On the deceased Author, Mr. JOHN FLETCHER, his Plays; and especially the Mad Lover.

WHILST his well-organ'd body doth retreat
To its first matter, and the formal heat 46
Triumphant sits in judgment, to approve
Pieces above our censure, and our love; 47
Such, as dare boldly venture to appear
Unto the curious eye, and critic ear:
Lo, the Mad Lover in these various times
Is press'd to life, t' accuse us of our crimes.
While Fletcher liv'd, who equal to him writ
Such lasting monuments of natural wit?

Others may draw their lines with sweat, like those
That (with much pains) a garrison inclose;
Whilst his sweet, fluent, vein did gently run,
As uncontrol'd and smoothly as the sun.

After his death, our theatres did make
Him in his own unequal language speak:
And now, when all the muses out of their
Approved modesty silent appear,

This play of Fletcher's braves the envious light,
As wonder of our ears once, now our sight.
Three-and-four-fold-blest poet, who the lives
Of poets, and of theatres, survives!

A groom, or ostler of some wit, may bring
His Pegasus to the Castalian spring;
Boast, he a race o'er the Pharsalian plain,
Or happy Tempe-valley, dares maintain:
Brag, at one leap, upon the double cliff
(Were it as high as monstrous Teneriffe)

45 Sir Henry Moody was of the number of those gentlemen who had honorary degrees conferred by King Charles the First, at his return to Oxford after the battle of Edgehill, The poem has some strong marks of genius in it, particularly in these lines,

-“ until these sullen days;

When scorn, and want, and danger, are the bays

That crown the head of merit."

I confess myself a great admirer of verses in rhime, whose pauses run into each other as boldly as blank verse itself. When our moderns corrected many faults in the measure of our verse by making the accents always fall on right syllables, and laying aside those harsh elisions used by our ancient poets, they mistook this run of the verses into each other after the manner of Virgil, Homer, &c. for a fault, which deprived our rhime of that grandeur and dignity of numbers which arises from a perpetual change of pauses, and turned whole poems into distiches.

SEWARD. 46 And the formal heat, &c.] Formal heat, I take to be a metaphysical and logical term for the soul, as the formal cause is that which constitutes the essence of any thing. Fletcher's soul therefore now sits in judgment, to approve works deserving of praise.

47 Pieces above our candour.] Amended by Theobald.

SEWARD.

Of

Of far-renown'd Parnassus he will get,

And there (t' amaze the world) confirm his seat:
When our admired Fletcher vaunts not aught,
And slighted every thing he writ as nought:
While all our English wond'ring world (in's cause)
Made this great city echo with applause.

Read him, therefore, all that can read; and those,
That cannot, learn; if you're not learning's foes,
And wilfully resolved to refuse

The gentle raptures of this happy muse.
From thy great constellation (noble soul)
Look on this kingdom; suffer not the whole
Spirit of poesy retire to Heaven;

But make us entertain what thou hast given.
Earthquakes and thunder diapasons make;
The seas' vast roar, and irresistless shake
Of horrid winds, a sympathy compose;
So in these things there's music in the close:
And though they seem great discords in our ears,
They are not so to them above the spheres.
Granting these music, how much sweeter's that
Mnemosyne's daughters' voices do create?

Since Heav'n, and earth, and seas, and air consent
To make an harmony, (the instrument,
Their own agreeing selves) shall we refuse
The music which the deities do use?
Troy's ravish'd Ganymede doth sing to Jove,
A Phoebus' self plays on his lyre above.
The Cretan gods, or glorious men, who will
Imitate right, must wonder at thy skill,
(Best poet of thy times!) or he will prove
As mad, as thy brave Memnon was with love.

XXI.

ASTON COKAINE, BART.49

On the Edition of Mr. FRANCIS BEAUMONT's and Mr. JOHN
FLETCHER'S Plays, never printed before.

I AM amaz'd; and this same extasy

Is both my glory and apology.

