lxxxiv
"The relish of the Muse consists in rime,
One verse must meete another like a chime.
In many changes these may be exprest :
But those that joyne most simply, run the best."
—ll. 37-49.
In his practice, the poet conforms to these conservative precepts by the avoidance of the metrical irregularities and to a lesser extent of the conceitfulness of his fellow-poets. "No one, indeed," says Mr. Gosse, " was in 1602 writing the heroic couplet so 'correctly' as the author of the Metamorphosis [of Tobacco]"[1] l This early piece was published anonymously, but there is little doubt of Beaumont's authorship.
It has, I think, not been pointed out that his historical poem entitled Bosworth Field, his lost Crown of Thorns,[2] all of his so-called "Royal and Courtly Poems," in short, the greater number of the pieces gathered together in the first (posthumous) edition of 1629, were written much later, dur- ing the closing years of James's reign, when the good will of his kinsman George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, drew him out of his long retirement and led him to seek favor at court with his pen :
"My Muse, which tooke from you her life and light Sate like a weary wretch, whome suddaine night
1
2
- ↑ The Jacobean Poets, p. 107.
- ↑ This was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, who was released from
imprisonment in 1621 and died in 1624. Cf. Beaumont's Elegy:
"He is a father to my crowne of thornes :
Now since his death how can I ever look,
Without some teares, upon that orphan booke?"The suggestion may be ventured that the poem had some connection with the King's Meditation on Matthew xxvii. 27-29, with sub-title A paterne for a Kings inauguration (1620), a lengthy sermon and application of the narrative of Christ's coronation by Pilate. A monarch, writes James, "must not expect a soft and easie croune, but a croune full of thornie cares yea of platted and intricate cares. . . ."
