can be little doubt that there were outbursts of youthful extravagance and self-indulgence. None the less is it equally certain-rather is in harmony therewiththat very early he mingled with the poets and wits of the day. There is not a tittle of evidence warranting the ascription of "Sir Martin Mar People his Coller of Esses Workmanly wrought by Maister Simon Soothsaier, Goldsmith of London, and offered to sale upon great necessity by John Davies. Imprinted at London by Richard Ihones. 1590 (4to),"2 to him; nor can any one really study "O Vtinam I For Queene Elizabeths securitie, 2 For hir Subiects prosperitie, 3 For a general conformitie, 4 And for Englands tranquilitie. Printed at London, by R. Yardley and P. Short, for Iohn Pennie, dwelling in Pater noster row, at the Grey hound. 1591 (16mo),”3 and for a moment concede his hastily alleged authorship. But in 1593 his poem of "Orchestra, or a Poeme of Dauncing," was "licensed to Iohn Harison " the elder. No earlier edition than that of 1596 has been proved; but the "license" assures us that Harrison had negotiated for its publication in 1593. The title-page of the 1596 edition is followed by a dedicatory sonnet "To his very friend,

2 There is a copy at Lambeth. 3 There is a copy in the Bodleian.

Ma. Rich. Martin." The Reader may turn to it "an' it please" him (Vol. I. p. 159): and "thereby hangs a tale." The dedicatory sonnet, it will be seen, while characterizing "Orchestra" as "this dauncing Poem," this "suddaine, rash, half-capreol of my wit," informs us that his "very friend " Martin was the "first mouer and sole cause of it, and that he was the Poet's “ owne selues better halfe," and "deerest friend." We have the time employed on it too :

"You know the modest Sunne full fifteene times Blushing did rise, and blushing did descend,

While I in making of these ill made rimes,

My golden howers unthriftily did spend:

Yet, if in friendship you these numbers prayse,

I will mispend another fifteene dayes."

All this receives tragi-comical illumination from the

fact that this same

and he who so sang

and estrangement.

66

very friend" and "better halfe,"

of him, had soon a deadly quarrel RICHARD MARTIN became Re

corder of London, and one memorial of him is a Speech to the King which, if it partakes of the oddities of Euphues, must also be allowed to contain weighty and bravely-outspoken counsel: and thus he has come down to posterity as a grave and potent seignior. Moreover, he became Reader of his Society,

and M.P. for first Barnstaple, and later for Cirencester. He appears, too, as the associate of Ben Jonson, John Selden, and others of the foremost.4

But as a youthful law-student he was 'wild.' He fell under the lash of the Benchers, having been expelled from the Middle Temple in February, 1591, for the part he took in a riot at the prohibited festival of the Lord of Misrule. He was fast of tongue and ribald of wit, with a dash of provocative sarcasm. Evidently he was one of those men who would rather (as the saying puts it) lose his friend than his joke (however poor the joke and rich the friend). A consideration of the whole facts seems to show that again restored to the Middle Temple he had let loose his probably winecharged sarcasms at his friend Davies.

was so or not, he was ignobly punished.

Whether it

For against all "good manners not to speak of the "law" and discipline of the Court, Master Davies came into the Hall with his hat on, armed with a dagger, and attended by two persons with swords. Master Martin was

4 See Woolrych, as before, and the authorities therein given. At the end of Thomas Coriate's "Traveller for the English Wits," W. Jaggard, 1616 (4to), is a list of his acquaintances, to whom he desires "the commendations of my dutiful respects." Among them occurs "Mr. Richard Martin, Counsellor."

seated at dinner at the Barristers' Table. Davies pulling a bastinado or cudgel from under his gown, went up to his insulter and struck him repeatedly over the head. The chastisement must have been given with a will; for the bastinado was shivered to pieces-arguing either its softness or the head's asinine thickness. Having "avenged" himself, Davies returned to the bottom of the Hall, drew one of the swords belonging to his attendants, and flourished it repeatedly over his head, turning his face towards Martin, and then hurrying down the water-steps of the Temple, threw himself into a boat. This extraordinary occurrence happened at the close of 1597 or January of 1598. In 1595 he had been called to the bar; but in February 1598 Davies was expelled by a unanimous sentence; "disbarred" and deprived for ever of all authority to speak or consult in law." These "outbreaks" and expulsions were familiar incidents; and make us exclaim with Othello: "O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil "—" O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their

Lord Stowell wrote an elaborate Paper on the whole matter, and the restoration of Davies. It appeared in " Archæologia," Vol. XXI. I propose to write the narrative in extenso in my fuller Life, as before. 6 Lord Stowell, as before.

brains that we should with joy, pleasure, revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts" (ii. 3). This is the all-too-plain solution of these "high jinks." It was a disaster of the most ominous kind. Nevertheless the dark cloud that thus fell across the noon of the fulland-hot-blooded young Barrister folded in it a "bright light:" or if we may fetch an illustration from Holy Scripture, as Moses the great Lawgiver of ancient Israel through the slaying of the Egyptian was compelled to be a fugitive in the wilderness and therein to master his native impulsiveness and passion, so was the "offender" in the Hall of the Middle Temple through the disgrace and penalties incurred forced into retirement and introspection. It was a costly price to pay. But it is to be doubted whether if the enforced return to Oxford and the self-scrutiny and penitence that calm reflection wrought there had not arrested him, he ever would have given our literature" Nosce Teipsum." His great poem bears witness to very poignant self-accusation and humiliation. Towards the close you seem to catch the echo of sobs and the glistening of tears; nor is it "preaching" to recognize a diviner element still-his unrest and burden alike laid on Him Who alone can sustain and help a "wounded spirit" in its trouble. Besides the hazardous as disastrous incident with