His life, however, was not without its solace. Happily for the literary men of the age, Ralegh had comprehended what is most essential both to mind and body, and in founding the meetings at the Mermaid had provided for the dramatist, poet, and philosopher, suitable relaxation. The place of meeting was at the Mermaid, in Bread Street, Cheapside. Here Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and many others, enjoyed the rare companionship of Ralegh, during the brief intervals in which he was not either engaged at the Court, or in distant expeditions. Here wit was the current coin of the company; toil was cast aside; “away with melancholy,” was the burden of the guests, who had probably many a care hidden in the core of their hearts. To Shakspeare’s joyous nature, and to the sanguine and then unbroken spirit of Ralegh, the sorrows of the past, the terrors of the future, might easily be forgotten, or suspended over a cup of rich Canary; or, as night drew on, after a beaker of sack-posset. But one may picture to oneself the diffident, yet proud Philip Massinger, in his black doublet and plain white linen collar, with shabby tassels hanging from it, feasting, perhaps, at another man’s expense--trying to shine in these "wit-combats"--trying to forget “the basket,” and to seem prosperous; but, with the remembrance of the five pounds borrowed upon the security of his capital of brains, with a heavy sigh, as the delightful bard of Avon talked of retiring, on his fortune of two hundred a-year, to the quaint old town, his birth-place. It must, however, have been a delicious opportunity of looking into minds as various as they were original. Beaumont has described the surface:-- “What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid!--heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life ... ... 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.” A modern writer has compared these meetings to the “_Noctes Ambrosianæ_.” Happier far the wits of modern days, than the gifted men who, in the time of the Stuarts, were fain to cringe to patrons for their subsistence. None but unsuccessful authors will rail at modern publishers, when they remember the infinite miseries, with few signal exceptions, of those who were unhappy enough to depend on individuals and not on the public, whose will and taste the publisher alone studies. Intemperance was, in those days, not only the sin of the middle-classes, but that of the Court; and both James and his Queen are said to have indulged in it. Massinger seems to have held what were rare opinions in his time, and to have been an advocate for total abstinence:--