 | The Maids Tragedy |  |
On Mr. Beaumont. (VVritten thirty years since, presently after his Death.)
Beaumont lyes here; and where now shall we haveA Muse like his to sigh upon his grave?
Ah! none to weep this with a worthy tear,
But he that cannot, Beaumont that lies here.
Who now shall pay thy Tomb with such a Verse
As thou that Ladies didst, fair Rutlands Herse?
A Monument that will then lasting be,
When all her Marble is more dust than she.
In thee all's lost: a sudden dearth and want
Hath seiz'd on Wit, good Epitaphs are scant;
We dare not write thy Elegie, whilst each fears
He ne're shall match that copy of thy tears.
Scarce in an Age a Poet, and yet he
Scarce lives the third part of his age to see,
But quickly taken off and only known,
Is in a minute shut as soon as shown.
Why should weak Nature tire her self in vain
In such a piece, to dash it straight again?
Why should she take such work beyond her skill,
Which when she cannot perfect, she must kill?
Alas, what is't to temper slime or mire?
But Nature's puzled when she works in fire:
Of Stone or Wood hold out, and fear not blowes,
And we their Ancient hoary heads can see
Whose Wit was never their mortalitie:
Beaumont dies young, so Sidney did before,
There was not Poetry he could live to more,
He could not grow up higher, I scarce know
If th'art it self unto that pitch could grow,
Were't not in thee that hadst arriv'd the hight
Of all that wit could reach, or Nature might.
O when I read those excellent things of thine,
Such strength, such sweetness coucht in every line,
Such life of Fancy, such high choice of brain,
Nought of the Vulgar wit or borrowed strain,
Such passion, such expressions meet my eye,
Such Wit untainted with obscenity,
And these so unaffectedly exprest,
All in a language purely flowing drest,
And all so born within thy self, thine own,
So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon;
I grieve not now that old Menanders vein
Is ruin'd to survive in thee again;
Such in his time was he, of the same piece,
The smooth, even natural Wit, and Love of Greece.
Those few sententious fragments shew more worth,
Than all the Poets Athens e're brought forth;
And I am sorry we have lost those hours
On them, whose quickness comes far short of ours,
And dwell not more on thee, whose every Page
May be a pattern for their Scene and Stage.
I will not yield thy Works so mean a Praise;
More pure, more chaste, more fainted than are Playes,
Nor with that dull supineness to be read,
To pass a fire, or laugh an hour in bed.
How do the Muses suffer everywhere,
Taken in such mouths censure, in such ears,
That 'twixt a whiffe, a Line or two rehearse,
And with their Rheume together spaule a Verse?
This all a Poems leisure after Play,
Drink or Tabaco, it may keep the Day.
Whilst even their very idleness they think
Is lost in these, that lose their time in drink.
Pity then dull we, we that better know,
Will a more serious hour on thee bestow,
Why should not Beaumont in the Morning please,
As well as Plautus, Aristophanes?
Who if my Pen may as my thoughts be free,
Were scurril wits and Buffons both to thee;
Yet these our Learned of severest brow
Will deign to look on, and to note them too,
That will defie our own, 'tis English stuffe,
And th'Author is not rotten long enough.
Alas what flegm are they, compar'd to thee,
In thy Philaster, and Maids Tragedy?
Where's such an humour as thy Bessus? pray
Let them put all their Thrasoes in one Play,
He shall out bid them, their conceit was poor,
All in a Circle of a Bawd or Whore;
A cozening dance, take the fool away,
And not a good jest extant in a Play.
Let these are Wits, because they're old, and now
Being Greek and Latine, they are Learning too:
But those their own times were content t'allow
A thirsty fame, and thine is lowest now.
But thou shalt love, and when thy name is grown
Six Ages older, shall be better known,
When th'art of Chaucers standing in the tombe,
Thou shalt not share, but take up all his room.
JOH. EARLE.
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