But besides this he loved to support literature and art. He directly offended the scruples of the Puritans by attending the theatre. A splendid and costly masquerade, which the four Inns of Court combined to exhibit in the Carnival of the year 1633, was counted as a proof of their loyalty. They drove from Ely House through Chancery Lane and Whitehall in their carriages surrounded by torches; and the King sent to request them to take a route that would enable him to see the spectacle twice. The ladies and gentlemen of the court mustered in their richest dress, and later in the evening the Queen mingled with the dancers. Shirley, who was in the Queen’s service, Massinger, and old Ben Jonson still prevented the English stage from degenerating: Cymbeline, Richard III, and other plays of Shakespeare were favourite pieces with the public. Ben Jonson lived till 1637: from time to time he had the opportunity of celebrating the generosity of Charles I, of which he was greatly in need. In his later writings, such as his ‘Discoveries made upon Men and Matter,’ a ripe and lively feeling for literary culture and for culture generally is displayed which does honour to the age. Charles I developed not only a preference, but a real appreciation, for art. Inigo Jones, whom many consider as the man of the greatest artistic talent whom England on the whole has produced, and in whose works we perceive a steady progress from an overcharged romantic style to purer forms, was one of his personal friends. It is easy to see why a man of architectural genius should attach himself to the court, for which he built chapels and banqueting halls, and to Archbishop Laud, who undertook to restore churches in the style of Christian antiquity, rather than to the [A.D. 1637.] Puritans who looked for salvation in the bare gospel. Among the King’s servants we find Vandyke, who in his incomparable portraits has preserved for us the forms of those who moved in high society; and Rubens, who reconciled his political commissions with constant practice of his art. On him as on others the obstinacy of the popular resistance with which Charles came into collision in his last Parliament produced an unfavourable impression. He blames the learned Selden for getting him involved in this confusion, to the prejudice of his art[75]. But as for the rest he was astonished by the zeal for study displayed by the English, and by the richness of their collections of works of art. The Arundel marbles were already rousing the attention of students of antiquity: Kenelm Digby procured for the King himself some of the finest monuments of ancient Greek art from the Levant. From Italy and Spain there was brought to him, as one of his contemporaries says, a whole troop of emperors and senators of ancient Rome, which he himself took pains to arrange in their chronological order: and he was capable of showing impatience if any one disturbed him in his task. He may be