Concerning the authorship of the successive scenes in a few of the plays undoubtedly written in partnership by Beaumont and Fletcher a consensus of opinion has practically been reached. Concerning others, especially those in which a third or fourth hand may be traced, the difference of opinion is still bewildering. This divergence is due, perhaps, to the proneness of the critic to emphasize one or more tests out of relation to the rest, or to forget that though individual scenes were undertaken now by one, now by the other of the colleagues, the play as a whole would be usually planned by both, but any individual scene or passage revised by either. The tests of external evidence have of course been applied by all critics, but as to events and dates there is still variety of opinion. Of the internal criteria, those based upon the peculiarities of each partner in respect of versification have been so carefully studied and applied that to repeat the operation seems like threshing very ancient straw; but to accept the winnowings of others, however careful, is unsatisfactory. Tests of rhetorical habit and tectonic preference have also been, in general, attempted; but not, I think, exhaustively. And, though much has been established, and availed of, in analysis, there remains yet something to desire in the application of the more subtle differentiae yielded by such preliminary methods of investigation,--what these differentiae teach us concerning the temperamental idiosyncrasies of each of the partners in scope and method of observation, in poetic imagery, in moral and emotional insight and elevation, intellectual outlook, philosophical and religious conviction. FOOTNOTES: [141] See G. C. Macaulay (_Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit._, VI), and other authorities as in footnote toward end of this chapter. [142] See authorities as in footnote, below. [143] Included "thirty years" after, among the commendatory poems in the folio of 1647; but published earlier with _Beaumont's Poems_, 1640. [144] Miss O. L. Hatcher, _John Fletcher_, Chicago, 1905. [145] As by Langbaine, _An Account of the English Dramatick Poets_ (1691), who acknowledges Cockayne as the only conclusive authority upon the subject. [146] _R. E. C._, Vol. III.