Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, and many others, whose names, even at this distant period, call up a mingled feeling of reverence and respect." Jonson has been accused of excess in wine; and certainly temperance was not the virtue of his age. Drummond, who puts down his conversations in a spirit of detraction, says, "Drink was the element in which he lived." Aubrey tells us "he would many times exceed in drink; Canary was his beloved liquor." And so he tells us himself in his graceful poem 'Inviting a Friend to Supper:' "But that which most doth take my muse and me Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine." But the rich Canary was to be used, and not abused: "Of this we will sup free, but moderately; This is not the principle of intemperance, at any rate; nor were the associates of Jonson at the Mermaid such as mere sensual gratification would have allied in that band of friendship. They were not such companions as the unhappy Robert Greene, whose genius was eaten up by his profligacy, describes himself to have lived amongst :-" His company were lightly the lewdest persons in the land, apt for pilfery, perjury, forgery, or any villany. Of these he knew the cast to cog at cards, cozen at dice; by these he learned the legerdemains of nips, foysts, conycatchers, crossbyters, lifts, high lawyers, and all the rabble of that unclean generation of vipers; and pithily could he point out their whole courses of craft: so cunning was he in all crafts, as nothing rested in him almost but craftiness." This is an unhappy picture; and in that age, when the rewards of unprofessional scholars were few and uncertain, it is scarcely to be wondered that their morals sometimes yielded to their necessities. Jonson and Shakspere passed through the slough of the theatre without a stain. Their club meetings were not the feasts of the senses alone. The following verses by Jonson were inscribed over the door of the Apollo Room in the Devil Tavern: 66 Welcome all who lead or follow To the oracle of Apollo : Here he speaks out of his pottle, Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, That sits watering with the Muses. 'Tis the true Phoebian liquor, Cheers the brains, makes wit the quicker; Pays all debts, cures all diseases, And at once three senses pleases. Welcome all who lead or follow To the oracle of Apollo !" In the Apollo Room Jonson sat, the founder of the club, perhaps its dictator. One of his contemporary dramatists, Marmion, describes him in his presidential chair: "The boon Delphic god Drinks sack, and keeps his Bacchanalia, But "the boon Delphic god" had his Leges Conviviales, (written in the purest Latinity), engraved in black marble over the chimney. They were gone when Messrs. Child, the bankers, purchased the old tavern in 1787; but the verses over the door, and the bust of Jonson, still remained there. These laws have been translated into very indifferent verse, to quote which would give an imperfect idea of their elegance and spirit. They were not laws for common booncompanions; but for the "Eruditi, urbani, hilares, honesti." The tavern has perished: it has long been absorbed by the all-devouring appetite of commerce. But its memory will be ever fresh, whilst the laws of its club record that there were elegance without expense, wit without malice, high converse without meddling with sacred things, argumentation without violence. If these were mingled with music and poetry, and sometimes accomplished women were present, and the dance succeeded to the supper, we must not too readily conclude that there was licence, allurements for the careless, which the wise ought not to have presided over. We must not judge of the manners of another age by those of our own. Jonson was too severe a moralist to have laid himself open to the charge of being a public example of immorality. Such, then, was the social life of the illustrious men of letters and the more tasteful of the aristocracy of the reign of James I. But where did the great painters of manners" pick up humours daily?" Where did they find the classes assembled that were to be held up to ridicule and reproof? We open Jonson's first great comedy, Every Man in his Humour,' and there in the list of characters we find "Captain Bobadill, a Paul's man." Adventurers like Bobadill were daily frequenters of Paul's. The middle aisle of the old cathedral was the resort of all the idle and profligate in London. The coxcomb here displayed his finery, and the cutpurse picked his pocket. Serving-men here came to find masters, and tradesmen to attract purchasers by their notices on the pillars. Bishop Earle, in his 'Microcosmographie' (1628), has given a most amusing description of this habitual profanation of a sacred place:-"It is the land's epitome, or you may call it the lesser isle of Great Britain. It is more than this--the whole world's map, which you may here discern in its perfectest motion, justling and turning. It is a heap of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages; and, were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babel. The noise in it is like that of bees-a strange humming or buzz, mixed of walking, tongues and feet. It is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and afoot. It is the synod of all pates politic, jointed and laid together in the most. serious posture: and they are not half so busy at the Parliament. It is the antic of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no further than faces. