Sombre John Webster would be here sometimes, sometimes Massinger, Thomas Middleton, Lilly, Thomas Heywood, William Rowley, Day, Wilkins, Ford, Camden, Ned Drayton, Fulke Greville, Harrington, Edmund Waller, Martin, Morley, Selden, the future Bishop of Winchester, _et cetera, et cetera, et cetera_! What a galaxy! what a feast! It is well for your peace of mind, my good wife, that the Mermaid and its company have vanished into the dark immensity. How long would I wait, and cheerfully, for so much as a peep through the window at that glorious company! * * * * * Dryden claims that the Mermaid did not receive such pleasant and such witty fellows in the reigns of Bess and James as did the Royal Oak, the Mitre, and the Roebuck after the Restoration; but to me the haunts of Wycherley, Otway, Villiers of Buckingham, Wilmot of Rochester, and the periwigged bucks and bloods and maccaronies in velvets and lace of Charles the Second's dissolute Court, are, as compared with the Falstaffian Taverns of the Shakespeareans, but dull and dry dens. So, if you will, of your grace, excuse the pun and the hasty skip, we will give these pretty gentlemen a miss, and jump at once into a fresh chapter and an account of a curious experience that once upon a time came in a tavern to me. WAS SHAKESPEARE A SCOTSMAN? O Caledonia! stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child. SCOTT. At last I was alone. The landlord, douce man, could stand no more; his conversation had been large and ample up to midnight, and had indeed left a fair remainder to spread a feast for solitude; but for the last two hours he had done nothing but alternately yawn and doze. Now, thank goodness, he had gone, and I could read in peace. Angels and ministers of grace defend us--Bacon's _Essays_ and Donnelly's _Cryptogram_!--in the parlour of a shabby old inn! Was mine host, then, of a literary turn? Ay, I had noted his gushing praise of Burns and Walter Scott; and, by the way, what was it he said about Shakespeare's visit to Edinburgh? He had shown me a letter in a book: I had been too intensely bored by his trowelled praise of Scottish lochs, Scottish mountains, haggis, parritch, usquebaugh, and Scottish poetry, to pay much heed--but yes, this must be it. Drummond's _Sonnets_, and here evidently was the letter, signed by Ben Jonson, indorsed "to my very good friend, the lairde of Hawthornden":-- Master vill, quhen we were drinking at my Lordis on Sonday, you promised yat you would gett for me my Lordis coppie he lent you of my Lord Sempill his interlude callit philotas, and qhuich vill Shakespeare told me he actit in edinburt, quhen he wes yair wit the players, to his gret contentment and delighte. My man waits your answer: So give him the play, And lette him awaye To your assured friend and loving servand, BEN JONSON. From my lodging in the canongait,