CHAPTER XXII
BEAUMONT'S MENTAL HABIT
From passages in the indubitable metrical manner and rhetorical style of Beaumont we pass to a still further test by which to determine his share in doubtful passages—I mean his stock of ideas. Critics have long been familiar with the determinism of his philosophy of life. His Arethusa in Philaster expresses it in a nutshell:
If destiny (to whom we dare not say,
Why didst thou this?) have not decreed it so,
In lasting leaves (whose smallest characters
Was never altered yet), this match shall break.—
We are ignorant of the 'crosses of our births.' Nature 'loves not to be questioned, why she did this or that, but has her ends, and knows she does well.' "But thou," cries the poet,—
But thou hadst, ere thou knew'st the use of tears,
Sorrow laid up against thou cam'st to years.
'Tis the gods, 'the gods, that make us so.' They would not have their 'dooms withstood, whose holy wisdoms make our passions the way unto their justice.' And 'out of justice we must challenge nothing.' The gods reward, the gods punish: 'I am a man and dare not quarrel with divinity ... and you shall see me bear my crosses like a man.' It is the 'will of Heaven'; 'a decreed instant cuts off every life, for which to mourn is to repine.'[178]
Similarly familiar is Beaumont's recurrent doctrine of the divinity of kings. "In that sacred word," says his Amintor of The Maides Tragedy,—