2. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures. Beaumont is especially fond of the following words and phrasal variations:--The 'basilisk' with his 'deaddoing eye,' 'venom,' 'infect,' 'infection' and 'infectious,' 'corrupt,' 'leprosy,' 'vild,' 'crosses' (for 'misfortunes'), 'crossed' and 'crossly matched,' 'perplex,' 'distracted,' 'starts' (for 'surprises' and 'fitful changes'), 'miseries,' 'griefs,' 'garlands,' 'cut,' 'shoot,' 'dissemble,' 'loathed,' 'salve' (as noun and verb), 'acquaint' and 'acquaintance,' to 'article,' 'pull,' 'piece,' 'frail' and 'frailty,' 'mortal' and 'mortality,' 'fate' and 'destiny,' to 'blot' from earth or memory, 'after-ages,' 'instruments' (for 'servants'). Of his repeated use of 'hills,' 'caves,' 'mines,' 'seas,' 'thunder,' 'beast,' 'bull,' we shall have further exemplification when we consider his figures of speech. He is forever playing phrasal variations upon the words 'piece,' and 'little.' The former is a mannerism of the day, already availed of by Shakespeare in _Lear_, 'O ruined piece of nature,' and frequently in _Antony and Cleopatra_, and later repeated in the _Tempest_ and _Winter's Tale_. So with Beaumont, Arethusa is a 'poor piece of earth'; 'every maid in love will have a piece' of Philaster; Oriana is a 'precious piece of sly damnation,' 'that pleasing piece of frailty we call woman.' Or the word is used literally for 'limb':--'I'll love those pieces you have cut away.'--Beaumont, I may say in passing, delights in cutting bodies 'into motes,' and sending 'limbs through the land.'--'Little' he affects, making it pathetic and even more diminutive in conjunction with 'that': Euphrasia would 'keep that little piece I hold of life.' 'It is my fate,' proclaims Amintor, To bear and bow beneath a thousand griefs To keep that little credit with the world; and so, 'that little passion,' 'that little training,' 'these little wounds,' _ad libitum_. Somewhat akin is the poet's use of 'kind': 'a kind of love in her to me'; 'a kind of healthful joy.' His heroines good and bad are given to introspection: they have 'acquaintance' with themselves. 'After you were gone,' says Bellario, 'I grew acquainted with my heart'; and Bacha in _Cupid's Revenge_ in a scene undoubtedly of Beaumont's verse 'loathes' herself and is 'become another woman; one, methinks, with whom I want acquaintance.'