This sketch of Ben Jonson’s life and writings may serve to illustrate the manners of those times, and the nature of that society in which George Villiers lived. In every revel Buckingham was the most distinguished courtier. In every masque, during King James’s life, he played a part. He knew the poet at Wilton; there can be little doubt that the friends of Villiers were the patrons of poor Ben. The panegyrist of the Duke, Lord Clarendon, lived, as he has himself declared, “many years on terms of the most friendly intercourse with Jonson.” In that conversation, praised by this historian “as very good, with men of most note,” Villiers must have borne a part; whilst Camden and Selden mingled with poor Ben, with the Sackvilles, the Sidneys, the Herberts, and the numerous family of Villiers. CHAPTER VI. BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER--THEIR ORIGIN--THEIR JOINT PRODUCTIONS--CHARACTER OF BISHOP FLETCHER--ANECDOTES ABOUT THE USE OF TOBACCO--FORD, THE DRAMATIST--HOWELL--SIR HENRY WOTTON--THE CHARACTER OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM CONSIDERED. CHAPTER VI. Among the young Templars who devoted themselves to the drama during the times of George Villiers, was Francis Beaumont. Born in the same county as that in which Buckingham’s family were settled, and bearing the same name as the Duke’s mother, there is every probability of there being some tie of consanguinity between the poet and the peer. Beaumont, like his colleague Fletcher, was one of ancient and honourable family; and, as such, entitled to be called to the Bar. It might be satisfactory to some of the lovers of literature to find that its pursuit, in the days of the Stuart Kings, was most frequently the choice of men of high connections, and by them considered as equal in position to the calling of the Bar, and far superior to that of the Church, or of medicine. The personal tastes of James, the passionate love of the drama evinced by Charles, by Henrietta Maria, and by Villiers, encouraged aspiring men to a display of genius which might have long been hidden in a lawyer’s wig, or extinguished for ever beneath the coif. Men were less shackled then by conventionalities than in the present day.