follow from his facility and plenipotence of wit in writing, that he
could shine at those extempore "flashes of merriment that were wont to
set the table on a roar." But, besides the natural inference that way,
we have the statement of honest old Aubrey, that "he was very good
company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit." Francis
Beaumont, who was a prominent member of that jovial senate, and to
whom Shirley applies the fine hyperbolism that "he talked a comedy,"
was born in 1586, and died in 1615. I cannot doubt that he had our
Poet, among others, in his eye, when he wrote those celebrated lines
to Ben Jonson:

"Methinks the little wit I had is lost
Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best
With the best gamesters. What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtile flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolv'd to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life."

In further token of Shakespeare's having belonged to this merry
parliament of genius, I must quote from Dr. Thomas Fuller, who, though
not born till 1608, was acquainted with some of the old Mermaid wits.
In his _Worthies of Warwickshire_, he winds up his account of the Poet
thus: "Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; which two
I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war.
Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning;
solid, but slow, in his performances: Shakespeare, with the English