Francis Beaumont: Dramatist: A Portrait, with Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean,; And of His Association with John Fletcher — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Francis Beaumont: Dramatist: A Portrait, with Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean,; And of His Association with John Fletcher
John Stuart Mill · en
Grace-Dieu where the youth of these children was principally spent, was
"beautifully situated in what was formerly one of the most recluse spots
in the centre of Charnwood Forest," within a little distance of the
turn-pike road that leads from Ashby-de-la-Zouch to Loughborough. It
lies low in a valley, near the river Soar. In his _Two Bookes of
Epigrammes and Epitaphs_, 1639, Thomas Bancroft gives us a picture of
the spot:
Grace-Dieu, that under Charnwood stand'st alone,
As a grand relicke of religion,
I reverence thine old, but fruitfull, worth,
That lately brought such noble Beaumonts forth,
Whose brave heroicke Muses might aspire
To match the anthems of the heavenly quire:
The mountaines crown'd with rockey fortresses,
And sheltering woods, secure thy happiness
That highly favour'd art (tho' lowly placed)
Of Heaven, and with free Nature's bounty graced.
And still another picture of it is painted, a hundred and seventy years
later by Wordsworth, the friend of the Sir George Beaumont who in his
day was possessed of the old family seat of Coleorton Hall, within half
an hour's walk of Grace-Dieu:--
Beneath yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound,
Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest ground
Stand yet, but, Stranger! hidden from thy view,
The ivied Ruins of forlorn Grace-Dieu,--
Erst a religious house, which day and night
With hymns resounded, and the chanted rite:
And when those rites had ceased, the Spot gave birth
To honourable Men of various worth:
There, on the margin of a streamlet wild,
Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child:
There, under shadow of the neighboring rocks,
Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks;
Unconscious prelude to heroic themes,
Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams
Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage,
With which his genius shook the buskined stage.
Communities are lost, and Empires die,
And things of holy use unhallowed lie;
They perish;--but the Intellect can raise,
From airy words alone, a Pile that ne'er decays.[13]
So far as the "youthful tales of shepherds" go, Wordsworth is probably
thinking of the verses of Francis' brother, Sir John, which open:
A shepherdess, who long had kept her flocks
On stony Charnwood's dry and barren rocks,--
written long after both brothers had left boyhood behind; indeed after
Francis was dead; or he is attributing to our Beaumont a share in
Fletcher's _Faithfull Shepheardesse_. Francis, himself, has given us
nothing of the pastoral vein, save sweet snatches in the dramas "with
which his genius shook the buskined stage."