Thy ocean fancy knew nor banks nor dams;
We ebb down dry to pebble-anagrams;
Dead and insipid, all despairing sit;
Lost to behold this great relapse of wit :
What strength remains, is like that (wild and fierce)
Till Jonson made good poets and right verse.
Such boist'rous trifles thy muse would not brook,
Save when she'd shew how scurvily they look ;
No savage metaphors (things rudely great)
Thou dost display, nor butcher a conceit;
Thy nerves have beauty which invades and charms;
Looks like a princess harness'd in bright arms.
Nor art thou loud and cloudy; those, that do
Thunder so much, do't without lightning too;
Tearing themselves, and almost split their brain
To render harsh what thou speak'st free and clean ;
Such gloomy sense may pass for high and proud,
But true-born wit still flies above the cloud;
Thou knew'st 'twas impotence, what they call height;
Who blusters strong i' th' dark, but creeps i' th' light.
And as thy thoughts were clear, so, innocent;
Thy fancy gave no unswept language vent;
Slander'st not laws, prophan'st no holy page
(As if thy father's crosier awed the stage ;)
High crimes were still arraign'd; tho' they made shift
To prosper out four acts, were plagued i' th' fift:
All's safe and wise; no stiff affected scene,
Nor swoln, nor flat, a true full natural vein ;
Thy sense (like well-drest ladies) cloath'd as skinn'd,
Not all unlaced, nor city-starch'd and pinn'd;
Thou hadst no sloth, no rage, no sullen fit,
But strength and mirth; Fletcher's a sanguine wit.
Thus, two great consul-poets all things sway'd,
Till all was English born or English made :
Mitre and coif here into one piece spun,
Beaumont a judge's, this a prelate's son.
What strange production is at last display'd,
Got by two fathers, without female aid!
Behold, two masculines espoused each other ;.
Wit and the world were born without a mother.
UPON THE EVER-TO-BE-ADMIRED MR. JOHN FLETCHER AND HIS PLAYS.
What's all this preparation for? or why
Such sudden triumphs? Fletcher, the people cry!
Just so, when kings approach, our conduits run
Claret, as here the spouts flow Helicon :
See, every sprightful muse, dress'd trim and gay,
Strews herbs and scatters roses in his way.
Thus th' outward yard set round with bays we've seen,
Which from the garden hath transplanted been ;
Thus, at the prætor's feast, with needless costs,
Some must be employ'd in painting of the posts;
And some, as dishes made for sight, not taste,
Stand here as things for show to Fletcher's feast.
Oh, what an honour, what a grace 't had been,
To have had his cook in Rollo serve them in!
Fletcher, the king of poets! such was he,
That earn'd all tribute, claim'd all sovereignty;
And may he that denies it, learn to blush
At's Loyal Subject, starve at's Beggar's Bush ;
And, if not drawn by example, shame, nor grace,
Turn o'er to's Corcomb, and the Wild-Goose Chase.
Monarch of wit! great magazine of wealth!
From whose rich bank, by a Promethean stealth,
Our lesser flames do blaze! His the true fire,
When they, like glow-worms, being touch'd, expire.
'Twas first believed, because he always was
The ipse dixit, and Pythagoras
To our disciple-wits, his soul might run
(By the same dreamt-of transmigration)
Into their rude and indigested brain,
And so inform their chaos-lump again;
For many specious brats of this last age
Spoke Fletcher perfectly in every page.
This roused his rage, to be abused thus,
Made's Lover Mad, Lieutenant Humorous.
Thus ends-of-gold-and-silver-men are made
(As th' use to say) goldsmiths of his own trade;
Thus rag-men from the dung-hill often hop,
And publish forth by chance a broker's shop.
But by his own light, now, we have descried
The dross, from that hath been so purely tried.
Proteus of wit! who reads him doth not see
The manners of each sex, of each degree?
His full-stored fancy doth all humours fill,
From th' Queen of Corinth to the Maid o' th' Mill;
His Curate, Lawyer, Captain, Prophetess,
Shew he was all and every one of these;
He taught (so subtly were their fancies seized)
To Rule a Wife, and yet the Women Pleased.
Parnassus is thine own; claim it as merit,
Law makes the Elder Brother to inherit.
