It seems hard to challenge the self-indulgence of Bishop Fletcher, or to grudge him a luxury which assisted Sir Isaac Newton in his contemplative mood, and soothed Hooker when a shrewish wife nearly drove him mad with vexation. Nevertheless, smoking, or taking snuff, is said to have ended Dr. Fletcher’s days. He had also trials of another kind to his health. He was the bishop who offended Elizabeth by taking a second wife, and that wife a handsome widow, Lady Baker, of Kent. The Queen, thinking that one wife was enough for a bishop, forbade him her presence, and ordered Archbishop Whitgift to suspend him, and whether from her Majesty’s displeasure, or from the effects of tobacco, he died suddenly in his chair; “being well, sick, and dead in one quarter of an hour.” The family of Fletcher were largely imbued with poetic fervour. Giles, the bishop’s brother, was a man of great learning; and his two sons, John and Phineas, were conspicuous during the reign of James I. for their learning and poetry. Phineas, whose name occurs in the biography of Villiers, wrote “The Purple Island,” an allegorical description of man--a much extended version of “Spenser’s Allegory” in his second book. He also composed “Piscatory Eclogues and Miscellanies;” and his time was divided between the duties of his calling (for he was a clergyman) and the delight of composition. His brother Giles was, says Anthony Wood, equally “beloved of the muses and the graces.” The Fletchers were, indeed, remarkable for their gifts. Benlowes, in his verses to Phineas, thus expresses his sense of their family attributes:-- “For ’twere a stain, Nature’s, not thy own; For thou art poet born; who know thee know it; Thy brother, sire--thy very name’s a poet.” The fame of Giles Fletcher rests chiefly on his poem called “Christ’s Victory,” which is printed with the “Purple Island” by his brother Phineas.