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 tho 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 " Faerie Queene ; " 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 : - 



" Souls of poets dead and gone, 

 What Elysium have ye known, 

 Happy field or mossy cavern, 

 Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ? " 



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 



