ch see Rowley.

There are four other plays ascribed to our author, in which he is said
by Mr. Phillips and Winstanley to be an associate with John Webster,
viz. Noble Stranger; New Trick to cheat the Devil; Weakest goes to the
Wall; Woman will have her Will; in all which Langbaine asserts they
are mistaken, for the first was written by Lewis Sharp, and the other
by anonymous authors.

[Footnote 1: This was revived in the year 1751, at Drury-lane theatre
on the Lord Mayor's day, in the room of the London Cuckolds, which is
now discontinued at that house.]

* * * * *

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER

Were two famous dramatists in the reign of James I. These two friends
were so closely united as authors, and are so jointly concerned in the
applauses and censures bestowed upon their plays, that it cannot be
thought improper to connect their lives under one article.

Mr. FRANCIS BEAUMONT

Was descended from the ancient family of his name, seated at Grace
dieu in Leicestershire,[1] and was born about the year 1585 in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth. His grandfather, John Beaumont, was Master
of the Rolls, and his father Francis Beaumont, one of the Judges of
the Common Pleas. Our poet had his education at Cambridge,[2]but of
what college we are not informed, nor is it very material to know. We
find him afterwards admitted a student in the Inner-Temple, but we
have no account of his making any proficiency in the law, which is
a circumstance attending almost all the poets who were bred to that
profession, which few men of sprightly genius care to be confined to.
Before he was thirty years of age he died, in 1615, and was buried the
ninth of the same month in the entrance of St. Benedictine's Chapel,
within St. Peter's Westminster. We meet with no inscription on his
tomb, but there are two epitaphs writ on him, one by his elder brother
Sir John Beaumont, and the other by Bishop Corbet. That by his brother
is pretty enough, and is as follows:

On Death, thy murderer, this revenge I take:
I slight his terror, and just question make,
Which of us two the best precedence have,
Mine to this wretched world, thine to the grave.
Thou should'st have followed me, but Death to blame
Miscounted years, and measured age by fame.
So dearly hast thou bought thy precious lines;
Thy praise grew swiftly, so thy life declines.
Thy muse, the hearer's queen, the reader's love
All ears, all hearts, b