Of Cotton, Fletcher's and, therefore, Beaumont's friend, Lord Clarendon gives us explicit information: "He had all those qualities which in youth raise men to the reputation of being fine gentlemen: such a pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a sweetness and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and delightfulness in conversation, that no man in the Court or out of it appeared a more accomplished person; all these extraordinary qualifications being supported by as extraordinary a clearness of courage, and fearlessness of spirit, of which he gave too often manifestation." In later life he was less happy in fortune and in disposition, "and gave his best friends cause to have wished that he had not lived so long." He passed through the Civil War and died at the end of Cromwell's protectorate, 1658. And of Robert Herrick, we may say that he, too, was surely an acquaintance of our poets. He writes many poems to Ben Jonson. To their other friend, Selden, Fletcher's connection by the Baker alliance, and Beaumont's associate in the Inner Temple, he writes appreciatively: Whose smile can make a poet, and your glance Dash all bad poems out of countenance.[107] And of our dramatists themselves, he writes about the same time that he is writing to Selden, in his verses _To the Apparition of his Mistresse, calling him to Elizium_,-- Amongst which glories, crown'd with sacred bayes And flatt'ring ivie, two recite their plaies-- Beaumont and Fletcher, swans to whom all eares Listen while they, like syrens in their spheres, Sing their Evadne.[108] [Illustration: JOHN SELDEN From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London] The Bohemian life on the Bankside, such as it was, must have been brought to an end by Beaumont's marriage, about 1613. By that time Beaumont had written _The Woman-Hater_, _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, _The Maske_, and several poems; Fletcher, _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ and three or four plays more; the two in partnership, at least five plays; and Fletcher had meanwhile collaborated with other dramatists in from eight to eleven plays which do not now concern us. As to the remaining dramas assigned to this period and attributed by various critics to Beaumont and Fletcher in joint-authorship, we shall later inquire. Suffice it for the present to say that I do not believe that the former had a hand in any of them, except _The Scornful Ladie_. FOOTNOTES: [97] _Underwoods_, XLVIII. [98] Thomas Nashe, _Dedication of The Life of Jack Wilton_. [99] _Itinerary_, Ed. L. T. Smith, Vol. I, 97. [100] See Greg's _Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Drama_, and my former pupil, H. W. Hill's, _Sidney's Arcadia and the Elizabethan Drama_. [101] _Itinerary_, Vol. I, 21. See also, below, Appendix, Table A. [102] _Cal. State Papers, Domestic_, Chamberlain to Carleton, Jan. 4, 1617. The Villiers descent is given in Collins, _Peerage_, III, 762.