This personage certainly Ben Jonson represented in the great room of the Devil tavern. Hither came all who desired to be "sealed of the tribe of Ben." "The _Leges Conviviales_," says Leigh Hunt, "which Jonson wrote for his Club, and which are to be found in his works, are composed in his usual style of elaborate and compiled learning, not without a taste of that dictatorial self-sufficiency, which, notwithstanding all that has been said by his advocates, and the good qualities he undoubtedly possessed, forms an indelible part of his character. 'Insipida poemata,' says he, 'nulla _recitantur_' (Let nobody repeat to us insipid poetry); as if all that he should read of his own must infallibly be otherwise. The Club at the Devil does not appear to have resembled the higher one at the Mermaid, where Shakspeare and Beaumont used to meet him. He most probably had it all to himself." In the Rules of the Apollo Club, women of character were not excluded from attending the meetings--_Probæ feminæ non repudiantur_. Marmion, one of Jonson's contemporary dramatists, describes him in his presidential chair, as "the boon Delphic god:"-- "_Careless._ I am full Of Oracles. I am come from Apollo. _Emilia._ From Apollo! _Careless._ From the heaven Of my delight, where the boon Delphic god Drinks sack, and keeps his bacchanalia, And has his incense and his altars smoaking, And speaks in sparkling prophecies; thence I come, My brains perfumed with the rich Indian vapour, And heightened with conceits. From tempting beauties, From dainty music and poetic strains, From bowls of nectar and ambrosial dishes, From witty varlets, fine companions, And from a mighty continent of pleasure, Sails thy brave Careless." Randolph was by Ben Jonson, adopted for his son, and that upon the following occasion. "Mr. Randolph having been at London so long as that he might truly have had a parley with his _Empty Purse_, was resolved to see Ben Jonson, with his associates, which, as he heard, at a set time kept a Club together at the Devil Tavern, neere Temple Bar: accordingly, at the time appointed, he went thither, but being unknown to them, and wanting money, which to an ingenious spirit is the most daunting thing in the world, he peeped in the room where they were, which being espied by Ben Jonson, and seeing him in a scholar's threadbare habit, 'John Bo-peep,' says he, 'come in,' which accordingly he did; when immediately they began to rhyme upon the meanness of his clothes, asking him if he could not make a verse? and without to call for a quart of sack: there being four of them, he immediately thus replied, "I, John Bo-peep, to you four sheep,-- With each one his good fleece; If that you are willing to give me five shilling, 'Tis fifteen-pence a-piece."