sky likewise leaves us with this impression, though in fact the episode had been romanced and distorted out of all recognition by the good-natured buffoon and adventurer who wrote it.

In the critical portions of the work, the reader will occasionally be taken aback by unabashed superlatives. In the suicide Werther "fell the noblest and purest of human souls." This is distinctly an eighteenth-century estimate. "Werther, the great masterpiece," is, "next to Hamlet, the most unique [eigenthümlich] figure in the literature of the world." We are given reasons why Goethe's Iphigenia is greater than the Iphigenia of Euripides. Of the youthful fragment, The Marriage of Hanswurst, it is written, "If the play had been completed we should possess a comedy little inferior to Aristophanes in wit, and superior in bold license." Those who feel that Aristophanes was conscious of the limits of his art will necessarily misconstrue Bielschowsky's intended compliment.

When he turns to the works of the closing years, in which the aging Goethe occasionally wanders far from the poet's province, the concrete, and writes in that compressed, telescoped style not unlike Shakespeare's last manner, the critic confuses two categories. He seems to believe that a work of art is beautiful in proportion as it is profound, forgetting that when poetry ceases to be simple, sensuous, and passionate, it runs grave danger of ceasing to be poetry. Thus the second part of Faust is coupled with the first in one indiscriminate laud, though the first

is a poem of man's experience with desires and the world, and the second of his experience with phantoms, ideas, and that essentially morbid person, himself. To many they are as different in quality as Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. The second poem of both masters has been anticlimaxed by the first; the griffe du lion is less and less evident, and the greatest poetry less and less frequent. Bielschowsky follows many commentators in speaking of Faust simply as the Gretchen Episode. Part II contains the body of the poem. Yet nearly a quarter of a century had elapsed between the publication of the two. The fact that Paradise Regained was Milton's favorite does not make it his greatest poem, and for the critic Goethe's views will not be decisive here. His two works, whatever their relation to the central theme, exhibit two distinct conceptions of poetry, and if they are both great world-literature they are great for different reasons and they should have been treated separately.

Through following his master so closely, Bielschowsky has given us a convincing, by all odds the most convincing, portrait of the great Sage of Weimar, the largest, fullest personality in history. He shows us how he lived and moved and had his being, how "he could split a day into a million parts and rebuild it into a miniature eternity." As such it is an independent and valuable contribution to literature. For estimates of the literary achievement of Goethe, we shall still read with profit the book of his larger-minded, saner admirer, George Henry Lewes.

IN 1833 Coleridge, full of enthusiasm for Beaumont and Fletcher, exclaimed, "How lamentable it is that no gentleman and scholar can be found to edit these beautiful plays!" Ten years later the Reverend Alexander Dyce, a scholar and a gentleman, and the man to whom the Elizabethan drama owes more than to almost any one, re-collated the early texts and published an edition which has remained standard for sixty years. Now two new complete editions' are offered to the public. It is to be hoped that this means, or will create, a renewal of interest in the old dramatists, and that a generation which has been somewhat surfeited with Ibsen will turn its attention for a time to plays of a different character. To be sure, Beaumont and Fletcher are infinitely grosser than the prophet of the North, but it may be doubted whether The Chances is not, in fundamentals, less unhinging to the moral sense than Ghosts, and the English play is certainly the more entertaining of the two.

Mr. Bullen reserves elaborate critical discussion for a supplementary volume; but each play is preceded by a brief introduction, of which the most original feature is a sketch of the theatrical history of the piece. In determining chronology it is unfortunate that the edit

1 The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Variorum Edition. London: George Bell & Sons and A. H. Bullen. (In course of publication.)

The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Edited by ARNOLD GLOVER and A. R. WALLER. Cambridge (England): The University Press. (In course of publication.)

The Maid's Tragedy and Philaster. By FRANCIS BEAUMONT and JOHN FLETCHER. Edited by ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE, Ph. D. Belles Lettres Series, Section III. General Editor, GEORGE PEIRCE BAKER. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. 1906.

ors should not have taken account of Professor Thorndike's admirable Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere. Even if they could not accept Professor Thorndike's views, they should certainly have considered them, particularly as to the relation of Cymbeline to Philaster. In explanatory notes Dyce is usually followed, but with valuable additions. For text the old editions have been re-collated and many variants, disregarded by Dyce, have been noted. Not all, however. For example, Maid's Tragedy, IV, 1, line 1, Mr. Bullen's edition, in common with all others, omits the at least possibly solemn and dramatic "God" of the first quarto.

The Cambridge edition, like the Cambridge Shakespeare, pays no attention to anything but the text, although a supplementary volume of comment is promised. The second folio is reprinted verbatim et litteratim, apparently with great accuracy, and a very extensive collection of variants in earlier editions is given in an appendix; but all emendations of modern editors are disregarded. In a work which appears, from its price, to be intended largely for popular reading, this method of procedure cannot be too emphatically condemned. Wantonly to reject everything that has been done to make the old poets more approachable and intelligible, and to hide carefully at the back of the book all the different readings of earlier and perhaps often better editions, is simply without excuse. To show what this leads to, I may point out that we get the beautiful verse of The Elder Brother in its plain prosaic second-folio garb; and although in this case the earlier verse form is printed in the appendix, the editors take pains to state that in general they have paid no attention to the efforts

of modern editors to extract verse from the old chaotic prose.