Sober joys are dull passions; they must bear
Proportion to the subject: If so, where

Beaumont and Fletcher shall vouchsafe to be
That subject, That joy must be extasy.
Fury is the complexion of great wits;
The fool's distemper: He, that's mad by fits,
Is wise so too. It is the poet's muse;
The prophet's god; the fool's, and my excuse.
For (in me) nothing less than Fletcher's name
Could have begot, or justified, this flame.

43 Aston Cokaine, Bart.] This gentleman who claimed being made a baronet by King Charles I. at a time when the king's distress prevented the creation passing the due forms, was a poet of some repute, for which reason this copy is inserted more than for its intrinsic worth. He was lord of the manors of Pooley in Polesworth-parish, Warwickshire, and of Ashburn in Derbyshire; but with a fate not uncommon to wits, spent and sold both; but his descendants of this age have been and are persons of distinguished merit and fortune.

SEWARD,
Beaumont

Beaumont
Fletcher

}

return'd! methinks, it should not be:
No, not in's works: plays are as dead as he.
The palate of this age gusts nothing high,
That has not custard in't, or bawdery.

Folly and madness fill the stage: The scene
Is Athens; where, the guilty, and the mean,
The fool 'scapes well enough; learned and great,
Suffer an ostracism; stand exulate.

Mankind is fall'n again, shrunk a degree,
A step below his very apostacy.
Nature her self is out of tune; and sick
Of tumult and disorder, lunatic.

Yet what world would not chearfully endure
The torture, or disease, t' enjoy the cure?

This book's the balsam, and the hellebore,
Must preserve bleeding Nature, and restore
Our crazy stupor to a just quick sense
Both of ingratitude, and Providence.

That teaches us (at once) to feel and know,

Two deep points; what we want, and what we our.
Yet great goods have their ills: Should we transmit,
To future times, the pow'r of love and wit,
In this example; would they not combine
To make our imperfections their design?
They'd study our corruptions; and take more
Care to be ill, than to be good, before.
For nothing, but so great infirmity,
Could make them worthy of such remedy.
Have you not seen the sun's almighty ray
Rescue th' affrighted world, and redeem day
From black despair? how his victorious beam
Scatters the storm, and drowns the petty flame
Of lightning, in the glory of his eye;
How full of pow'r, how full of majesty?
When, to us mortals, nothing else was known,
But the sad doubt, whether to burn, or drown.
Choler, and phlegm, heat, and dull ignorance,
Have cast the people into such a trance,
Thar fears and danger seem great equally,
And no dispute left now, but how to die.
Just in this nick, Fletcher sets the world clear
Of all disorder, and reforms us here.

The formal youth, that knew no other grace,
Or value, but his title, and his lace,
Glasses himself, and, in this faithful mirror,
Views, disapproves, reforms, repents his error.
The credulous, bright girl, that believes all
Language, in oaths (if good) canonical,
Is fortified, and taught, here, to beware
Of ev'ry specious bait, of ev'ry snare

Save one; and that same caution takes her more,
Than all the flattery she felt before.

She finds her boxes, and her thoughts betray'd
By the corruption of the chamber-maid;
Then throws her washes and dissemblings by,
And vows nothing but ingenuity.

The

The severe statesman quits his sullen form
Of gravity and business; the lukewarm
Religious, his neutrality; the hot
Brainsick illuminate, his zeal; the sot,
Stupidity; the soldier, his arrears;

The court, its confidence; the plebs, their fears;
Gallants, their apishness and perjury;
Women, their pleasure and inconstancy;
Poets, their wine; the usurer, his pelf;
The world, its vanity; and I, my self.

XXII,

ON THE EDITION.

ROGER L'ESTRANGE. 49

FLETCHER (whose fame no age can ever waste;
Envy of ours, and glory of the last)

Is now alive again; and with his name
His sacred ashes wak'd into a flame;
Such as before, did by a secret charm

The wildest heart subdue, the coldest warm;
And lend the ladies' eyes a power more bright,
Dispensing thus to either heat and light.

