eign of James was as much overlapped in
this respect by his son's as by Elizabeth's, and there are others who need
but slight notice, besides yet others--a great multitude--who can receive
no notice at all. The doggerel of Taylor, the water-poet (not a bad prose
writer), received both patronage and attention, which seem to have annoyed
his betters, and he has been resuscitated even in our own times. Francis
Beaumont, the coadjutor of Fletcher, has left independent poetical work
which, on the whole, confirms the general theory that the chief execution
of the joint plays must have been his partner's, but which (as in the
_Letter to Ben Jonson_ and the fine stoicism of _The Honest Man's Fortune_)
contains some very good things. His brother, Sir John Beaumont, who died
not so young as Francis, but at the comparatively early age of forty-four,
was the author of a historical poem on _Bosworth Field_, as well as of
minor pieces of higher merit, including some remarkable critical
observations on English verse. Two famous poems, which everyone knows by
heart, the "You Meaner Beauties of the Night" of Sir Henry Wotton and the
"Tell Me no more how fair She is" of Bishop Henry King, are merely perfect
examples of a style of verse which was largely if not often quite so
perfectly practised by lesser or less known men, as well as by greater
ones.[59]

[59] The most interesting collection and selection of verse of this class
and time is undoubtedly Dr. Hannah's well-known and charming but rather
oddly entitled _Poems of Raleigh, Wotton, and other Courtly Poets_ in the
Aldine Series. I say oddly entitled, because though Raleigh and Wotton were
certainly courtiers, it would be hard to make the name good of some of the
minor contributors.

There is, moreover, a class of verse which has been referred to
incidentally before, and which may very likely be referred to incidentally
again, but which is too abundant, too characteristic, and too charming not
to merit a place, if no very large one, to itself. I refer to the
delightful songs which are scattered all over the plays of the period, from
Greene to Shirley. As far as Shakespere is concerned, these songs are well
enough known, and Mr. Palgrave's _Treasury_, with Mr. Bullen's and Bell's
_Songs from the Dramatists_, have given an inferior currency, but still a
currency, to the best of the remainder. The earlier we have spoken of. But
the songs of Greene and his fellows, though charming, can