374 A Century of Science 



den was master of Westminster School; among 

 the lights of the age for legal learning were Ed 

 ward Coke and Francis Bacon ; at the same time, 

 one might have met in London the learned archi 

 tect Inigo Jones and the learned poet John Donne, 

 both of them excellent classical scholars ; there one 

 would have found the divine poet Edmund Spen 

 ser, just come over from Ireland to see to the pub 

 lication of his &quot; Faerie Queene ; &quot; not long after 

 ward came John Fletcher from Cambridge, and the 

 acute philosopher Edward Herbert from Oxford , 

 and one and all might listen to the incomparable 

 table-talk of that giant of scholarship, John Sel- 

 den. The delights of the Mermaid Tavern, where 

 these rare wits were wont to assemble, still live in 

 tradition. As Keats says : 



&quot; Souls of poets dead and gone, 

 Wbat Elysium have ye known, 

 Happy field or mossy cavern, 

 Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ? &quot; 



It has always been believed that this place was 

 one of Shakespeare s favourite haunts. By com 

 mon consent of scholars, it has been accepted as 

 the scene of those contests of wit between Shake 

 speare and Jonson of which Fuller tells us when 

 he compares Jonson to a Spanish galleon, built 

 high with learning, but slow in movement, while 



