The ring, without doubt, Was the thing put him out, And made him forget what was next; For every one there Will say, I dare swear, He handled it more than his text. With poetical badinage of this complexion the wits of the University of Oxford, with Corbet at their head, “who loved this boy’s play to the last,” abounded. While many of the pasquinades are lost, many, however, are still preserved among Ashmole’s papers: on most occasions Corbet was at least a match for his opponents, but this misfortune of the ring became a standing jest against him: it is alluded to at page 233; and it is demanded in another poem[16], if He would provoke court wits to sing The _second_ part of bandstrings and the ring. Upon the evening of the same Sunday, the students of Christ-Church, willing to show their respect for the royal visitor, obtained leave to present a play before the King; and they chose, with no great display of taste, Barten Holyday’s ΤΕΧΝΟΓΑΜΙΑ, or “The Marriage of the Arts,” which had been acted in Christ-Church hall the 13th of February, 1617. The play was so little relished, that the king was with difficulty persuaded to sit till its conclusion: the “enactors” became subjects of ridicule to the University; and, though Corbet and King rhymed in their favour, the laugh went against them. Indeed the Oxonians were not more unfortunate in their theatrical representations on this than on former occasions. Upon the visit of James, in 1605, two out of three dramatic exhibitions, prepared at great expense and performed by the students, were, according to the testimony of an eye-witness, received with tædium, and rewarded with unconcealed disgust[17]. The writers of the poet’s life are silent as to the period of his marriage; and if I am unable to communicate any information on this point, it will not, I trust, be attributed to any parsimony of research, or indifference as to fact when conjecture can be substituted. Those who have made literary biography their study, know that it is frequently much easier to write many pages than to ascertain a date, and hence but too frequently ingenuity supplies the place of labour and inquiry: in the present instance, every record that suggested a probability of containing any memorial relative to the family of the subject of this biography has been inspected personally; but before the passing of the Marriage Act, nothing is more uncertain than the probable place of the celebration of that ceremony[18].