SONG IN FLETCHER'S PLAY OF "THE NICE VALOUR"—THE EX-ALE-TATION OF ALE, A POEM ATTRIBUTED TO BEAUMONT

Many of your readers will remember the beautiful song in Fletcher's play of *The Nice Valour*, act iii. scene 3., beginning— "Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There's nought in this life sweet, If man were wise to see 't, But only melancholy, Oh, sweetest melancholy!" Milton was indebted to it for the idea of his *Il Penserose*; and Hazlitt calls it "the perfection of this kind of writing." My object in now calling your attention to it, is to point out a copy, hitherto, I believe, unnoticed, among Malone's MSS. in the Bodleian Library. It i…