The place where he was accustomed particularly to resort for social recreation was the Mermaid Tavern, Friday street, Cheapside. This was the wits' house for a long period. There a club for _beaux esprits_ was established by Sir Walter Raleigh, and here came, in their several days and times, Spenser, Shakspeare, Philip Sidney, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Marlowe, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, Wotton, and all the brave spirits of those ages. Here Jonson and Shakspeare used to shine out by the brilliancy of their powers, and in their "wit combats," in which Fuller describes Jonson as a _Spanish great galleon_, and Shakspeare as the _English man-of-war_. "Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and his invention." Enough has been said of this celebrated club by a variety of writers. There can be no doubt that there wit and merriment abounded to that degree, that, as Beaumont has said in his epistle to Jonson, one of their meetings was enough to make up for all the stupidity of the city for three days past, and supply it for long to come; to make the worst companions right witty, and "downright fools more wise." There is as little doubt, however, that, with Jonson in the chair, drinking would be as pre-eminent as the wit. The verses which he had inscribed over the door of the Apollo room, at the Devil Tavern, another of their resorts, are, spite of all vindications by ingenious pens, too indicative of that. "Welcome all who lead or follow To the oracle of Apollo: Here he speaks out of his pottle, Or the tin-pot, his tower bottle: All his answers are divine; Truth itself doth flow like wine. Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, Cries old Sam, the king of skinkers. He the half of life abuses That sits watering with the Muses, Those dull gods no good can mean us: Wine--it is the cream of Venus, And the poet's horse accounted: Ply it, and you all are mounted. 'Tis the true Phoebian liquor, Cheers the brain, makes it the quicker; Pays all debts, cures all diseases, And at once the senses pleases. Welcome all who lead or follow To the oracle of Apollo." There is not any reason to believe that Shakspeare, lover of wit and jollity as he was, was a practical upholder of this pernicious doctrine. He may often make his characters speak in this manner, but personally he retired as soon as he could from this bacchanal life to his own quiet hearth at Stratford; and if we are to believe his sonnets addressed to his wife, and they possess the tone of a deep and real sentiment, he seriously rued the orgies in which he had participated.