Among the permanent services rendered by Beaumont and Fletcher to drama in general we may reckon their widening of the scope of sensational situation, their addition to the resources of stage-craft, and their development of burlesque. To this last feature, Beaumont, from its frequent appearance in the parts of plays associated with his form of verse, would seem to have the best claim; although its scarcity in Fletcher's ordinary work is hardly evidence of what he could or would do in collaboration on a burlesque play like The Knight of the Burning Pestle.' But more important than these things is the effect of the pair on pure comedy; and here, though the surviving and more volatile genius of Fletcher had fuller play, the share of Beaumont in the early comedy of 'The Scornful Lady,' letting alone the rich incidental humour of the serious joint plays, makes him an admired participant in the fame of their achievement.

The strong influence of Jonson on both writers was all in their favour for this effect on later comedy; for, if anything is clear, it is the extreme importance that later dramatists, from Dryden to Congreve, attached to his example, an example, for them, principally concentrated in 'The Silent Woman,' with its remarkable construction, its often copied types of witty young men with their contrasted fools and butts, and its heartless, depraved women. Jonson stands for a great deal more than characters of humour understood as exaggerated oddities. But beyond all this was something more akin and attractive to the coming time than Jonson gave. The lively and frivolous spirit of the age, operating on young men whose birth and education fitted them for its enjoyment, produced a comedy full of lightness of heart, and characters brimfull of the wine of existence. Young and old among them, in their scrapes and perplexities, their indignations and their humours, have something in them of Sidney's boy that piped as though he should never be old. Such are Young Loveless in 'The Scornful Lady,' Don Frederick and Don John in 'The Chances,' with their camaraderie, their nice morality' as young men, and strict honour as chivalrous gentlemen; Monsieur Thomas, a true ancestor of Garrick's famous part of Ranger in Hoadly's 'Suspicious Husband'; hearty old Dorilaus in 'The Lovers' Progress,'

irascible Alphonso in The Pilgrim'; and, above all, those own brothers in jolly age, Old Merrythought in 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle' and Sebastian in 'Monsieur Thomas.' This last comedy, if its double plot places it in construction below the lauded Wild Goose Chase,' is yet not badly built, and in other ways endears Fletcher to his readers. In the serious plot, love, friendship, and the instinct of a father working unconsciously and overcoming a more selfish though honourable interest, are painted more humanly than opposing passions commonly are by him; and in the comic plot the same seems true of the lively intrigue and accumulation of ludicrous distress. Monsieur Thomas is Mirabel of The Wild Goose Chase,' with infinitely more heart and humour; his sister Dorothy and sweetheart Mary are lively girls without the affected extravagances recommended to the daughters of Nantolet in the same play by their archaic tutor Lugier; and in Sebastian, the champion of heredity, disgusted at his son's supposed reform, we have a character of humour irresistibly delightful. He complains to his daughter: DOROTHY. You have a Son, Sir.

SEB.
DOR.

SEB.

Where, what is he? Who is he like?
Your self.

Thou lyest, thou hast marr'd him,

Thou, and thy prayer books: I do disclaim him.
Did not I take him singing yesternight

A godly Ballad, to a godly tune too,

And had a Catechism in 's pocket, Damsel,

One of your dear disciples, I perceive it?

When did he ride abroad since he came over?

What Tavern has he us'd to? what things done

That shews a man, and mettle?' (iii, 2).

He is delighted when a wild frolic is reported by his son's man:

'If this be true, thou little tyney page,

This tale that thou tell'st me,

Then on thy back will I presently hang
A handsome new Livery' (iv, 2).

And when, intending to disinherit the reformed rake and marry, he consults him as to whom he may safely wed without confounding their 'Genealogies,' the unscrupulous and unblushing answers change his purpose and effect a reconciliation:

A straw on pardon: prithee need no pardon :
I'le aske no more, nor think no more of marriage,
For o' my conscience I shall be thy Cuckold.'

It is not surprising that comedies and semi-comic romances like this should anticipate the lax morality of the Restoration stage to a considerable extent. They have not the heartlessness and cynicism of later comedy; and the women at any rate, not to speak of some men, are reasonably virtuous as a body. Fletcher, in his frequent recourse to Spanish novels, seems also to have softened events and spared some unlucky heroines the worst indignity. It would not be difficult to extract a good deal of excellent moral teaching even from the comedies. But, on the other hand, there is in Beaumont and Fletcher too often an absence of that respect for moral bonds which is preserved by Shakespeare, and a libertinism that goes beyond the easy morality of young men more or less implied throughout Elizabethan drama. In the plot that gives its name to The Coxcomb,' Mercury deplores his sudden love for his fellow-traveller's wife simply because he is under obligations to him. It is incumbent on his honour to repress his passion; and in one breath he declares the heinousness of the sin and deplores the unlucky accident of friendship which disables him from a tempting pursuit. In fact, as, in 'The Spanish Curate,' it is not merely amusing but an act of virtue to cuckold a rogue, so here a coxcomb is accounted to deserve the same fate; and, though the turn of the plot favours the hero without violating his principles of honour, his friend nevertheless leaves the stage much better satisfied but as thoroughly deceived as Pinchwife in 'The Country Wife' of Wycherley. Welford's scheme to ensure a marriage with Martha in 'The Scornful Lady' is in the true Restoration spirit; as is also, for a further instance, the intrigue in 'The Little French Lawyer,' though here the end mends all.

