What the young readers of contemporary poetry at the universities thought of him is nowhere better expressed than in the lines written immediately after the poet's death by the fifteen- or sixteen-year-old John Earle;--he who was later Fellow of Merton; and in turn Bishop of Worcester, and of Salisbury. The ardent lad is gazing in person or imagination on the new-filled tomb in the Poets' Corner, when he writes: Beaumont lyes here; and where now shall we have A Muse like his, to sigh upon his grave? Ah, none to weepe this with a worthy teare, But he that cannot, Beaumont that lies here. Who now shall pay thy Tombe with such a Verse As thou that Ladies didst, faire Rutlands Herse? A Monument that will then lasting be, When all her Marble is more dust than she. In thee all's lost: a sudden dearth and want Hath seiz'd on Wit, good Epitaphs are scant; We dare not write thy Elegie, whilst each feares He nere shall match that coppy of thy teares. Scarce in an Age a Poet,--and yet he Scarce lives the third part of his age to see, But quickly taken off, and only known, Is in a minute shut as soone as showne.... Why should Nature take such pains to perfect that which ere perfected she shall destroy?-- Beaumont dies young, so Sidney died before; There was not Poetry he could live to, more: He could not grow up higher; I scarce know If th' art it self unto that pitch could grow, Were 't not in thee that hadst arriv'd the hight Of all that wit could reach, or Nature might.... The elegist likens Beaumont to Menander, Whose few sententious fragments show more worth Than all the Poets Athens ere brought forth; And I am sorry I have lost those houres On them, whose quicknesse comes far short of ours, And dwelt not more on thee, whose every Page May be a patterne to their Scene and Stage. I will not yeeld thy Workes so mean a Prayse-- More pure, more chaste, more sainted than are Playes, Nor with that dull supinenesse to be read, To passe a fire, or laugh an houre in bed.... Why should not Beaumont in the Morning please, As well as Plautus, Aristophanes? Who, if my Pen may as my thoughts be free, Were scurrill Wits and Buffons both to Thee.... Yet these are Wits, because they'r old, and now Being Greeke and Latine, they are Learning too: But those their owne Times were content t' allow A thriftier fame, and thine is lowest now. But thou shall live, and, when thy Name is growne Six Ages older, shall be better knowne; When thou'rt of Chaucers standing in the Tombe, Thou shall not share, but take up all his roome.[131]