The lines written to Lady Rutland, some five years before, What little wit I have Is not yet grown so near unto the grave, But that I can, by that dim fading light, Perceive of what, or unto whom I write, may have been conceived merely in humorous self-depreciation. But when we couple them with the epitaph written by John of Grace-Dieu "upon my deare brother, Francis Beaumont,"-- On Death, thy murd'rer, this revenge I take: I slight his terrour, and just question make, Which of us two the best precedence have-- Mine to this wretched world, thine to the grave. Thou shouldst have followed me, but Death to blame Miscounted yeeres, and measur'd age by fame: _So dearely hast thou bought thy precious lines; Their praise grew swiftly, so thy life declines._ Thy Muse, the hearer's queene, the reader's love, All eares, all hearts (but Death's), could please and move;-- when we couple the dramatist's own words of his "wit not yet grown so near unto the grave" with these of his brother which I have italicized, and reflect that for the last three years Francis seems to have written almost nothing, we are moved to conjecture that his early death was not unconnected with an excessive devotion to his art, and that his health had been for some time failing. As Darley long ago pointed out,[113] the lines of Bishop Corbet "on Mr. Francis Beaumont (then newly dead)" may intend more than a poetical conceit; and they would confirm the probability suggested above. He that hath such acuteness and such wit, As would ask ten good heads to husband it; He that can write so well, that no man dare Refuse it for the best, let him beware: Beaumont is dead; _by whose sole death appears, Wit's a disease consumes men in few years_.-- And this conjecture is borne out by the portrait of the weary Beaumont that now hangs in Nuneham.