All this receives tragi-comical illumination from the fact that this same "very friend" and "better halfe," and he who so sang of him, had soon a deadly quarrel and estrangement. Richard Martin became Recorder 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.[13]
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 wine-charged sarcasms at his friend Davies. Whether it was so or not, he was ignobly punished. 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 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.[14] 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.[15] 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 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 full-and-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 Martin, his "Epigrams" by their abandon and general allusiveness reveal that he was the associate of the "young gallants" of the city and lived "fast"; and so give significance and interpretation to his later passionate regrets, self-accusations and self-rebuke. How abased and yet in touches how noble is this!
"O ignorant poor man! what dost thou beare
Lockt vp within the casket of thy brest?
What iewels and what riches hast thou there!
What heauenly treasure in so weake a chest!
Looke in thy soule, and thou shalt beauties find,
Like those which drownd Narcissus in the flood:
Honour and Pleasure both are in thy mind,
And all that in the world is counted good.
Thinke of her worth, and think that God did meane,
This worthy mind should worthy things imbrace;
Blast not her beauties with thy thoughts vnclean,
Nor her dishonour with thy passions base:
Kill not her quickning powers with surfettings,
Mar not her sense with sensualitie;
Cast not her serious wit on idle things:
Make not her free-will, slaue to vanitie.
And when thou think'st of her eternitie,
Thinke not that death against her nature is,
Thinke it a birth; and when thou goest to die,
Sing like a swan, as if thou went'st to blisse.
Take heed of over-weening, and compare
Thy peacock's feet with thy gay peacock's traine;
Study the best and highest things that are,
But of thyselfe an humble thought retaine."[16]