es to "volumes" are
to the ten-volume edition of 1750, by Theobald, Seward, and others.

"'Oh thou conqueror,
Thou glory of the world once, now the pity:
Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus?
What poor fate followed thee, and plucked thee on
To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian?
The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger,
That honourable war ne'er taught a nobleness
Nor worthy circumstance show'd what a man was?
That never heard thy name sung but in banquets
And loose lascivious pleasures? to a boy
That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness
No study of thy life to know thy goodness?...
Egyptians, dare you think your high pyramides
Built to out-dure the sun, as you suppose,
Where your unworthy kings lie rak'd in ashes,
Are monuments fit for him! No, brood of Nilus,
Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven;
No pyramid set off his memories,
But the eternal substance of his greatness,
To which I leave him.'"

The chief fault of _Valentinian_ is that the character of Maximus is very
indistinctly drawn, and that of Eudoxia nearly unintelligible. These two
pure tragedies are contrasted with two comedies, _The Little French Lawyer_
and _Monsieur Thomas_, which deserve high praise. The fabliau-motive of the
first is happily contrasted with the character of Lamira and the friendship
of Clerimont and Dinant; while no play has so many of Fletcher's agreeable
young women as _Monsieur Thomas_. _The Bloody Brother_, which its title
speaks as sufficiently tragical, comes between two excellent comedies, _The
Chances_ and _The Wild Goose Chase_, which might serve as well as any
others for samples of the whole work on its comic side. In _The Chances_
the portrait of the hare-brained Don John is the chief thing; in _The Wild
Goose Chase_, as in _Monsieur Thomas_, a whole bevy of lively characters,
male and female, dispute the reader's attention and divide his preference.
_A Wife for a Month_ sounds comic, but is not a little alloyed with
tragedy; and despite the pathos of its central situation, is marred by some
of Fletcher's ugliest characters--the characters which Shakespere in
Pandarus and the nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_ took care to touch with his
lightest finger. _The Lover's Progress_, a doubtful tragedy, and _The
Pilgrim_, a good comedy (revived at the end of the century, as was _The
Prophetess_ with certain help from Dry