A panegyric liberal in the superlatives of youth but, in view of passages to be quoted elsewhere, one of the sanest as well as earliest appreciations of Beaumont's distinctive quality as a dramatist; an appreciation such as the historian might expect from a collegian who, a dozen years later, was not only one of the most genial and refined scholars of his generation but, perhaps, the most accurate observer and epitomist of the familiar types and minor morals of his day,--a writer who in 1628 is still championing the cause of contemporary poetry. In his characterization of the Vulgar-Spirited Man "that is taken only with broad and obscene wit, and hisses anything too deep for him; that cries, Chaucer for his money above all our English poets, because the voice has gone so, and he has read none," the Earle of the _Microcosmographie_ is but repeating the censure of his elegy on Beaumont in 1616. About 1620, we find a contemporary of altogether different class from that of the university student acknowledging the fame of Beaumont, the Thames waterman, John Taylor. This self-advertising tramp and rollicking scribbler mentions him in _The Praise of Hemp-seed_ with Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare, and others, as of those who, "in paper-immortality, Doe live in spight of death, and cannot die." And not far separated from Taylor's testimonial in point of time is William Basse's prediction of a prouder immortality. Basse who was but two years older than Beaumont, and, as we have seen, was one of the pastoral group with which Beaumont's career was associated, is writing of "Mr. William Shakespeare" who had died six weeks after Beaumont,--and he thus apostrophizes the Westminster poets of the Corner: Renowned Spencer, lye a thought more nye To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lye A little neerer Spencer, to make roome For Shakespeare in your threefold, fowerfold Tombe. To lodge all foure in one bed make a shift Untill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift, Betwixt this day and that, by Fate be slayne For whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe. The date of the sonnet of which these are the opening lines can be only approximately determined. It must be earlier, however, than 1623; for in that year Jonson alludes to it in verses presently to be quoted. And it must be later than the erection of the monument to Shakespeare's memory in Trinity Church, Stratford, in or soon after 1618, for in the lines which follow those given above the writer apostrophizes Shakespeare as sleeping "Under this carved marble of thine owne." The sonnet contemplates the removal of Shakespeare's remains to Westminster, and arranges the poets already lying there not in actual but chronological order.[132]