"Sir Edward Coke," says Lord Campbell, writing of this period, "first evinced his forensic powers when deputed by the students to make a representation to the benchers of the Inner Temple respecting the bad quality of their _commons_ in the hall. After laboriously studying the facts and the law of the case, he clearly proved that the cook had broken his engagement, and was liable to be dismissed. This, according to the phraseology of the day, was called 'the cook's case,' and he was said to have argued it with so much quickness of penetration and solidity of judgment, that he gave entire satisfaction to the students, and was much admired by the Bench." In his exquisite "Prothalamion" Spenser alludes to the Temple as if he had sketched it from the river, after a visit to his great patron, the Earl of Essex,-- "Those bricky towers, The which on Thames' broad, aged back doe ride, Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide, Till they decayed through pride." Sir John Davis, the author of "Nosce Teipsum," that fine mystic poem on the immortality of the soul, and of that strange philosophical rhapsody on dancing, was expelled the Temple in Elizabeth's reign, for thrashing his friend, another roysterer of the day, Mr. Richard Martin, in the Middle Temple Hall; but afterwards, on proper submission, he was readmitted. Davis afterwards reformed, and became the wise Attorney-General of Ireland. His biographer says, that the preface to his "Irish Reports" vies with Coke for solidity and Blackstone for elegance. Martin (whose monument is now hoarded up in the Triforium) also became a learned lawyer and a friend of Selden's, and was the person to whom Ben Jonson dedicated his bitter play, _The Poetaster_. In the dedication the poet says, "For whose innocence as for the author's you were once a noble and kindly undertaker: signed, your true lover, BEN JONSON."