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. It is the general mint of all famous lies, which are here, like the legends of popery, first coined and stamped in the church. All inventions are emptied here, and not few pockets. The best sign of a temple in it is that it is the thieves' sanctuary, which rob more safely in the crowd than a wilderness, whilst every searcher is a bush to hide them. It is the ears' brothel, and satisfies their lust and itch. The visitants are all men without exceptions; but the principal inhabitants and possessors are stale knights and captains out of servicemen of long rapiers and breeches-which after all turn merchants here, and traffic for news. Some make it a preface to their dinner, and travel for a stomach: but thrifty men make it their ordinary, and board here very cheap. Of all such places it is least haunted with hobgoblins, for if a ghost would walk more he could not." Jonson has, up and down, constant allusions to Paul's, which abundantly testify to the correctness of Bishop Earle's description. It was here that, wrapped up in his old coachman's coat, he studied the fopperies in dress which were so remarkable a characteristic of his times. According to Dekker, in his 'Gull's Horn Book,' the tailors here caught the newest fashions:-" If you determine to enter into a new suit, warn your tailor to attend you in Paul's, who, with his hat in his hand, shall like a spy discover the stuff, colour, and fashion of any doublet or hose that dare be seen there; and, stepping behind a pillar to fill his tablebooks with those notes, will presently send you into the world an accomplished man, by which means you shall wear your clothes in print with the first edition." It was here, probably, that Jonson got the hint of Bobadill's boots worn over his silk stockings, and the jewel in his ear. Here, too, he heard the gingle of the silver spurs which the gallants wore in spite of the choristers, who had a vigilant eye to enforce the fine called spur-money. Gifford has a note on the passage in Every Man out of his Humour' where Carlo Buffone talks of the "sound of the spur,' in which he quotes "a presentment to the visitor," made in 1598, which reproves the choristers for "hunting after spur-money, whereon they set their whole minds, and do often abuse divers if they do not bestow somewhat on them.” The practice is not yet obsolete. Here, too, Jonson might have seen the "wrought shirt" of Fastidious Brisk, embroidered all over with fruits and flowers, which fashion the Puritans imitated by ornamenting their shirts with texts of Scripture. Here he saw the "gold cable hatband"-"the Italian cut work band"—" the embossed girdle"-and the "ruffle to the boot" of the same distinguished fop. The "mirror in the hat," and the "finger that hath the ruby," could not fail to be noticed in Paul's by the satirist. The "love-lock" and the "cut beard" were displayed in every variety that caprice and folly could suggest. Jonson touches upon these, here and there; but Lyly, in his Midas,' has given us a complete description of these absurdities :-"How will you be trimmed, sir? Will you have your beard like a spade or a bodkin? A penthouse on your upper lip, or an alley on your chin? A low curl on your head like a ball, or dangling locks like a spaniel? Your mustachioes sharp at the ends like shoemakers' awls, or hanging down to your mouth like goat's flakes? Your love-locks wreathed with a silken twist, or shaggy to fall on your shoulders?" The profanation of sacred edifices in London, by making them lounges and places of appointment, was not confined to the old cathedral. In 'The Alchymist' we have "Here's one from Captain Face, sir, Desires you meet him in the Temple Church Some half-hour hence, and upon earnest business." But the Exchange competed with Paul's in its attractions for loungers of every description. Samuel Rolle, who wrote of the burning of London, thus describes the treasures of the Exchange before the fire :-"What artificial thing could entertain the senses, the fantasies of men, that was not there to be had? Such was the delight that many gallants took in that magazine of all curious varieties, that they could almost have dwelt there (going from shop to shop like bees from flower to flower), if they had but had a fountain of money that could not have been drawn dry. I doubt not but a Mahomedan (who never expects other than sensual delights) would