strays by all manner of men, and very few are to be ascribed to his pen.
The first collected edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays appeared in 1647 under the title 'Comedies and Tragedies written by Francis Beavmont and Iohn Fletcher, Gentlemen. Never printed before, and now published by the Authours Originall Copies,' 1647 (folio). Dyce's edition (11 vols. 1843) is the latest, and, like all texts edited by him, modernised. Beaumont and Fletcher, like Ben Jonson, still await a competent editor, for with its many merits Dyce's work lacks faithfulness and thoroughness of collation. Hunter, in his 'Chorus Vatum,' notes Oldys's difficulty as to Beaumont's early poems, viz. that his name appears in Speght's 'Chaucer' (1598); but there was another earlier writer of the same name.
[Burton's Leicestershire; Nichols's Hist. of Leicestershire; Collier's Life of Shakespeare (cf. with Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher, xi. 445); Malone's Shakespeare; Darley's Introduction to the Works of Beaumont and Fletcher; Francis Beaumont, a critical study by G. C. Macaulay, 1883; Jonson's Works by Cunningham, 3 vols.; Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe, iii. 99 (ed. 1843); Notes of Jonson's Conversations with Drummond by Laing; College of Arms MSS.; Visitations of Leicestershire; Thompson's Leicester; Davies's Scourge of Folly in his complete works in Fuller's Worthies Library, 2 vols. 4to; Heywood's Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, 1635, p. 206.]
BEAUMONT, Sir GEORGE HOWLAND (1753–1827), connoisseur, patron
of art and landscape painter, was the son
of Sir George Beaumont, the sixth baronet,
and Rachel, daughter of Michael Howland.
of Stonehall, Dunmow, Essex, where he was
born 6 Nov. 1753. He succeeded to the title
in 1762, and was educated at Eton and New
College, Oxford. In 1778 he married Margaret Willes, daughter of John Willes of Astrop, and granddaughter of Lord Chief Justice Willes, and in 1782 made with her the
tour of Italy. From his youth he had shown
taste for literature and the fine arts, and cultivated the society of poets and painters, practising himself the art of landscape painting.
In 1790 he entered parliament, and was member for Beeralston till 1796. His social position, wealth, and cultivation secured for
him a distinguished position as a ruler of
taste, and to these qualifications he added
much personal attraction, being tall and good-looking, with polished manners and gentle
address. In 1800, with the assistance of the
architect Dance, he began to rebuild Coleorton Hall, where, according to the dedication
of Wordsworth to the edition of his poems in
1815, several of that poet's best pieces were
composed. It was here also, after Sir George's
death, that Wordsworth wrote his elegiac
musings, a tender and eloquent tribute to the
character and talents of his friend, and his
noble 'Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle'
was suggested by one of Beaumont's pictures.
Sir George knew Dr. Johnson, was the intimate friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and it
was under his roof that Sir Walter Scott met
Sir Humphry Davy, Samuel Rogers, and
Byron, who satirised him in 'The Blues.'
He encouraged Coleridge, and helped to procure his pension. Sir George soon began to
collect works of art, beginning with drawings
by the English artists, Wilson, Gilpin, Hearne,
Girtin, and others. To these he added slowly,
and with good judgment, a fine but small
collection of old masters, and of oil pictures
by contemporary Englishmen. Haydon
(whose 'Macbeth' he purchased) and Jackson were among the artists whom he specially
befriended, and after John Robert Cozens became insane he supported him till he died.
Sir George was one of the first to detect the
merits of Wilkie, and Edwin Landseer, and
Gibson the sculptor. It was for him that the
first painted the 'Blind Fiddler.' In 1818,
when Landseer was a lad of sixteen, he purchased the now celebrated picture of 'Fighting Dogs,' and when in Rome in 1822 he gave
Gibson a commission for the group of 'Psyche
borne by Zephyrs.' It was here at the same
time that he purchased the beautiful unfinished bas-relief, by Michael Angelo, of 'The
Virgin, the Holy Child, and St. John,' now
in the possession of the Royal Academy, to
whom it was presented by him.
Sir George greatly admired the works of Wilson and Claude, and it was on these painters that he formed his own style; but though his landscapes show signs of poetical feeling, they did not rise above mediocrity in execution. This fact and his reported sayings that 'a good picture, like a good fiddle, should be brown,' and that 'there ought to be one brown tree in every landscape,' have cast undeserved ridicule upon his taste, which was unusually intelligent and independent for his time. This opinion is attested not only by the judgment shown in his collection, but by his criticisms both of ancient and modern pictures. His lifelong devotion to art culminated in the success of his endeavours towards the formation of a national gallery. These were much assisted by his conditional offer to present his own collection to the nation, and in 1826, or two years after the purchase by the state of Mr. Angerstein's pictures (the nucleus of the present National Gallery), he added sixteen of his own, including four
