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.”
Wotton and Walton.
Another great traveller of these times—but one whose dignities would, I suspect have kept him away from the Devil Tavern—was Sir Henry Wotton.[35] He was a man who had supplemented his university training by long residence abroad; who had been of service to King James (before the King had yet left Scotland) by divulging to him and defeating some purposed scheme of poisoning. Wotton was, later, English ambassador at the brilliant court of Venice, whence he wrote to the King many suggestions respecting the improvement of his garden, detailing Italian methods, and forwarding grafts and rare seedlings; he was familiar with most European courts—hobnobbed with Doges and with Kings, was a scholar of elegant and various accomplishments, and the reputed maker of that old and well-worn witticism about ambassadors—that “they were honest men, sent to lie abroad for the good of their country.” He was, furthermore, himself boastful of the authorship of this prickly saying, “The itch of disputation is the scab of the church.”[36] There is also a charming little poem of his—which gets place in the anthologies—addressed to that Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, whom we encountered as a bride at the Castle of Heidelberg, and who became the mother of the accomplished and daring Prince Rupert. Such a man as Wotton, full of anecdote, bristling with wit, familiar with courts, and one who could match phrases with James, or Charles, or Buckingham, in Latin, or French, or Italian, must have been a god-send for a dinner-party at Theobalds, or at Whitehall. To crown his graces, Walton[37] tells us that he was an excellent fisherman.