to the age of Michael Angelo and Titian? Shakspeare might have lived another half century, enjoying fame and repose, “now that his task was smoothly done," listening to the music of his name, and, better still, of his own thoughts, without minding Rymer's abuse of "the tragedies of the last age." His native stream of Avon would then have flowed with softer murmurs to the ear, and his pleasant birth-place, Stratford, would in that case have worn even a more gladsome smile than it does to the eye of fancy! Poets however have a sort of privileged after-life, which does not fall to the common lot: the rich and mighty are nothing but while they are living, their power ceases with them: but "the sons of memory, the great heirs of fame," leave the best part of what was theirs, their thoughts, their verse, what they most delighted and prided themselves in, behind them-imperishable, incorruptible, immortal! Sir John Beaumont (the brother of our dramatist), whose loyal and religious effusions are not worth much, very feelingly laments his brother's untimely death in an epitaph him: upon "Thou should'st have followed me, but death to blame So dearly hast thou bought thy precious lines, All ears, all hearts (but Death's) could please and move." Beaumont's verses addressed to Ben Jonson at the Mermaid, are a pleasing record of their friendship, and of the way in which they "fleeted the time carelessly" as well as studiously " in the golden age" of our poetry: [Lines sent from the Country with two unfinished Comedies, which deferred their merry meetings at the Mermaid.] "The sun (which doth the greatest comfort bring Than beer, good only for the sonnet's strain, |