Intemperance was, in those days, not only the sin of the middle-classes, but that of the Court; and both James and his Queen are said to have indulged in it. Massinger seems to have held what were rare opinions in his time, and to have been an advocate for total abstinence:--

"O take care of wine!

Cold water is far better for your healths,

Of which I am very tender."--The Picture.

He wrote rapidly, and his pen was never idle; yet he lived in miserable poverty. There is no record either that he was married--no indication that, like every other poet, he had an unfortunate or unrequited attachment. His pilgrimage had one solace, that of a fervent religion; which had, probably, much of the superstitions which were mingled, in those early days of Protestantism, with the reformed faith. The Church of England was then “an untrimmed vessel, lurching now towards Rome, and now towards Geneva;” it is therefore no wonder if many of the young, the impassioned, the imaginative, inclined to that form of faith and of worship which wore at least the semblance of venerable seniority.[[192]]

There is not a line in Massinger’s works that can either convict him of Romanism, or stamp him as a Protestant. Like many of his contemporaries, his romantic fancy was captivated by the picturesque ceremonial, the saintly observances, the dramatic services of the Romish Church; and to this was probably added a disgust to that puritanic fervour by which not only the drama--to which there were, in fact, many just exceptions to be made--but all that was enchanting in life, poetry, secular music, revelry (not necessarily corrupting), was condemned as sinful, and all intellectual luxury prohibited and anathematized.

The Herbert family continued to be friends to Massinger--at all events, to lend him the support of their name. He dedicated “The New Way to Pay Old Debts,” the most celebrated of his plays, to Robert, Earl of Carnarvon. “I was born,” he says, “a most devoted servant to the thrice noble family of your incomparable lady, and am most ambitious, though at a proper distance, to be known to your lordship.” Robert, Earl of Carnarvon, who had married the Lady Katherine Herbert, although a friend and favourer of the Muses, and also Grand Falconer of England, is long since forgotten--whilst the poet, who addressed him “at a proper distance,” is remembered with pride and interest.

There was so close an intimacy at one time between the Earl of Pembroke’s family and that of the Duke of Buckingham, that it seems strange that no trace of Massinger’s having been patronized by him are to be discovered. In fact, the annals of Massinger’s life present little except the dates of his works. The eldest son of the unworthy Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, the poet’s chief patron, was married in 1634 to Lady Mary Villiers, then a mere girl. It is true that this alliance was formed six years after Buckingham’s death; but it was probably concerted before that event, after the fashion of the day, in which the infant in the cradle was often affianced by ambitious parents, and the nuptials solemnized at ten or twelve years of age. Charles, Lord Herbert set out on his travels directly after he had married his young wife, and died of small-pox at Florence in 1636. Massinger wrote a poem on his loss, among others, to his little bride:--

“True sorrow fell

With showers of tears--still bathe the widowed bed