ABSTRACT
In a macaronic poem 'Convivium philosophicum', which pokes fun at the poetaster and traveller Thomas Coryate, John Hoskins describes a scene of witty revelry at thc Mitre Tavern. The guests at what seems to have been an actual asscmbly of notable wits are denoted in the poem by quibbling pseudonyms, and Donne appears as 'Johannes Factus' among a group of his known associates-Christopher Brooke, Hoskins himself, Richard Martin, Sir Henry Goodyer, Inigo Jones. (L. L. Osborn, The Life, Letters, and Writings of John Hoskyns, 1566-1638, Yale, 1937, pp. 196-9. An English version of the poem, attributed to John Reynolds, is given in Andrew Clark's edition of Aubrey's Brief Lives, Oxford, 1898, ii, pp. 50-3.)
How-ever short of Others Art and Witt I knowe my powers for such a Part unfitt; And shall but light my Candle in the Sunne, To doe a Work shalbe so better Donne:
?1618
