mouer and sole cause of it, and that he was the Poet's "owne selues better halfe," and "deerest friend." We have the time employed on it too:-- [Footnote 11: There is a copy at Lambeth.] [Footnote 12: There is a copy in the Bodleian.] "You know the modest Sunne full fifteene times Blushing did rise, and blushing did descend, While I in making of these ill made rimes, My golden howers unthriftily did spend: Yet, if in friendship you these numbers prayse, I will mispend another fifteene dayes." All this receives tragi-comical illumination from the fact that this same "very friend" and "better halfe," and he who so sang of him, had soon a deadly quarrel and estrangement. RICHARD MARTIN became Recorder of London, and one memorial of him is a Speech to the King which, if it partakes of the oddities of Euphues, must also be allowed to contain weighty and bravely-outspoken counsel: and thus he has come down to posterity as a grave and potent seignior. Moreover, he became Reader of his Society, and M.P. for first Barnstaple, and later for Cirencester. He appears, too, as the associate of Ben Jonson, John Selden, and others of the foremost.[13] [Footnote 13: See Woolrych, as before, and the authorities therein given. At the end of Thomas Coriate's "Traveller for the English Wits," W. Jaggard, 1616 (4to), is a list of his acquaintances, to whom he desires "the commendations of my dutiful respects." Among them occurs "Mr. Richard Martin, Counsellor."] But as a youthful law-student he was 'wild.' He fell under the lash of the Benchers, having been expelled from the Middle Temple in February, 1591, for the part he took in a riot at the prohibited festival of the Lord of Misrule. He was fast of tongue and ribald of wit, with a dash of provocative sarcasm. Evidently he was one of those men who would rather (as the saying puts it) lose his friend than his joke (however poor the joke and rich the friend). A consideration of the whole facts seems to show that again restored to the Middle Temple he had let loose his probably wine-charged sarcasms at his friend Davies. Whether it was so or not, he was ignobly punished. For against all "good manners" not to speak of the "law" and discipline of the Court, Master Davies came into the Hall with his hat on, armed with a dagger, and attended by two persons with swords. Master Martin was seated at dinner at the Barristers' Table. Davies pulling a bastinado or cudgel from under his gown, went up to his insulter and struck him repeatedly over the head. The chastisement must have been given with a will; for the bastinado was shivered to pieces--arguing either its softness or the head's asinine thickness. Having "avenged" himself, Davies returned to the bottom of the Hall, drew one of the swords belonging to his attendants, and flourished it repeatedly over his head, turning his face towards Martin, and then hurrying down the water-steps of the Temple, threw