Only strong Destiny, which all controuls, I hope hath left a better fate in store For me thy friend, than to live ever poore, Banisht unto this home. Fate once againe Bring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plaine The way of Knowledge for me, and then I, Who have no good but in thy company Protest it will my greatest comfort be To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee. Ben, when these Scaenes are perfect, we'll taste wine; I'll drink thy Muses health, thou shalt quaff mine. The _Letter_ was written after Beaumont's Muse had produced something worthy of a toast from Jonson,--the _Woman-Hater_ and the _Knight_, for instance (both marked by wit and by the discipline of Jonson); but not later than the end of 1612, for during most of 1613 Jonson was traveling in France as governor to Sir Walter Raleigh's "knavishly inclined" son; and after February of that year Beaumont wrote so far as I venture to conclude but one drama, _The Scornful Ladie_; and that does not precede this _Letter_ in the folio of 1647; is not printed in that folio at all. Nor was this _Letter_ of a disciple written later than the great Beaumont-Fletcher plays of 1610-1611, for then Jonson was praising Beaumont for "writing better" than he himself. If there is any truth at all in the rubric to the _Letter_, the "scenes" of which Beaumont speaks as not yet "perfect" were of _The Coxcombe_; and evidence which I shall, in the proper place, adduce convinces me that that was first acted before March 25, 1610, perhaps before January 4. The play would, then, have been written about the end of 1609. I do not wonder that, as the Prologue in the first folio tells us, it was "condemned by the ignorant multitude," not only because of its length, a fault removed in the editions which we possess, but because the larger part of the play is written by Fletcher, and in his most inartistic, and irrational, licentious vein. Beaumont, though admitted to the partnership, had not yet succeeded in hanging "plummets" on his friend's luxuriance. He contented himself with contributing to a theme of Boccaccian cuckoldry the subplot of how Ricardo, drunk, loses his betrothed, and finds her again and is forgiven,--a little story that contains all the poignancy of sorrow and poppy of romance and poetry of innocence that make the comedy readable and tolerable.