The others cold inventions with such wit, As served like spice, to make them quick and fit; Nor out of mutuall want, or emptinesse, Did you conspire to go still twins to th' Presse: But what thus joy tied you wrote, might have come forth As good from each, and stored with the same worth That thus united them, you did joyne sense, In you 'twas League, in others impotence; And the Presse which both thus amongst us sends, Sends us one Poet in a faire of friends._ Jasper Maine. Upon the report of the printing of the Dramaticall Poems of Master _John Fletcher_, collected before, and now set forth in one Volume. _Though when all_ Fletcher _writ, and the entire Man was indulged unto that sacred fire, His thoughts, and his thoughts dresse, appeared both such, That 'twas his happy fault to do too much; Who therefore wisely did submit each birth To knowing_ Beaumont _e're it did come forth, Working againe untill he said 'twas fit, And made him the sobriety of his wit; Though thus he call'd his Judge into his fame, And for that aid allow'd him halfe the name, 'Tis knowne, that sometimes he did stand alone, That both the Spunge and Pencill were his owne; That himselfe judged himselfe, could singly do, And was at last_ Beaumont _and_ Fletcher _too; Else we had lost his_ Shepherdesse, _a piece Even and smooth, spun from a finer fleece, Where softnesse raignes, where passions passions greet, Gentle and high, as floods of Balsam meet. Where dressed in white expressions, sit bright Loves, Drawne, like their fairest Queen, by milkie Doves; A piece, which_ Johnson _in a rapture bid Come up a glorifi'd Worke, and so it did. Else had his Muse set with his friend; the Stage Had missed those Poems, which yet take the Age; The world had lost those rich exemplars, where Art, Language, Wit, sit ruling in one Spheare, Where the fresh matters soare above old Theames, As Prophets Raptures do above our Dreames; Where in a worthy scorne he dares refuse All other Gods, and makes the thing his Muse; Where he calls passions up, and layes them so, As spirits, aw'd by him to come and go; Where the free Author did what e're he would, And nothing will'd, but what a Poet should. No vast uncivill bulke swells any Scene, The strength's ingenious, a[n]d the vigour cleane; None can prevent the Fancy, and see through At the first opening; all stand wondring how The thing will be untill it is; which thence With fresh delight still cheats, still takes the sence; The whole designe, the shadowes, the lights such That none can say he shelves or hides too much:_ _Businesse growes up, ripened by just encrease, And by as just degrees againe doth cease, The heats and minutes of affaires are watcht, And the nice points of time are met, and snatcht: Nought later then it should, nought comes before,