gladly have availed himself of that place, and the treasures of it, for his heaven, and thought there were none like it." The upper walk of the Exchange, called "the Pawne," was one great bazaar. In a little work published in 1632, called London and the Country Carbonadoed,' the perils of the Exchange to the pocket are described as very fearful :—“ Here are usually more coaches attendant than at church-doors. The merchants should keep their wives from visiting the upper rooms too often, lest they tire their purses by attiring themselves. . . There's many gentlewomen come hither, that, to help their faces and complexions, break their husband's backs; who play foul in the country with their land, to be fair and play false in the city." The doors were open till nine in the summer, and ten in the winter; and the crowd of loungers who came for any other purpose than to buy, after they had spent the afternoon in Paul's, gave the evening to the Exchange. An epigram "to Sir Pierce Pennilesse," by Hayman (1628), alludes to this variety in the daily exercise of those who lived upon the town :— "Though little coin thy purseless pockets line, Yet with great company thou 'rt taken up, And often with Sir Thomas Gresham sup." A dramatic author lived, of course, much about the theatres. Shakspere and Jonson, being actors at one period of their lives, must have been in the constant habit of familiarity with many of the frequenters of their respective stages. And these were not only the mere herd of the gay and the dissolute: Essex and Southampton, when banished from the Court, went daily to hear the lessons of philosophy which the genius of Shakspere was pouring forth at the Globe. This was their academy. The more distinguished portion of the audience-that is, those who could pay the highest price-were accommodated on the stage itself. Jonson has an exceedingly humourous passage in his Induction to Cynthia's Revels,' which very clearly describes the arrangements for the critics and gallants; and shows also the intercourse which the author was expected to have with this part of the audience. The play was originally performed by the children of the Queen's Chapel; and in this Induction they give us a picture of the ignorant critic and another gallant with remarkable spirit : "3 Child. Now, Sir, suppose I am one of your genteel auditors, that am come in, having paid my money at the door, with much ado, and here I take my place and sit down: I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin :- By this light, I wonder that any man is so mad to come to see these rascally tits play here! They do act like so many wrens, or pismires -not the fifth part of a good face amongst them all. And then their music is abominable-able to stretch a man's ears worse than ten-pillories; and their ditties—most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows that make them-poets. By this vapour, an 'twere not for tobacco-I think--the very stench of 'em would poison me. I should not dare to come in at their gates.-A man were better visit fifteen jails—or a dozen or two of hospitals-than once adventure to come near them.' How is't? Well? "1 Child. Excellent. Give me my cloak. 3 Child. Stay; you shall see me do another now, but a more sober, or bettergather'd gallant; that is, as it may be thought, some friend or well-wisher to the house and here I enter. : 1 Child. What, upon the stage too? 2 Child. Yes; and I step forth like one of the children, and ask you, Would you have a stool, Sir? 3 Child. A stool, boy? 2 Child. Ay, Sir, if you 'll give me sixpence, I'll fetch you one. 3 Child. For what, I pray thee? What shall I do with it? 2 Child. O Lord, Sir! Will you betray your ignorance so much? Why throw yourself in state on the stage, as other gentlemen use, Sir. 3 Child. Away, wag! What, wouldst thou make an implement of me? . . . . I would speak with your author; where is he? 2 Child. Not this way, I assure you, Sir; we are not so officiously befriended by him as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the bookholder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit, as some author would, if he had such fine engles as we." The two great genera into which society was divided in Jonson's time were, the gentry and the citizens. During the law-terms London was full of the country squires and their families; who sometimes came up to town with the ostensible purpose of carrying on their law-suits, but more generally to spend some portion of that superfluous wealth which the country could not so agreeably absorb. The evil—if evil it was grew to be so considerable that James, by proclamation, directed them to return to their own counties. But this, of course, was mere idle breath. Jonson, though the theatres might be supposed to gain by this influx of strangers, boldly satirized the improvidence and profligacy of the squires, whom he has no hesitation in denouncing as "country gulls," who "come up every term |