scarcely be called plays, in the higher sense of the term, and are more accurately described by the designation usually applied to them of Interludes, having few characters and scarcely any plot, and consisting entirely of an uninterrupted dialogue, without an attempt at action or structural design. They may be said to represent the transition from the Moralities to the regular drama; and in this point of view they possess a special interest.

The date of Heywood's birth is not known, nor has the place been ascertained with certainty. According to Bale

and Wood, he was born in the city of London, and received his education in the University of Oxford, at the ancient hostel of Broadgate, in St. Aldgate's parish. Other writers assert that he was born at North Mimms, near St. Alban's, Hertfordshire, where the family had some property, and at which place he lived after he left college; while a MS. in the possession of the Earl of Ellesmere describes him as a native of Kent.

Heywood had no inclination for the life of a student. His tastes lay in music, good fellowship, and 'mad, merry wit;' and, as he tells us in one of his epigrams, he applied himself to mirth more than thrift.' That he profited little by his residence at Oxford may be inferred from an observation made by Puttenham, who ascribes the favour in which he stood at Court to his mirth and quickness of conceit more than any good learning that was in him.' In Hertfordshire he became acquainted with Sir Thomas More, who lived in the neighbourhood, and who was so well pleased with his aptness for jest and repartee, qualities in much request at that period with the reigning monarch, that he not only introduced him to Henry VIII., but is said to have assisted him in the composition of his epigrams. He became a great favourite with the king, who appears, from his Book of Payments, to have taken him into his service as a player on the virginal; and gratuities from both the princesses are to be found amongst the items of the royal expenditure. In addi

tion to his wit and his music, he appears also to have had some talent as an actor, and to have presented an interlude at court (written no doubt by himself), played, according to the fashion then prevalent, by children. Heywood was a staunch Roman Catholic, a circumstance to which, we may presume, he was mainly indebted for the particular favours bestowed upon him by the Princess Mary, who admitted him to the most intimate conversation during the time of Henry VIII. and the succeeding reign; and conferred a distinguished mark of her patronage upon him when she came to the throne, by appointing him to address her in a Latin and English oration on her procession through the city to Westminster the day before her coronation. These were the palmy days of Heywood's career. The queen was so great an admirer of his humorous talents that she constantly sent for him to beguile the hours of illness, and is said to have sought relief from pain in his diverting stories even when she was languishing on her death-bed. His stories,' observes Chalmers, must have been diverting, indeed, if they soothed the recollections of such a woman.'

Upon the death of Queen Mary he suffered the reverse which attended most of her personal adherents. The Protestant religion was now in the ascendancy, and Heywood had been so conspicuous a follower of the late sovereign, that he either could not endure to live under the rule of her successor, or was apprehensive that his safety would be jeopardized if he remained in England. He accordingly left the kingdom, and settled at Mechlin, in Belgium, where Wood informs us he died in 1565. The Ellesmere MS., however, says that he was still living in 1576. He left two sons, Ellis and Jasper, who both became Jesuits, and were eminent for their learning.

In private life Heywood was a humorist and a jovial companion. The same character pervades his writings, which derived their popularity in his own time mainly from his social talents and his position at court. He began to write

about 1530; and his interludes, with one exception, were published in 1533.* His parable upon Queen Mary, called The Spider and the Fly, appeared in 1556, and his epigrams, by which he is best known to modern readers, in 1576.

The Play of Love, from which the following song is extracted, affords a fair sample of his dramatic system. The characters are mere abstractions-a Lover loving and not loved, a Woman loved and not loving, and a Vice who neither loves nor is loved. The dialogue draws out these metaphysical entities into a discourse which much more nearly resembles the application of the exhausting process to a very dull argument than the development of a passion. In the song taken from this play, Heywood adopts the vein of Skelton, who died in 1529, and who was not, as has been stated, one of his contemporaries. Heywood rarely displayed much tenderness of feeling, or an instinct of the beautiful; but more of these qualities will be found in this song, and in his verses on the Princess Mary,† than might be expected from the general character of his writings.]

* For an account of these interludes the reader may be referred to Mr. Fairholt's excellent introduction to Heywood's Dialogue on Wit and Folly, printed by the Percy Society, from the original MS. in the British Museum.

+ Harleian MS., No. 1703. This poem, entitled A Description of a most Noble Lady, was printed in Park's edition of Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, and a modernized copy of it is given in Evans's Old Ballads; another and a different version, in which some stanzas are omitted, and others altered, was published in Tottel's Miscellany, amongst the contributions of Uncertain Authors,' and quoted in that form (with the exception of a single verse) in Ellis's Specimens. Tottel's version will be found complete amongst the specimens of minor poets contemporaneous with Surrey, in the volume of Surrey's Poems, Ann. Ed. p. 237. It is there inserted, as it had been previously copied by Ellis, amongst the Uncertain Authors,' and a conjecture hazarded from internal evidence that it might have been written by George Boleyn. There is no doubt, however, that the poem in the Harleian MS. was written by Heywood, and that the share which the uncertain author,' whoever he may have been, had in Tottel's version, consisted in imparting certain refinements to the original, by which the sweetness and beauty of the expression are much heightened.

THE PLAY OF LOVE.

IN PRAISE OF HIS LADY.

AND to begin

At setting in:

First was her skin
White, smooth and thin,
And every vein
So blue seen plain;
Her golden hair
To see her wear,
Her wearing gear,
Alas! I fear

To tell all to you,
I shall undo you.
Her eye so rolling
Each heart controlling;
Her nose not long,
Her stode not wrong:

Her finger tips
So clean she clips;
Her rosy lips,

Her cheeks gossips

So fair, so ruddy,
It axeth study
The whole to tell;
It did excel.

It was so made

That even the shade

At every glade

Would hearts invade:

The paps small,

And round withal;

The waist not mickle,

But it was tickle:*

* In the sense of exciting. Tyckyll also meant unsteady, uncertain, doubtful. A thing was tickle that did not stand firmly

The thigh, the knee,
As they should be;
But such a leg,

A lover would beg

To set eye on,
But it is gone:

Then, sight of the foot
Rift hearts to the root.

[The four songs that follow are derived from another source. There is no evidence to show that they were written for the stage, although it is not improbable that some of them might have been sung in the interludes. Whether such a supposition may be considered sufficient to justify their insertion in this collection, I will not pretend to determine; but the reader who takes an interest in our early ballads will discover an ample reason for their introduction in the broad light they throw upon the lyrical poetry of the sixteenth century, and especially upon the peculiar style and manner of Heywood.

These four songs, together with many others, are contained in the same MS. with Redford's play of Wit and Science, which belonged to the late Mr. Bright, and was printed in 1848 by the Shakespeare Society, under the discriminating editorship of Mr. Halliwell. The collection of songs by John Heywood and others,' observes Mr. Halliwell, ‘is of considerable interest to the poetical antiquary; some are remarkably curious, and all of them belong to a period at which the reliques of that class of composition are exceedingly rare, and difficult to be met with.'

The collection contains eight songs by Heywood. The four here selected are intrinsically the best, and the most characteristic of the manner of the writer.]

tickle weather was uncertain weather. ticklish a ticklish case, a doubtful case.

Hence the modern phrase