“His breast is a brave palace, a broad street, Where all heroic ample thoughts do meet, Where Nature such a large survey hath ta’en, As others’ souls to _his dwelt in a lane_.” I cannot here help observing that the ridiculous story about Ben Jonson in his old age refusing money from Charles I., and rudely sending back word “that the king’s soul dwelt in a lane,” must have originated in some careless or malicious perversion of this line of the rough old poet’s. “Immortal Ben” wrote ten poems on the death of Sir Kenelm’s wife, who was the daughter of Sir Edward Stanley, and, it is supposed, the mistress of the Earl of Dorset. Randolph, Habington, and Feltham also wrote elegies on this beautiful woman, who was found dead in her bed, accidentally poisoned, it is supposed, by viper wine, or some philtre or cosmetic given her by her experimentalising husband in order to heighten her beauty.[444] In one of Ben Jonson’s poems there are the following incomparable verses about Lady Venetia:-- “Draw first a cloud, all save her neck, And out of that make day to break, Till like her face it do appear, And men may think all light rose there.” And again-- “Not swelling like the ocean proud, But stooping gently as a cloud, As smooth as oil pour’d forth, and calm As showers, and sweet as drops of balm.” Sir Kenelm, when imprisoned in Winchester House, in Southwark, wrote an attack on Sir Thomas Browne’s sceptical work _Religio Medici_. He also produced a book on cookery, and a commentary on the _Faerie Queen_. This strange being was buried in Christ Church, Newgate Street. St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields is an ancient parish, but it was first made independent of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, in 1535, by that tyrant Henry VIII., who, justly afraid of death, disliked the ceaseless black funeral processions of the outlying people of St. Martin’s passing the courtly gate of Whitehall, and who therefore erected a church near Charing Cross, and constituted its neighbourhood into a parish.[445] In 1607, that unfortunate youth of promise, Henry Prince of Wales, added a chancel to the very small church, which soon proved insufficient for the growing and populous suburb. But though so modern, this parish formerly included in its vast circle St. Paul’s Covent Garden, St. James’s Piccadilly, St. Anne’s Soho, and St. George’s Hanover Square. It extended its princely circle as far north as Marylebone, as far south as Whitehall, as far east as the Savoy, and as far west as Chelsea and Kensington. When first rated to the poor in Queen Elizabeth’s time it contained less than a hundred rateable persons. The chief inhabitants lived by the river side or close to the church. Pall Mall and Piccadilly were then unnamed, and beyond the church westward were St. James’s Fields, Hay-hill Farm, Ebury Farm, and the Neat houses about Chelsea.[446]