The jailor’s daughter, who falls in love with Palamon, and goes mad, is a wretched interpolation in the story, and a fantastic copy of Ophelia. But they readily availed themselves of all the dramatic common-places to be found in Shakespear, love, madness, processions, sports, imprisonment, &c. and copied him too often in earnest, to have a right to parody him, as they sometimes did, in jest.—The story of the Two Noble Kinsmen is taken from Chaucer’s Palamon and Arcite; but the latter part, which in Chaucer is full of dramatic power and interest, degenerates in the play into a mere narrative of the principal events, and possesses little value or effect.—It is not improbable that Beaumont and Fletcher’s having dramatised this story, put Dryden upon modernising it. I cannot go through all Beaumont and Fletcher’s dramas (52 in number), but I have mentioned some of the principal, and the excellences and defects of the rest may be judged of from these. The Bloody Brother, A Wife for a Month, Bonduca, Thierry and Theodoret, are among the best of their tragedies: among the comedies, the Night Walker, the Little French Lawyer, and Monsieur Thomas, come perhaps next to the Chances, the Wild Goose Chase, and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife.—Philaster, or Love lies a Bleeding, is one of the most admirable productions of these authors (the last I shall mention); and the patience of Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario, the tenderness of Arethusa, and the jealousy of Philaster, are beyond all praise. The passages of extreme romantic beauty and high-wrought passion that I might quote, are out of number. One only must suffice, the account of the commencement of Euphrasia’s love to Philaster. ——‘Sitting in my window, Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a God I thought (but it was you) enter our gates; My blood flew out, and back again as fast As I had puffed it forth and suck’d it in Like breath; then was I called away in haste To entertain you. Never was a man Heav’d from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais’d So high in thoughts as I: you left a kiss Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep From you forever. I did hear you talk Far above singing!’ And so it is our poets themselves write, ‘far above singing.’[23] I am loth to part with them, and wander down, as we now must, ‘Into a lower world, to theirs obscure And wild—To breathe in other air Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.’