the greatest Monument of the Scene that Time and Humanity have produced, and must Live, not only the Crowne and sole Reputation of our owne, but the stayne of all other Nations and Languages." To such a pitch had the vogue of our dramatists risen in the thirty years after Beaumont's death! Not only Shakespeare and learned Ben, but Sophocles and Euripides may vail to them. "This being,"--and here we catch a vision from life itself,--"this being the Authentick witt that made Blackfriars an Academy, where the three howers spectacle while Beaumont and Fletcher were presented, were usually of more advantage to the hopefull young Heire, than a costly, dangerous, forraigne Travell, with the assistance of a governing Mounsieur, or Signior, to boote. And it cannot be denied but that the spirits of the Time, whose Birth and Qualitie made them impatient of the sowrer ways of education, have from the attentive hearing these pieces, got ground in point of wit and carriage of the most severely employed Students, while these Recreations were digested into Rules, and the very pleasure did edifie." So far as the plays printed in this folio are concerned, not much of this praise belongs to Beaumont; for, as we now know, not more than two of them, _The Coxcombe_ and the _Masque of the Inner Temple_, bear his impress. But Shirley is thinking of the reputation of the authors in general; and he writes with an eye to the sale of the book. Since we shall presently find opportunity to consider the trend of opinion during the seventeenth century regarding the respective shares of the dramatists in composition, but a word need be said here upon the subject,--and that as to the origin of a tradition speedily exaggerated into error: namely, that Beaumont's function in the partnership was purely of gravity and critical acumen. From the verses of John Berkenhead, an Oxford man, born in 1615, a writer of some lampooning ability and, in 1647 reader in moral philosophy at the University, we learn that, he, at least, thought it impossible to separate the faculties of the two dramatists, which "as two Voices in one Song embrace (Fletcher's keen Trebble, and deep Beaumont's Base"); that, however, there were some in his day who held "That One [Fletcher] the Sock, th' Other [Beaumont] the Buskin claim'd," That should the Stage embattaile all its Force, Fletcher would lead the Foot, Beaumont the Horse; and that Beaumont's was "the understanding," Fletcher's "the quick free will." Such discrimination, as I have said, Berkenhead disavows; but he is of the opinion, nevertheless, that the rules by which their art was governed came from Beaumont: So Beaumont dy'd; yet left in Legacy His Rules and Standard-wit (Fletcher) to Thee. And still another Oxford man, born four years before Beaumont's death, the Reverend Josias Howe, reasserting the essential unity of their compositions, concedes with regard to Fletcher,--