UPON THE UNPARALLELED PLAYS WRITTEN BY THOSE RENOWNED TWINS OF POETRY, BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
What's here? another library of praise,
Met in a troop to advance contemned plays,
And bring exploded wit again in fashion?
I can't but wonder at this reformation.
My skipping soul surfeits with so much good,
To see my hopes into fruition bud.
A happy chemistry! blest viper! Joy!
That through thy mother's bowels gnaw'st thy way!
Wits flock in shoals, and club to re-erect,
In spite of ignorance, the architect
Of occidental poesy; and turn
Gods, to recal Wit's ashes from their urn.
Like huge Colosses, they've together knit
Their shoulders to support a world of wit.
The tale of Atlas (though of truth it miss)
We plainly read mythologized in this!
Orpheus and Amphion, whose undying stories
Made Athens famous, are but allegories.
'Tis Poetry has power to civilize
Men, worse than stones, more blockish than the trees.
I cannot chuse but think (now things so fall)
That Wit is past its climacterical;
And though the Muses have been dead and gone,
I know they'll find a resurrection.
'Tis vain to praise; they're to themselves a glory, And silence is our sweetest oratory.
For he, that names but Fletcher, must needs be
Found guilty of a loud hyperbole.
His fancy so transcendently aspires,
He shews himself a wit, who but admires.
Here are no volumes stuff'd with chevrel sense, The very anagrams of eloquence;
Nor long long-winded sentences that be,
Being rightly spell'd, but wit's stenography;
Nor words as void of reason as of rhyme,
Only cæsura'd to spin out the time.
But here's a magazine of purest sense,
Cloath'd in the newest garb of eloquence:
Scenes that are quick and sprightly, in whose veins
Bubbles the quintessence of sweet high strains.
Lines, like their authors, and each word of it
Does say, 'twas writ by a gemini of wit.
How happy is our age! how blest our men !
When such rare souls live themselves o'er again.
We err, that think a poet dies; for this
Shews, that 'tis but a metempsychosis.
Beaumont and Fletcher here, at last, we see
Above the reach of dull mortality,
Or power of fate: And thus the proverb hits,
(That's so much cross'd) These men live by their wits.
ON THE DEATH AND WORKS OF MR. JOHN FLETCHER.
My name, so far from great, that 'tis not known, Can lend no praise but what thou'dst blush to own; And no rude hand, or feeble wit, should dare
To vex thy shrine with an unlearned tear.
I'd have a state of wit convoked, which hath A power to take up on common faith;
That, when the stock of the whole kingdom's spent
In but preparative to thy monument,
The prudent council may invent fresh ways
To get new contribution to thy praise ;
And rear it high, and equal to thy wit;
Which must give life and monument to it.
So when, late, Essex died, the public face
Wore sorrow in't; and to add mournful grace
To the sad pomp of his lamented fall,
The commonwealth served at his funeral,
And by a solemn order built his hearse;
-But not like thine, built by thyself in verse,
Where thy advanced image safely stands
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands.
Base hands, how impotently you disclose
Your rage 'gainst Camden's learned ashes, whose
Defaced statua and martyr'd book,
Like an antiquity and fragment look,
Nonnulla desunt's legibly appear,
So truly now Camden's Remains lie there.
Vain malice! how he mocks thy rage, while breath
Of Fame shall speak his great Elizabeth!
'Gainst time and thee he well provided hath; Britannia is the tomb and epitaph.
Thus princes' honours; but wit only gives
A name which to succeeding ages lives.
Singly we now consult ourselves and fame,
Ambitious to twist ours with thy great name.
Hence we thus bold to praise: For as a vine,
With subtle wreath and close embrace, doth twine
A friendly elm, by whose tall trunk it shoots,
And gathers growth and moisture from its roots;
About its arms the thankful clusters cling
Like bracelets, and with purple ammelling
The blue-cheek'd grape, stuck in its vernant hair,
Hangs like rich jewels in a beauteous ear.
So grow our praises by thy wit; we do
Borrow support and strength, and lend but show.
And but thy male wit, like the youthful sun,
Strongly begets upon our passion,
Making our sorrow teem with elegy,
Thou yet unwept, and yet unpraised might'st be.
