CHAPTER X

AN INTERSECTING CIRCLE OF JOVIAL SORT

Christopher Brooke of Lincoln's Inn enters the circle of Beaumont's associates not only as the advocate to whom Beaumont's friends in Shakespeare's company of actors turn for counsel in an important suit at law, and as the encomiast of Shakespeare himself a year or two later:

He that from Helicon sends many a rill, Whose nectared veines are drunk by thirsty men,[95]

but as one of the pastoralists of the Inns of Court. He was also a friend of Beaumont's older associates, Jonson, Drayton, and Davies of Hereford. From an unexpected quarter comes information of Brooke's intimacy with still others who at various points impinged upon Beaumont's career,--with Inigo Jones, for instance, who designed the machinery for Beaumont's _Masque_, and with Sir Henry Nevill, the father of the Sir Henry who, a few years later, supplied the publisher Walkley with the manuscript of Beaumont and Fletcher's _A King and No King_. When we let ourselves in upon the elder Sir Henry carousing at the Mitre with Brooke and Jones, and others known to Beaumont as members of the Mermaid, in a famous symposium held some time between 1608 and September 1611, we begin to feel that it was not by mere accident that the manuscript _of A King and No King_ fell into the hands of the Nevill family. Sir Henry the elder, of Billingbear, Berkshire, was a relative of Sir Francis Bacon, and a friend of Davies of Hereford, and of Ben Jonson, who dedicated to Nevill about 1611 one of his most graceful epigrams; probably, also, of Francis Beaumont's brother John, who wrote a graceful tribute to the memory of one of the gentlewomen of the family, Mistress Elizabeth Nevill. This Sir Henry was an influential member of Parliament, a statesman, a courtier, and a diplomat, as well as a patron of poets. He came near being Secretary of the realm. It is his name that we find scribbled with those of Bacon and Shakespeare, about 1597, possibly by Davies of Hereford, the admirer of all three, over the cover of the _Northumbrian Manuscript_ of "Mr. Ffrauncis Bacon's" essays and speeches. Sir Henry did not die till 1615, and it is more than likely that the play, _A King and No King_, which was acted about 1611, and of which his family held the manuscript, had his "approbation and patronage" as well as that of Sir Henry the younger "to the commendation of the authors"; and that both father and son knew Beaumont and Fletcher well.

The Mitre Inn, a common resort of hilarious Templars, still stands at the top of Mitre Court, a few yards back from the thoroughfare of Fleet Street.

The symposium to which I have referred is celebrated in a copy of macaronic Latin verses, entitled _Mr. Hoskins, his Convivium Philosophicum_;[96] and I may be pardoned if I quote from the contemporary translation by John Reynolds of New College, the opening stanzas, since one is set to wondering how many other of the jolly souls "convented," beside Brooke and Jones and Nevill, our Beaumont knew.--

Whosoever is contented That a number be convented, Enough but not too many; The _Miter_ is the place decreed, For witty jests and cleanly feed, The betterest of any.

There will come, though scarcely current, Christopherus surnamed _Torrent_ And John ycleped _Made_; And Arthur _Meadow-pigmies'-foe_ To sup, his dinner will forgoe-- Will come as soon as bade.

Sir Robert _Horse-lover_ the while, _Ne let_ Sir Henry _count it vile_ Will come with gentle speed; And _Rabbit-tree-where-acorn-grows_ And John surnamed _Little-hose_ Will come if there be need.

And Richard _Pewter-Waster_ best And Henry _Twelve-month-good_ at least And John _Hesperian_ true. If any be desiderated He shall be amerciated Forty-pence in issue.

Hugh the _Inferior-Germayne_, Nor yet unlearned nor prophane Inego _Ionicke-pillar_. But yet the number is not righted: If Coriate bee not invited, The jeast will want a tiller.

In his edition of Aubrey's _Brief Lives_, Dr. Clark supplies the glossary to these punning names. _Torrent_ is, of course, Brooke. Johannes _Factus_, or _Made_, is Brooke's chamber-fellow of Lincoln's Inn, John Donne; and Donne is the great friend and correspondent in well known epistles of Henry _Twelve-month-good_, the Sir Henry Goodere, or Goodeere, who married Frances (Drayton's Panape), one of the daughters of "the first cherisher of Drayton's muse." _Ne-let_ Sir Henry _count it vile_ is the elder Nevill under cover of his family motto, _Ne vile velis_. Inigo Jones, _Ionicke-pillar_ is even more thinly disguised in the Latin original as Ignatius _architectus_, Hugh Holland (the _Inferior-Germayne_) was of Beaumont's Mermaid Club, the writer--beside other poems--of commendatory verses for Jonson's _Sejanus_ in 1605, and of the sonnet _Upon the Lines and Life_ of that other frequenter of the Mermaid, "sweet Master Shakespeare." Holland's "great patronesse," by the way, was the wife of Sir Edward Coke of Beaumont's Inner Temple, whose daughter married Beaumont's kinsman, Sir John Villiers; and it was by the great Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, that Holland was introduced to King James. Also, of the Mermaid in Beaumont's time was Tom Coryate, the "legge-stretcher of Odcombe" without whose presence this Convivium Philosophicum would "want its tiller." Of the Mermaid, too, was Richard Martin (the _Pewter-waster_). He was fond of the drama; had organized a masque at the Middle Temple at the time of the Princess Elizabeth's marriage; and it is to him that Ben Jonson dedicates the folio of _The Poetaster_ (1616). In 1618, as Recorder of London, he was the bosom friend of Brooke, Holland, and Hoskins: he died of just such a "symposiaque" as this, a few years later, and he lies in the Middle Temple. Last, comes the reputed author of these macaronic Latin verses of the Mitre, John Hoskins himself (surnamed _Little-hose_). He had been a freshman of the Middle Temple in the year when Beaumont was beginning at the Inner. He was an incomparable writer of drolleries, over which we may be sure that Beaumont many a time held his sides,--a wag whose "excellent witt gave him letters of commendacion to all ingeniose persons," a great friend of Beaumont's Jonson, and of Raleigh, Donne, Selden, Camden, and Daniel.

Of the participants in Serjeant Hoskins's _Convivium Philosophicum_, we find, then, that several were of those who came into personal contact with Beaumont, and that of the rest, nearly all moved in the field of his acquaintance. Concerning a few, Arthur _Meadow-pigmies'-foe_ (Cranefield), Sir Robert _Horse-lover_ (Phillips), _Rabbit-tree-where-acorn-grows_ (Conyoke or Connock), and John _Hesperian_ (West), I have no information pertinent to the subject.

FOOTNOTES:

[95] _The Ghost of Richard III_, I, viii (1614).

[96] In _Cal. State Papers (Dom.)_, under Sept. 2, 1611, I find "Description by Ralph Colphab [Thomas Cariat] of Brasenose College, Oxford, of a philosophical feast the guests at which were Chris Brook, John Donne," and others in exactly the order given below, save for one error. "In Latin Rhymes." Dr. A. Clark in his Aubrey's _Brief Lives_, II, 50-51, gives the Latin verses from an old commonplace book in Lincoln College Library, "authore Rodolpho Calsabro, Aeneacense"; but prefers the attribution of another old copy, owned by Mr. Madan of Brasenose, "per Johannem Hoskyns, London." The translation by Reynolds, who died in 1614, is also given by Dr. Clark.