In all his works he is a witness ever ready to declare and expose the ruling sin of his day and generation. It is true that he sometimes found a picture gallery among the drunkards, used them in his artistic way, and made them extol the virtues of the thing that lowered them to what they were, the buffoons of his creation; but in his heart of hearts, as he would himself express it, he abhorred the thing, while he could not resist the acknowledgment of its fascination. The same cannot be said of his friend, Ben Jonson, who, like so many of the dramatists of the period, as Marlowe, Greene, and Nash, was a notoriously free liver. His naturally passionate disposition, so unlike that of his famous friend, was rendered more hasty and vindictive by his addiction to drink. He goes near to condemn himself in his apostrophe ‘To Penshurst’:-- Whose liberal board doth flow With all that hospitality doth know! Where comes no guest but is allowed to eat Without his fear, and of my lord’s own meat; Where the same beer and bread, and self-same wine, That is his lordship’s shall be also mine. And I not fain to sit--as some this day At great men’s tables--and yet dine away. Here no man tells my cups. To him canary was The very elixir and spirit of wine. He could say, though not in the original intention, Wine is the word that glads the heart of man, And mine’s the house of wine. Sack, says my bush, Be merry and drink sherry, that is my posie. The following are _Ben Jonson’s Sociable Rules for the Apollo._