the belief that _The Scornful Ladie_ was one of the latest joint-plays, only partly revised by Beaumont,--and that, not long before his death. Fletcher's preference for _ye_ is a distinctive mannerism. His usage varies from the employment of one-third as many _ye's_ to that of twice as many _ye's_ as _you's_; whereas Beaumont rarely uses a _ye_. Even more distinctive is Fletcher's use of _y'are_, and of _ye_ in the objective case. The latter, Beaumont does not tolerate. For figurative purposes Fletcher finds material most frequently in the phenomena of winter and storm: 'frosts,' 'nipping frosts,' 'nipping winds,' 'hail,' 'cakes of ice,' 'icicles,' 'thaw,' 'tempests,' 'thunders,' 'billows,' 'mariners' and 'storm-tossed barks,' 'wild overflows' of waters in stream or torrent; in the phenomena of heat and light: 'suns,' the 'icy moon,' the 'Dog-star' or the 'Dog,' the 'Sirian star,' the 'cold Bear' and 'raging Lion,' 'Aetna,' 'fire and flames'; of trees: root and branch, foliage and fruit; of the oak and clinging vine; of the rose or blossom and the 'destroying canker'; of fever and ague; of youth and desire, and of Death 'beating larums to the blood,' of our days that are 'marches to the grave,' and of our lives 'tedious tales soon forgotten.' I have elsewhere called attention to the numerous variations which he plays upon the 'story of a woman.' His 'monuments' are in frequent requisition and, by preference, they 'sweat'; men pursued by widows fear to be 'buried alive in another man's cold monument.' Other common images are 'rock him to another world,' 'bestride a billow,' 'plough up the sea.' He indulges in extended mythological tropes as of the 'Carthage queen' and Ariadne; is especially attracted by Adonis, Hylas (whom he may have got either from Theocritus or the Marquis D'Urfe's Astraean character), and Hercules; and, in general, he levies more freely than Beaumont on commonplace classical material. In his unassisted dramas his fondness for personification seems to grow: many pages are thick with capitalized abstractions; and the poetry, then, is usually limited to the capitalization. The curious reader will find most of Fletcher's predilections in image-making clustered in three or four typical passages of the later and unassisted plays, such as Alphonso's raving in _A Wife for a Month_, IV, 4; and in passages, undoubtedly of his verse and diction, in plays written conjointly with Beaumont, such as that of Spaconia's outburst in _King and No King_, IV, 2, 45-62.