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"What has been said applies chiefly to his comedies. tragedies, of which two only are come down to us, do not call for much additional remark. Both are taken from the Roman story, and he has apparently succeeded in his principal object, which was to exhibit the characters of the drama to the spectators of his days, precisely as they appeared to those of their own. The plan was scholastic, but it was not judicious. The difference between the dramatis personæ and the spectators was too wide; and the very accuracy to which he aspired would seem to take away much of the power of pleasing. Had he drawn men instead of Romans, his success might have been more assured; but the ideas, the language, the allusions, could only be readily caught by the contemporaries of Augustus and Tiberius; and it redounds not a little to the author's praise, that he has familiarised us, in some measure, to the living features of an age so distant from our own."

All this is founded in truth; but too favourable. The plots of Jonson are, in some dramas, too complicated to be much relished. Had they been simpler, more intelligible, they would have been deserving of the praise Mr. Gifford has bestowed on them. They are constructed with too much art. His characters are, in general, unequalled, both for truth and vigour; but they, too, are not always such as are to be found in life. As we have before observed, he sometimes mistook the exception for the rule. His manners may be those of the age, or rather of a particular society in that age; but they are not universally true. He studied human nature in its aberrations rather than in its general tenor he studied humours not pas

sions; local feelings, not permanent sentiments. Take him, however, for all in all, and he is perhaps inferior to no English dramatist, Shakespear only excepted.

Connected with the biography and the labours of Ben Jonson, are those of two dramatists, whom we shall associate with him,

Beaumont and Fletcher.'

These remarkable men, of whom the former died in 1616, the latter in 1625, must, in conformity with established usage, be classed together. In fact their lives cannot be separated. They lived together, and wrote together; nor is it, in most instances, possible to distinguish the contributions which they made to the same drama.

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John Fletcher was the son of Dr. Richard Fletcher, bishop of London. This Richard Fletcher was held in much consideration by queen Elizabeth. He had indeed been her ready instrument on at least one occasion, in which no divine of decency or of character would have interfered, - this was at the execution of the unfortunate Mary, queen of Scots, whose last moments he embittered by his absurd attempts to convert her. His conduct on that occasion was disgusting. But it had the effect he designed: it recommended him greatly to his own royal mistress, who raised him to the see of Bristol. He had, however, other friends to please; and he is said to have gratified them by placing under their charge a portion of his episcopal revenues. This indeed was a very frequent crime, so frequent as to create no surprise. Some of the men whom we have been taught to regard as patriots, and as holy men, were guilty of the same sacrilege: they were eager to hold certain episcopal lands, and to farm them

This article is derived from Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, by Bliss; from Baker's Biographia Dramatica; from Fuller's Worthies of England, vol. i. (Kent); from Camden's Annals of Elizabeth; from Baker's Chronicle of England; from Dryden's Essay on Dramatic Poetry; from Cibber's

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