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R. SEWARD'S PREFACE. xxxvii As Cellide had before used a light behaviour ia trial of his virtue, uponfinding it only a trial, and receiving from her this virtuous lecture, herejoins ; ** How like the sun Labourins in his eclipse, dark and prodigiousShe shew d till now ? when having won his way.How full of wonder he breaks out againAnd sheds his virtuous beams ?** Such passages as these are frequent in our authors comedies; were theyexprest only in genteel prose, they would rank with the very noblest pas-sages of Terence, but what reason upon earth can be assigned, but mereftuhioriy why, because they are parts of comedies, they should be weakenedand flattened into prose '° by drawing the sinews of their strength andeclipsing those poetic beams that shed vigour, life and lustre on every sen-timent? Such poetic excellence therefore will the reader find in the gentad partsof our author's comedies, but, as before hinted, there is a poetic sti/e oftenequally proper and excellent even an the lowest drollery of comedy. Thuswhen the jocose old Miramont in the Elder Brother catches austere solemnmagistrate Brisac endeavouring to debauch his servani*s wife — Before hebreaks in upon him, he says; ''.Oh, th* infinite frights that will assail this gentleman!The quartans, tertians, and quotidians,Thatll hang, like sergeants, on his worship's shoulders !How will those solemn looks appear to mc,And that seoerejace that speaks chains and shackles /'* How small a change of the comic words would turn this into the sublime?suppose it spoke of Nero by one who knew he would be at once desertedby ihe senate and army, and given up to the fury of the people. " What infinite frights will ;,vX)n assail the tyrant?What terrors like stern lictors will arrest Iriim?How will that fierce terrific eye appear.Whose slightest bend spake dungeons, cliuins, and death ?" Such as the former, is the general stilc of our author's drollery, particu-larly of Fletcher's; Beaumont deals chiefly in another species, the bur-iesque epic. Thus when the Little comic French Lawyer is run fighting-mad, and his antagonist excepts against his shirt for not being laced (asgentlemen's shirts of that age used to be) he answers, * ' Base and degenerate cousin, dost not knowAn old and tattcr'd colours to an enemy.Is of more honour, and shews more ominous?Iliis shirt five times victorious I've fought under.And cut thro' squadrons of your curious cut-works.As I will do thro' thine; shake and be satisfy'd.*' ■® There is much less prose left, in tjiis edition than there was in all the former ; in whichthe measure was often most miserablv neglected. Wit Without Money, the very first playwhich fell to my lot to prepare for tne press after Mr. Theobald's death, was all printed asprose, except about twenty lines towards the end ; but the reader will now find it as tnit-Joeasure as almost any comedy of Qur authors.
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