Professor Thorndike's unpretentious volume shows the care and scholarship which we should expect from him and from the excellent "Belles Lettres Series." The introductory matter is abundant and suggestive, both for scholars and for the general reader. The bibliographics, especially, as with other volumes of the series, are very useful. The text has evidently been prepared with much thought and labor. I must confess to a shadow of doubt as to the advantage of following the lawless spelling of the old quartos; but Professor Thorndike's whole treatment of the question is totally different from the slavish process of facsimile adopted by the Cambridge editors.

It has long been well known that in the vast collection of dramas printed under the names of Beaumont and Fletcher, Beaumont had but a comparatively small share. Massinger was recognized by contemporaries as an occasional collaborator with Fletcher, while Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Rowley, and Shirley are all mentioned as part authors of different plays, and many were undoubtedly written by Fletcher. alone. The elaborate investigations made in recent years by Fleay, Boyle, Oliphant, and others, have put the question into much more scientific shape, and it is now possible in a large number of cases to distinguish the different authors with a reasonable degree of certainty. This result has been brought about mainly by the careful study of different forms of verse. In the work of Shakespeare, taken in its chronological order of development, we find a very great variety in the iambic metre, a steady progression from simple and primitive numbers in the early historical plays to the complicated and subtle harmony of The Tempest and A Winter's Tale. In Shakespeare's contemporaries no such elaborate process of development has yet been traced; but many of them seem to have inclined to some special phase or phases of metrical expression, by

which, when once recognized, it becomes a comparatively easy matter to distinguish their work. Of all the dramatists, Fletcher is the most marked in this respect. In the plays which are known to be by him alone, he shows such striking peculiarities of metre, as well as of style, that any one who is thoroughly familiar with him will hardly confuse his work with that of others. The same thing is true, though in a less degree, of Massinger, and, in a less degree again, of Beaumont; so that we can say, with a reasonable amount of confidence, that certain plays are by Massinger and Fletcher, others by Beaumont and Fletcher; and, in the case of the former, especially, we can point out the acts and scenes that are attributable to each author. With Beaumont and Fletcher this is more difficult, for we often find distinct traces of both authors in the same scene, and these marks of intimate association of thought and workmanship agree pleasantly with old traditions of the poets' close friendship and intimate association in their lives.

Unfortunately tradition and shreds of doubtful hearsay are all that have come to us in the matter. As with Shakespeare, and with so many of his great fellows, we know little of Beaumont and Fletcher beyond a dry and meagre collection of dates. Fletcher was born in 1579, entered as a pensioner in Benet College, Cambridge, 1591, probably began playwriting about 1604, and died in 1625. Beaumont (sometimes spelled by contemporaries Bewmont and possibly so pronounced) was born about 1585, went to Oxford in 1597, was entered at the Inner Temple in 1600, married, perhaps in 1613, and died in 1616, the year which also saw the death of Shakespeare. Both poets were of good family, Fletcher being the son of a bishop. Both had certainly the opportunity of a good education, and were well qualified to mingle on equal terms with the gay and courtly gentlemen who figure so largely in their plays. Both were intimate with their fellow drama

tists. The most brilliant account that has come down to us of the witty doings at the Mermaid Tavern is contained in a letter of Beaumont's to Ben Jonson; and Jonson's answer shows genuine affection, although in his frank talks with Drum mond he remarked "that Francis Beaumont loved too much himself and his own verses!" For any closer acquaintance with the characters and fortunes of the two celebrated partners we have to rely, as with Shakespeare, mainly upon the study of their writings.

In considering Beaumont's work we must always bear in mind his extreme youth. If Professor Thorndike's chronology is to be accepted, Beaumont began play-writing at twenty, and some of his best pieces had almost certainly been produced by the time he was twenty-five, an age at which Shakespeare had not attempted even such immature performances as The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors. Dying at but little over thirty, Beaumont is to be classed with Chatterton and Keats and Shelley, among those who had time to give the world only the promise of what they might have accomplished.

Yet the contemporaries of this precocious genius seem to have thought quite as highly of his discretion as of his inspiration. Pope's remark that Beaumont

checked what Fletcher writ" is hardly to be accepted as final, any more than Dryden's astonishing statement that Jonson" used his [Beaumont's] judgment in correcting, if not contriving all his plots;" but such observations must have been founded on an enduring tradition which had much basis in fact. And, in general, the plays written by the two poets in collaboration, as compared with Fletcher's unassisted work, show a greater solidity of design, more forethought and broad sense of dramatic effect in the conduct of the action. They have not Fletcher's verve, his inexhaustible fertility of resource; but Beaumont would hardly have been guilty of the structural defects of The Chances.

