In the history of culture not only John and Francis, but the Beaumonts in general are illustrious. In various branches and for generations the poetic, scholarly, and artistic vein has persisted. John Beaumont's son and heir, the second Sir John, edited his father's poems, and lived to write memorial verses on Ben Jonson, and on Edward King, Milton's "Lycidas"; and another son, Francis, wrote verses. A relative and namesake of the dramatist's father,--afterwards Master of Charterhouse,--wrote an Epistle prefixed to Speght's _Chaucer_, 1598; and still another more distant relative, Dr. Joseph, Master of Peterhouse, and author of the epic allegory, _Psyche_, was one of the poetic imitators through whom Spenser's influence was conveyed to Milton. The Sir George Beaumont of Wordsworth's day to whom reference has already been made was celebrated by that poet both as artist and patron of art. And, according to Darley,[14] Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was of the race and maiden name of our dramatist's mother, Anne Pierrepoint. From which coincidence one may, if he will, argue poetic blood on that side of the family, too; or from Grosart's derivation of Jonathan Edwards from that family, polemic blood, as well. The three sons of Justice Beaumont of Grace-Dieu were entered on February 4, 1597, at Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke, which at that time was one of the most flourishing and fashionable institutions in Oxford. These young gentlemen-commoners were evidently destined for the pursuit of the civil and common law, since, as Dyce informs us, their Hall was then the principal nursery for students of that discipline. But one cannot readily visualize young Frank, not yet thirteen, or his brother John, a year or so older, devoting laborious hours to the _Corpus Juris_ in the library over the south aisle of St. Aldate's Church, or to their Euclid, Strabo, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian. We see them, more probably, slipping across St. Aldate's street to Wolsey's gateway of Christ Church, and through the, then unfinished, great quadrangle, past Wolsey's tower in the southeast corner, and, by what then served for the Broad Walk, to what now are called the Magdalen College School cricket grounds, and so to some well-moored boat on the flooded meadows by the Cherwell. And some days, they would have under arm or in pocket a tattered volume of Ovid, preferably in translation,--Turberville's _Heroical Epistles_, or Golding's rendering of the _Metamorphoses_,--or Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, or Fenton's _Tragical Discourses_ out of Bandello, dedicated to the sister of Sir Philip Sidney--Sir Philip, whose daughter young Francis should, one day, revere and celebrate in noble lines. Or they would have Harington's _Orlando Furioso_ to wonder upon; or some cheap copy of _Amadis_ or _Palmerin_ to waken laughter. And, other days, fresh quartos of _Tamburlaine_ and _Edward II_ and _Dido_, or Kyd's _Spanish Tragedy_ and Lyly's _Gallathea_, or Greene's