‘The sun which doth the greatest comfort bring To absent friends, because the self-same thing They know they see, however absent is, (Here our best hay-maker, forgive me this, It is our country style) in this warm shine I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine: Oh, we have water mixt with claret lees, Drink apt to bring in drier heresies Than here, good only for the sonnet’s strain, With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain:— Think with one draught a man’s invention fades, Two cups had quite spoil’d Homer’s Iliads. ’Tis liquor that will find out Sutclift’s wit, Like where he will, and make him write worse yet: Fill’d with such moisture, in most grievous qualms[30] Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms: And so must I do this: and yet I think It is a potion sent us down to drink By special providence, keep us from fights, Make us not laugh when we make legs to knights; ’Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states, A medicine to obey our magistrates. · · · · · Methinks the little wit I had is lost Since I saw you, for wit is like a rest Held up at tennis, which men do the best With the best gamesters. What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! Hard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtile flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolv’d to live a fool the rest Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown Wit able enough to justify the town For three days past, wit that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly, Till that were cancell’d; and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies Right witty, though but downright fools more wise.’ I shall not, in this place repeat Marlowe’s celebrated song, ‘Come live with me and be my love,’ nor Sir Walter Raleigh’s no less celebrated answer to it (they may both be found in Walton’s Complete Angler, accompanied with scenery and remarks worthy of them); but I may quote as a specimen of the high and romantic tone in which the poets of this age thought and spoke of each other the ‘Vision upon the conceipt of the Fairy Queen,’ understood to be by Sir Walter Raleigh.