But they're imperfect births; and such are all
Produced by causes not univocal,
The scapes of Nature, passives being unfit :
And hence our verse speaks only mother-wit.
Oh, for a fit o' th' father! for a spirit
That might but parcel of thy worth inherit;
For but a spark of that diviner fire,
Which thy full breast did animate and inspire;
That souls could be divided, thou traduce
But a small particle of thine to us!
Of thine; which we admired when thou didst sit
But as a joint-commissioner in wit;
When it had plummets hung on to suppress
Its too luxuriant growing mightiness:
Till, as that tree which scorns to be kept down,
Thou grew'st to govern the whole stage alone;
In which orb thy throng'd light did make the star,
Thou wert the intelligence did move that sphere.
Thy fury was composed; Rapture no fit
That hung on thee; nor thou far gone in wit
As men in a disease; thy fancy clear,
Muse chaste, as those flames whence they took their fire; No spurious composures amongst thine,
Got in adultery 'twixt Wit and Wine.
And as the hermetical physicians draw
From things that curse of the first-broken law,
That ens venenum which extracted thence
Leaves nought but primitive good and innocence :
So was thy spirit calcined; no mixtures there
But perfect, such as next to simples are.
Not like those meteor-wits which wildly fly
In storm and thunder through the amazed sky;
Speaking but th' ills and villainies in a state,
Which fools admire, and wise men tremble at,
Full of portent and prodigy, whose gall
Oft 'scapes the vice, and on the man doth fall.
Nature used all her skill, when thee she meant
A wit at once both great and innocent.
Yet thou hadst tooth; but 'twas thy judgment, not
For mending one word a whole sheet to blot.
Thou couldst anatomise with ready art,
And skilful hand, crimes lock'd close up i' th' heart.
Thou couldst unfold dark plots, and shew that path
By which Ambition climb'd to greatness hath;
Thou couldst the rises, turns, and falls of states,
How near they were their periods and dates;
Couldst mad the subject into popular rage,
And the grown seas of that great storm assuage;
Dethrone usurping tyrants and place there
The lawful prince and true inheriter;
Knew'st all dark turnings in the labyrinth
Of policy, which who but knows he sinn❜th,
Save thee, who un-infected didst walk in't,
As the great genius of government.
And when thou laidst thy tragic buskin by,
To court the stage with gentle comedy,
How new, how proper th' humours, how express'd
In rich variety, how neatly dress'd
In language, how rare plots, what strength of wit
Shined in the face and every limb of it!
The stage grew narrow while thou grew'st to be
In thy whole life an excellent comedy.
To these a virgin-modesty, which first met
Applause with blush and fear, as if he yet
Had not deserved; till bold with constant praise
His brows admitted the unsought-for bays.
Nor would he ravish Fame; but left men free
To their own vote and ingenuity.
When his fair Shepherdess, on the guilty stage,
Was martyr'd between ignorance and rage;
At which the impatient virtues of those few
Could judge, grew high, cried murder! though he knew
The innocence and beauty of his child,
He only, as if unconcerned, smiled.
Princes have gather'd since each scatter'd grace,
Each line and beauty of that injured face;
And on th' united parts breathed such a fire
As, spite of malice, she shall ne'er expire.
Attending, not affecting, thus the crown,
Till every hand did help to set it on,
He came to be sole monarch, and did reign
In Wit's great empire, absolute sovereign.
TO THE MEMORY OF THE DECEASED, BUT EVER-LIVING AUTHOR, IN THESE HIS POEMS,
MR. JOHN FLETCHER.
On the large train of Fletcher's friends let me
(Retaining still my wonted modesty)
Become a waiter, in my ragged verse,
As follower to the muse's followers.
Many here are of noble rank and worth
That have, by strength of art, set Fletcher forth
In true and lively colours, as they saw him,
And had the best abilities to draw him;
Many more are abroad, that write, and look
To have their lines set before Fletcher's book ;
Some, that have known him too; some more, some less ;
Some only but by hearsay, some by guess;
And some for fashion-sake would take the hint,
To try how well their wits would shew in print.
You, that are here before me, gentlemen,
And princes of Parnassus by the pen,
And your just judgments of his worth, that have
Preserved this author's memory from the grave,
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