Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/420

 The Literary Associations of the Temple. (and that they were performed in the hall of that Inn. His tragi-comedy, "The Picture," was dedicated "To my honoured and select friends of the Honourable Society of the In ner Temple." His contemporary, Ford, the great painter of unhappy love, was also a member of the Inner Temple. He does not appear to have depended on his literary work for his livelihood, but rather to have followed diligently the employment of the law. Beaumont, who collaborated with Fletcher in those works which vie with Shakespeare's in tragic and romantic eloquence, belonged to the Middle Temple. Both were of high social status, Beaumont being the son of a famous judge and Fletcher the son of a bishop. These three are the contributions of the Temple to an age of great drama tists. Though Evelyn the diarist was a member of the Middle Temple, and lived at 5 Essex Court, the other great diarist of those days, Samuel Pepys, cannot be claimed. Both, however, mention the Temple in their writ ings. In 1642, Evelyn tells us, he was chosen comptroller of the Christmas revels at the Middle. He was then twenty-two years of age. Many years later he writes : "bent to see the revels at the Middle Tem ple, an old but riotous custom, which hath relation neither to virtue nor to policy." Pepys tells us of an amusing incident which happened in 1669. " My lord mayor being invited this day to dinner at the Reader's Feast at the Temple, and endeavoring to carry his sword up, the students did pull it down, and force him to go and stay all day in a private councillor's chambers, until the reader himself could get the young gentle men to dinner. And then my lord mayor did retreat out of the Temple with his sword up. This did make great heat among the students, and my lord mayor did send to the king, and also I hear that the drums did beat for the train bands; but all is over, only I hear the students have resolved to try the charter of the city."

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"Honest Tom Southernc," the first to hold up to execration the slave trade, and the author of "The Fatal Marriage," was entered as a student of the Middle Temple in 1678. He soon deserted the law for the profession of arms, and is said to have been present at the battle of Sedgemoor. Congreve, the comrade of Swift at Kilkenny school, be came a member of the Middle Temple when he came to London, but, like Southerne and Rowe, soon forsook law for literature, and became the darling of society. Rowe, the author of "Jane Shore" and "The Fair Penitent," entered the Temple in 1691. The study of law, however, had little attraction for one of such good presence and lively manners; and on his father's death in 1692 he betook himself to society and literature, and enriched our vocabulary with his " gal lant, gay Lothario." Fielding, the novelist, had some experience of the world before he joined the Middle Temple in 1737, aged thirty at a time when he seemed to have to choose between being a hackney coachman and the career of a hackney writer. The record of his entry is as follows : " I Novris1737. Henricus Fielding de East Stout in Com. Dorset, Ar., filius et haeres apparens Brig. Genlis: Edmundi Fielding admissus est in Societatem Medii Templi Lond. specialiter et obligatur cum," etc. He is said to have studied vigorously, and often to have left a tavern late at night to abstract the ab struse works of authors in civil law. While a student he gave his aid in editing a peri odical called " The Champion " and it is probably of this that Thackeray was think ing when he writes of Fielding, "with inked ruffles and a wet towel round his head, dash ing off articles at midnight, while the print er's boy is asleep in the passage." After his call he regularly attended the Wiltshire sessions; but he did not succeed, though he appears to have made many friends among the lawyers, as the list of subscribers to his "Miscellanies " shows. Perhaps it was this connection with law which gave him some