He to a sympathy those souls betray'd,
Whom love, or beauty, never could persuade;
And in each mov'd spectator could beget
A real passion by a counterfeit:
When firft Bellario bled, what lady there
Did not for every drop let fall a tear?
And when Aspatia wept, not any eye
But seem'd to wear the same sad livery;
By him inspir'd, the feign'd Lucina drew
More streams of melting sorrow than the true;
But then the Scornful Lady did beguile
Their easy griefs, and teach them all to smile.
Thus he affections could or raise or lay;
Love, grief, and mirth, thus did his charms obey;
He Nature taught her passions to out-do,
How to refine the old, and create new;
Which such a happy likeness seem'd to bear,
As if that Nature Art, Art Nature were.

Yet all had nothing been, obscurely kept
In the same urn wherein his dust hath slept;
Nor had he ris' the Delphic wreath to claim,
Had not the dying scene expir'd his name;
Despair our joy hath doubled, he is come;
Thrice welcome by this post-liminium.

His loss preserv'd him; They, that silenc'd Wit,
Are now the authors to eternize it;

Thus poets are in spite of Fate reviv'd,

And plays by intermission longer-liv'd.

THO. STANLEY.50

49 For the same reason that Sir Aston Cockaine's poem is reprinted, Sir Roger L'Estrange's keeps its place. His name is well known to the learned world, but this copy of verses does no great honour either to himself or our authors. SEWARD.

50 Mr. Stanley educated at Pembroke-Hall, Cambridge, was a poet of some eminence, and his verses have merit; and contain a proof of what is asserted in the Preface, of plays being kept unpublished for the benefit of the players. SEWARD.

VOL. I.

m

To

Beaumont
Fletcher

}

return'd! methinks, it should not be:
No, not in's works: plays are as dead as he.
The palate of this age gusts nothing high,
That has not custard in't, or bawdery.
Folly and madness fill the stage: The scene
Is Athens; where, the guilty, and the mean,
The fool 'scapes well enough; learned and great,
Suffer an ostracism; stand exulate.

Mankind is fall'n again, shrunk a degree,
A step below his very apostacy.
Nature her self is out of tune; and sick
Of tumult and disorder, lunatic.

Yet what world would not chearfully endure
The torture, or disease, t' enjoy the cure?
This book's the balsam, and the hellebore,
Must preserve bleeding Nature, and restore
Our
crazy stupor to a just quick sense

Both of ingratitude, and Providence.

That teaches us (at once) to feel and know,

Two deep points; what we want, and what we out.
Yet great goods have their ills: Should we transmit,
To future times, the pow'r of love and wit,
In this example; would they not combine
To make our imperfections their design?
They'd study our corruptions; and take more
Care to be ill, than to be good, before.
For nothing, but so great infirmity,
Could make them worthy of such remedy.
Have you not seen the sun's almighty ray
Rescue th' affrighted world, and redeem day
From black despair? how his victorious beam
Scatters the storm, and drowns the petty flame
Of lightning, in the glory of his eye;
How full of pow'r, how full of majesty?
When, to us mortals, nothing else was known,
But the sad doubt, whether to burn, or drown.
Choler, and phlegm, heat, and dull ignorance,
Have cast the people into such a trance,
Thar fears and danger seem great equally,
And no dispute left now, but how to die.
Just in this nick, Fletcher sets the world clear
Of all disorder, and reforms us here.

The formal youth, that knew no other grace,
Or value, but his title, and his lace,
Glasses himself, and, in this faithful mirror,
Views, disapproves, reforms, repents his error.
The credulous, bright girl, that believes all
Language, in oaths (if good) canonical,
Is fortified, and taught, here, to beware
Of ev'ry specious bait, of ev'ry snare

Save one; and that same caution takes her more,
Than all the flattery she felt before.

She finds her boxes, and her thoughts betray'd

By the corruption of the chamber-maid;

Then throws her washes and dissemblings by,
And vows nothing but ingenuity.