Many weary dayes They now had spent in unfrequented wayes. About the rivers, vallies, holts, and crags, Among the ozyers and the waving flags, They merely pry, if any dens there be, Where from the Sun might harbour crueltie: Or if they could the bones of any spy, Or torne by beasts, or humane tyranny. They close inquiry made in caverns blind, Yet what they look for would be death to find. Right as a curious man that would descry, Led by the trembling hand of Jealousy, If his fair wife have wrong'd his bed or no, Meeteth his torment if he find her so.[93] I cannot, however, refrain from pointing the venturesome researcher,--with irony--may be not Mephistophelian, but merely pyrrhonic,--to the dramatic misfortunes of Bellario, Aspasia, and Evadne, and other heroines of the dramatized romances in which Beaumont and Fletcher's theatre of the Globe was indulging at the time. And I would ask him after he has read the sage advice of Remond to the disconsolate shepherd, some two hundred lines further down, to turn to Fletcher's poem of 1613 _Upon an Honest Man's Fortune_, and decide whether the poet-philosopher of the one is not very much of the same opinion as the shepherd-philosopher of the other.[94] FOOTNOTES: [81] John Chamberlain to Mris. Carleton, 18 February, 1612-3, in _State Papers (Domestic) James I_, LXXII, No. 30. Quoted by Miss Sullivan, _Court Masques of James I_, p. 76 (1913). [82] Foscarini in _Calendar of State Papers, Venetian_, XII, No. 832. Quoted by Miss Sullivan, _op. cit._, p. 77. [83] _Calendar State Papers (Domestic)_, 1611-1618, pp. 171, 172, 175. [84] Dugdale's _Origines Juridicales_, as cited by Dyce, _B. and F._, II, 453. Inderwick, _op. cit._, II, xxxix-xlii, 72, 77, etc. Douthwaite, _op. cit._, 231. Nichols's _Progresses of King James_, II, 566, 591. [85] _To Worthy Persons_, in the volume entitled _The Scourge of Folly_. [86] Gordon Goodwin, in _The Muses' Library_, 1894, p. 132. [87] See _Greenstreet Papers_, VIII, Fleay, _Hist. Stage_, 250. [88] _Brit. Past._, I, 1, 476. [89] _Ibid._, II, 2, 469. [90] Li. 405-470. [91] _Ibid._, I, 3, 297-8. [92] _Ibid._, II, 2, 247-352. [93] _Ibid._, II, 2, 510-512. [94] Cf. especially _Brit. Past._, II, 2, 706-732, with Fletcher's defiance of poverty and independence of criticism in his poem, _Upon an Honest Man's Fortune_. CHAPTER X AN INTERSECTING CIRCLE OF JOVIAL SORT Christopher Brooke of Lincoln's Inn enters the circle of Beaumont's associates not only as the advocate to whom Beaumont's friends in Shakespeare's company of actors turn for counsel in an important suit at law, and as the encomiast of Shakespeare himself a year or two later: He that from Helicon sends many a rill, Whose nectared veines are drunk by thirsty men,[95]