Mr. Weber, to whose taste, industry, and appropriate erudition we owe, I will not say the best, (for that would be saying little,) but a good, edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, has complimented the Philaster, which he himself describes as inferior to the Maid's Tragedy by the same writers, as but little below the noblest of Shakspeare's plays, Lear, Macbeth, Othello, &c. and consequently implying the equality, at least, of the Maid's Tragedy;--and an eminent living critic,--who in the manly wit, strong sterling sense, and robust style of his original works, had presented the best possible credentials of office as 'chargé d'affaires' of literature in general,--and who by his edition of Massinger--a work in which there was more for an editor to do, and in which more was actually well done, than in any similar work within my knowledge--has proved an especial right of authority in the appreciation of dramatic poetry, and hath potentially a double voice with the public in his own right and in that of the critical synod, where, as 'princeps senatus', he possesses it by his prerogative,--has affirmed that Shakspeare's superiority to his contemporaries rests on his superior wit alone, while in all the other, and, as I should deem, higher excellencies of the drama, character, pathos, depth of thought, &c. he is equalled by Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and Massinger! [1] Of wit I am engaged to treat in another Lecture. It is a genus of many species; and at present I shall only say, that the species which is predominant in Shakspeare, is so completely Shakspearian, and in its essence so interwoven with all his other characteristic excellencies, that I am equally incapable of comprehending, both how it can be detached from his other powers, and how, being disparate in kind from the wit of contemporary dramatists, it can be compared with theirs in degree. And again--the detachment and the practicability of the comparison being granted--I should, I confess, be rather inclined to concede the contrary;--and in the most common species of wit, and in the ordinary application of the term, to yield this particular palm to Beaumont and Fletcher, whom here and hereafter I take as one poet with two names,--leaving undivided what a rare love and still rarer congeniality have united. At least, I have never been able to distinguish the presence of Fletcher during the life of Beaumont, nor the absence of Beaumont during the survival of Fletcher.