The contemporary testimony to Massinger's frequent collaboration with Fletcher has been referred to at the beginning of this article; and in a number of plays the presence of Massinger's style confirms it in a manner that enhances the repute which his own unassisted plays have

given him. But it is in the latter that he must be read to be seen at his best, especially in characterisation. There is a peculiar fascination about some of his less normal types, such as Domitian in 'The Roman Actor.' Prof. Koeppel has done justice to his various qualities, among them his earnestness, his great constructive ability, and his beauty of style, in a discriminating criticism in 'The Cambridge History'; but the subject cannot be enlarged upon here. Space also forbids discussion of the question of Fletcher's connexion with Shakespeare in 'Henry VIII' and 'The Two Noble Kinsmen,' or of the theory of the possible influence of the coadjutors' early plays on Shakespeare's latest, as propounded by Prof. Thorndike in his 'Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere.' This theory, however, notwithstanding its dependence on indeterminable dates and the refusal to see in Pericles'-even the Shakespearean part of ita genuine romance, is of the stimulating kind, full of incidental value, and goes further than many more demonstrable propositions to advance the study of this branch of literature.

In one feature of drama, though an incidental onethe interspersion of songs-Beaumont and Fletcher are not behind the best of their predecessors. Their genius for lyric, especially Fletcher's, is in evidence from first to last, and shows itself in rich variety of form, from the mixed seven- and eight-syllabled verse in 'The Faithful Shepherdess,' to the changing music of the various songs in The Nice Valour'; and of subject, from the sweets of indulged melancholy in the famous Hence, all you vain delights' in the same play, to the triumphant creed of Love's omnipotence in Valentinian'-a magical phrasing of his deeds in classical story that not ten times their hackneying in the 18th century can make less appealing; from the sombre drinking song in 'The Bloody Brother,' There is no drinking after death,' to the brave war chant in 'The Mad Lover,' and the songs of the soldiers turned pedlars in 'The Loyal Subject.' We may bless the memory of the worthy Gentleman' referred to on p. 27, to whom, according to the publisher's statement, we probably owe the preservation of many of these songs and certainly their appearance in the 1679 folio.

R. H. CASE.

Art. 3.-ST PAUL.

1. The Apostle Paul. By A. Sabatier. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1891.

2. St Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen. By W. M. Ramsay. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1896. 3. The Expansion of Christianity. By Adolf Harnack. Two vols. London: Williams and Norgate, 1905. 4. St Paul, the Man and his Work. By H. Weinel. London: Williams and Norgate, 1906.

5. Paul. By W. Wrede. London: Philip Green, 1907. 6. The Earlier Epistles of St Paul. By K. Lake. London: Rivingtons, 1911.

7. The Religious Experience of St Paul. By P. Gardner. London: Williams and Norgate, 1911.

8. St Paul. By A. Deissmann. Hodder and Stoughton, 1912. 9. St Paul and Christianity. By A. C. Headlam. London: Murray, 1913.

AMONG all the great men of antiquity there is none, with the exception of Cicero, whom we may know so intimately as Saul of Tarsus. The main facts of his career have been recorded by a contemporary, who was probably his friend and travelling companion. A collection of letters, addressed to the little religious communities which he founded, reveals the character of the writer no less than the nature of his work. Alone among the first preachers of Christianity, he stands before us as a living man. Οἷος πέπνυται, τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀΐσσουσι. We know very little in reality of Peter and James and John, of Apollos and Barnabas. And of Paul's divine Master no biography can ever be written. We have a vivid impression of an unique, effulgent personality; we have a considerable body of sayings which must be genuine because they are far too great to have been invented by His disciples; and, for the rest, whatever royal robes and tributes of devotion the Church of A.D. 70-100 thought most fitting for its King. The Gospels are the creation of faith and love; faith and love hold the key to their interpretation.

With St Paul it is quite different. He is a saint without a luminous halo. His personal characteristics are too distinct and too human to make idealisation easy. For this reason he has never been the object of popular