A New King and some Literary Survivors.
The new King, his son, was a well-built young fellow of twenty-five, of fine appearance, well taught, and just on the eve of his marriage to Henrietta of France. He had a better taste than his father, and lived a more orderly life; indeed, he was every way decorous save in an obstinate temper and in absurd notions about his kingly prerogative. He loved play-going and he loved poetry, though not so accessible as his father had been to the buffoonery of the water-poet Taylor, or the tipsy obeisance of old Ben Jonson. For Ben Jonson was still living, not yet much over fifty, though with his great bulk and reeling gait seeming nearer seventy; now, too, since Shakespeare is gone, easily at the head of all the literary workers in London; indeed, in some sense always at the head by reason of his dogged self-insistence and his braggadocio. All the street world[33] knows him, as he swaggers along the Strand to his new jolly rendezvous at the Devil Tavern, near St. Dunstan’s, in Fleet Street—not far off from the Temple Church—where he and his fellows meet in the Apollo Chamber, over whose door Ben has written:
“Welcome, all who lead or follow
To the oracle of Apollo!
Here he speaks out of his pottle
On the tripos—his tower-bottle,” etc.
Of all we have named hitherto among the Elizabethan poets, the only ones who would be likely to appear there in Charles I.’s time would be George Chapman, of the Homer translation; staid and very old now, with snowy hair; and Dekker—what time he was out of prison for debt; possibly, too, John Marston. Poor Ben Jonson wrote about this time his last play, which did not take either with courtiers or the public; whereupon the old grumbler was more rough than ever, and died a few years thereafter, wretchedly poor, and was put into the ground—upright, tradition says, as into a well—in Westminster Abbey. There one may walk over his name and his crown; and this is the last we shall see of him, whose swagger has belonged to three reigns.
Among other writers known to these times and who went somewhiles to these suppers at the Apollo was James Howell,[34] notable because he wrote so much; and I specially name him because he was the earliest and best type of what we should call a hack-writer; ready for anything; a shrewd salesman, too, of all he did write; travelling largely—having modern instincts, I think; making small capital—whether of learning or money—reach enormously. He was immensely popular, too, in his day; a Welshman by birth, and never wrote at all till past forty; but afterward he kept at it with a terrible pertinacity. He gives quaint advice about foreign travel, with some shrewdness cropping out in it. Thus of languages he says:
“Whereas, for other Tongues one may attaine to speak them to very good purpose, and get their good will at any age; the French tongue, by reason of the huge difference ’twixt their writing and speaking, will put one often into fits of despaire and passion; but the Learner must not be daunted a whit at that, but after a little intermission hee must come on more strongly, and with a pertinacity of resolution set upon her againe and againe, and woo her as one would do a coy mistress, with a kind of importunity, until he over-master her: She will be very plyable at last.”
Then he says, for improvement, it is well to have the acquaintance of some ancient nun, with whom one may talk through the grated windows—for they have all the news, and “they will entertain discourse till one be weary, if one bestow on them now and then some small bagatells—as English Gloves, or Knives, or Ribands—and before hee go over, hee must furnish himself with such small curiosities.”
The expenses of travel in that day on the Continent, he says, for a young fellow who has his “Riding and Dancing and Fencing, and Racket, and Coach-hire, with apparel and other casual charges will be about £300 per annum”—which sum (allowing for differences in moneyed values) may have been a matter of $6,000. He says with great aptness, too, that the traveller must not neglect letter-writing, which
“he should do exactly and not carelessly: For letters are the ideas and truest mirrors of the mind; they show the inside of a man and how he improveth himself.”