In short, I am inclined to think Fletcher the more poet of the two. Where there is pathos or humor, I am in doubt whether it belongs to him or his partner, for I find these qualities both in the plays they wrote together and in those which are wholly his. In the expression of sentiment going far enough to excite a painless æsthetic sympathy, but stopping short of tragic passion, Beaumont is quite the equal of his friend. In the art of heightening and enriching such a sentiment by poetical associations and pictorial accessories, Fletcher seems to me the superior. Both, as I have said, have the art of being pathetic, and of conceiving pathetic situations; but neither of them had depth enough of character for that tragic pathos which is too terrible for tears; for those passionate convulsions when our human nature, like the sea in earthquake, is sucked away deep down from its habitual shores, leaving bare for a moment slimy beds stirring with loathsome life, and weedy tangles before undreamed of, and instantly hidden again under the rush of its reaction. Theirs are no sudden revelations, flashes out of the very tempest itself, and born of its own collisions; but much rather a melancholy Ovidian grace like that of the Heroic Epistles, conscious of itself, yet not so conscious as to beget distrust and make us feel as if we had been cheated of our tenderness. If they ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears, it is not without due warning and ceremonious preparation. I do not mean to say that their sentiment is not real, because it is pensive and not passionate. It is real, but it is never heart-rending. I say it all in saying that their region is that of fancy. Fancy and imagination may be of one substance, as the northern lights and lightning are supposed to be; but the one plays and flickers in harmless flashes and streamers over the vault of the brain, the other condenses all its thought-executing fires into a single stab of flame. And so of their humor. It is playful, intellectual, elaborate, like that of Charles Lamb when he trifles with it, pleasing itself with artificial dislocations of thought, and never glancing at those essential incongruities in the nature of things at sight of which humor shakes its bells, and mocks that it may not shudder. Their comedies are amusing, and one of them, “Wit without Money,” is excellent, with some scenes of joyous fun in it that are very cheering. The fourth scene of the third act is a masterpiece of fanciful extravagance. This is probably Fletcher’s. The Rev. W. Cartwright preferred Fletcher’s wit to Shakespeare’s:-- “Shakespeare to thee was dull: whose best jest lies I’ th’ ladies’ questions and the fools’ replies. Nature was all his art; thy vein was free As his, but without his scurrility.”