And the finish, the perfection of Beaumont's workmanship are much more apparent in his style than in his handling of plot. In this regard he is as remote from Fletcher as he is from Shakespeare. Shakespeare crowds his lines, strains them with thought and figure. sometimes sublime above all other sublimity, sometimes ill-chosen and tasteless; he loads and strains language almost beyond its capacity of bearing. Fletcher rushes onward in a golden flood, clear, but unchecked, exuberant, garrulous at moments. Beaumont is as clear as Fletcher, as simple, no labor in him, no overstrain; but every word tells. The progress, the modulation of the thought is as delicate and perfect as the modulation of the verse, and moves with it in absolute harmony. From the nature of the case these qualities can be well shown only in passages longer than I have space to quote; but let the reader turn to Philaster's well-known description of his first meeting with Bellario and observe the exquisite adjustment of sound to sense, the grace and purity of the diction, the delicate restraint in the use of figurative expressions. An odd little illustration of the working of prejudice in these matters occurs in a note of Steevens on Twelfth Night. He calls attention to the lines of Viola,

-

Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy, — and adds, "how much more elegantly is this thought expressed by Shakespeare than by Beaumont and Fletcher in their Philaster:

I grieve such virtue should be laid in earth Without an heir.

We must remember that Viola's mood tends to irony; but surely any one who is not blinded by the good Steevens's Shakespeariolatry will feel that, taken in itself, the Twelfth Night passage, with its fanciful conceit and its tricky alliteration, is far inferior to the Beaumont bit in grace, in delicacy, in short, precisely in elegance.

This instinct of perfection in Beaumont has been too often overlooked, because until recently critics have not been sufficiently able to separate his work from the glittering imperfection of Fletcher; and no better testimony can be found to the utility of minute investigation in questions of authorship than that it clears the way for such a result. It is worth while to insist on Beaumont's excellence in this respect, because it is so peculiarly un-Elizabethan. Ben Jonson complained that Shakespeare wanted art, and, after all the frenzy of German hypercriticism, I think the sober reader of the twentieth century will end by agreeing with Ben Jonson. Beaumont did not live to arrive at maturity. He was hampered, as well as benefited, by association with a genius of a totally different stamp. But if he had lived and had come to work independently, I cannot help thinking that he might have given to the English drama just the something which Shakespeare, supreme poet and supreme creator as he was, did not give to it. In all the peculiar excellences of the dramatic art we may, perhaps, take Racine to have been the exact opposite, the complement of Shakespeare. And Beaumont had it in him to have become the English Racine.

In the creation of character Beaumont has also much of Racine, as well as in style and in faculty of design. Like Racine, the English poet succeeded best with women, and his heroines have the grace, the delicacy, the peculiarly feminine qualities, which belong to Phèdre, to Andromaque, to Bérénice. Beaumont's heroes undeniably fall short of the heroic. Amintor, Philaster, Arbaces, Ricardo, are too much victims of the storms of passion, they lack command over others and even over themselves; we feel in them the want not only of heroism, but too often of simple manliness, which, perhaps, is the same thing as the only heroism that counts. Nor, indeed. have his women always quite that element of womanliness which corresponds to manVOL. 101 - NO. 1

Do it by me,

Do it again by me, the lost Aspatia,
And you shall find all true but the wild island.
Suppose I stand upon the sea-beach now,
Mine arms thus, and mine hair blown with the
wind,

Wild as that desert; and let all about me
Be teachers of my story.

Or the pathos of the abandoned Viola ?·
Woman, they say, was only made of man.
Methinks, 't is strange they should be so unlike.
It may be, all the best was cut away

To make the woman, and the naught was left Behind with him. — I'll sit me down and weep. All things have cast me from 'em but the earth. The evening comes and every little flower Droops now as well as I.

Or the divine tenderness of Euphrasia (as the boy Bellario) comforting Philaster who mourns that her life should be cut off before the prime?

Alas, my Lord, my life is not a thing Worthy your noble thoughts. "T is not a life; 'T is but a piece of childhood thrown away.

On another side, however, Beaumont shows his truly Elizabethan affinities and reaches out into a world of comedy quite beyond the grasp of the classical author of Les Plaideurs. Bessus and Merrythought are as far removed from the starched humors of Jonson as from the dry brilliance of Fletcher. They have the warmth, the mellow, fruity richness in which only Beaumont, Dekker, and Middleton approach the golden sunshine of Shakespeare. Merrythought, especially, is a real comic creation and stands out as such in that rather elementary burlesque medley, The Knight of the Burning Pestle. How gay he is, with his old tags of song, his inextinguishable laughter, his joyous confidence that the future will be like the past and that, if it is not, mirth will mend it.

"How have I done hitherto these forty years? I never came into my dining-room but at eleven and six o'clock I found excellent