Thomas Heywood, himself an actor, was the most indefatigable of dramatic writers. He had, as he informs his readers, an entire hand, or at least a maine finger,' in two hundred and twenty plays. He wrote also a long series of other works in prose or verse, or in both, including translations from Lucian and other classics, defences of the stage, books of biography and theology, epitaphs and elegies. Most of the few facts we know about Heywood's life and history have been gleaned from his own writings and the dates of his plays. The time of his birth is not known, but he seems to have been born about 1575; he was a native of Lincolnshire, and is said to have been a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge; he wrote his first play about 1600, and he continued to exercise his ready pen down to the year 1641. In one of his prologues he adverts to the various sources of his multifarious labours:

To give content to this most curious age,

The gods themselves we've brought down to the stage
And figur'd them in planets; made even hell
Deliver up the Furies, by no spell
Saving the Muses' rapture: further, we
Have traffick'd by their help; no history
We have left unrifled; our pens have been dipt,
As well in opening each hid manuscript,
As tracts more vulgar, whether read or sung
In our domestic or more foreign tongue.
Of fairy elves, nymphs of the sea and land,
The lawns and groves, no number can be scann'd
Which we've not given feet to.

Charles Lamb's startling epithet for Heywood, 'a sort of prose Shakespeare,' is, even when qualified by Lamb's rather serious deduction-'but we miss the poet'-usually treated as one of his least happy appreciations, as a misleading paradox bred of the kindly critic's enthusiasm for his old dramatists, emphatic almost in proportion as they were neglected by the world. Lamb further says of Heywood: 'He possessed not the imagination of Shakespeare, but in all those qualities which gained for Shakespeare the attribute of gentle he was not inferior to him-generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depths of his passion; sweetness, in a word, and gentleness; Christianism, and true hearty Anglicism of feelings shaping that Christianism, shine throughout his beautiful writings in a manner more conspicuous than in those of Shakespeare.' This is high praise; but Mr Addington Symonds declares the verdict is in many points a just one. Heywood, while he lacks the poetry, philosophy, deep insight into nature, and consummate art of Shakespeare— those qualities, in a word, which render Shakespeare supreme among dramatic poets-has a sincerity, a tenderness of pathos, and an instinctive perception of nobility that distinguish him among the playwrights of the seventeenth century. Dekker, he wins our confidence and love. We keep a place in our affection for his favourite characters.' And Mr Symonds calls Heywood's

Like

masterpiece, A Woman Killed with Kindness, 'the finest bourgeois tragedy of our Elizabethan literature.' Yet it is admitted that his first play, The Four Prentices of London, is absurd, and justly open to the caricature of it in Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle; that his historical plays are mere chronicles hastily and perfunctorily dramatised to supply the immediate wants of the stage; that some of his plays are feeble and in bad taste; that he lacks the highest artistic instinct; and that in all his work—including his domestic, his romantic, and his classical or pseudoclassical plays-he is almost everywhere careless, and never produced one play reasonably perfect in dramatic form or any character self-consistent throughout. He resembled Shakespeare, certainly, in writing his plays to be acted rather than read, and in being strangely careless as to what became of them in the long-run. With Greene he was one of the earliest of English professional writers for the press, and he was not seldom a mere hackwriter; he wrote too freely, too constantly, and too much it is recorded of him that, somewhat like Anthony Trollope, 'he obliged himself to write a sheet every day for several years together.' Ready invention, a certain lightness of touch, and directness were his gifts rather than creative power or the art of breathing into his characters the breath of life. His best things are single scenes, passages, or fragments. But he is very strong in his pictures of English home life, of the ways of English country gentlemen, and of English sailors. His pathos is sometimes forced sentiment, but is sometimes marvellously simple, true, and effective. He usually mixed prose and verse; and his English style is generally free and natural, though, like many contemporaries, he liked to set out his story with pedantic phrases and fantastic coinages. There is genuine poetry here and there in most of his pieces. His songs are many of them fresh, flowing, and musical, and linger in the memory.

Of Heywood's huge dramatic library, only twentyfour plays have come down to us, the best of which perhaps are A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603), The Rape of Lucrece (1608), The Fair Maid of the West (1617), The English Traveller (1633), A Challenge for Beauty (1636), Love's Mistress (1636), and The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (1638). Edward IV. follows pretty closely the old ballads of the 'Tanner of Tamworth' and of 'Jane Shore.' The Rape of Lucrece, spite of its subject, is so little classical in tone that one of the songs, for which it is chiefly noteworthy, begins :

Shall I woo the lovely Molly,
She's so fair, so fat, so jolly?

and another, in imitation-Dutch gibberish, has the eminently unclassical refrain:

Skerry merry vip,

Skerry merry vap!

In The Fair Maid of the West (1631), and in

Fortune by Land and Sea (1655), partly written by William Rowley, he gives spirited descriptions of sea-fights. Love's Mistress (1636), the tale of Cupid and Psyche, is a sort of masque. In The Royall King and Loyall Subject (1637) the doctrine of passive obedience to kingly authority is carried to extreme lengths. The Captives, discovered by Mr Bullen, was printed by him in 1885. The Late Lancashire Witches, partly by Richard Brome, is farcical and rather vulgar. Heywood was also the author of an historical poem, Troja Britannica (1609); an Apology for Actors (1612); Nine Bookes of Various History concerninge Women (1624); a poem in folio, The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells (1635); a volume of rhymed translations from Lucian, Erasmus, Ovid, &c.; various pageants, tracts, and treatises; and The Life of Ambrosius Merlin (1641). In virtue of his General History of Women, containing the Lives of the most Holy and Profane, the most Famous and Infamous in all Ages' (1624; 2nd ed. 1657), and his Exemplary Lives of Nine the most Worthy Women of the World (1640), Heywood may be regarded as the father of all those who compile 'Lives of Twelve Bad Men' and 'Lives of Twelve Good Women' -sometimes thought a very modern enterprise.

The following extracts will show Heywood at his best in tragedy, and will explain the title of his masterpiece, A Woman Killed with Kindness. Frankford, discovering that he has been wronged by his wife and his friend, instead of slaying them both as they expected, makes an unusually gentle return (note the kindly 'O Nan!' to which he by-and-by recurs):

Mrs Frankford. O, by what words, what title, or what Shall I entreat your pardon? Pardon ! Oh!

I am as far from hoping such sweet grace,
As Lucifer from heaven. To call you husband-
O me most wretched! I have lost that name:

I am no more your wife.

[name

[thee;

Frankford. Spare thou thy tears, for I will weep for
And keep thy countenance, for I'll blush for thee.
Now, I protest, I think 'tis I am tainted,

For I am most ashamed; and 'tis more hard
For me to look upon thy guilty face

Than on the sun's clear brow: what wouldst thou speak?
Mrs Fran. I would I had no tongue, no ears, no eyes,
No apprehension, no capacity.

When do you spurn me like a dog? when tread me
Under feet? when drag me by the hair?
Though I deserve a thousand thousand fold
More than you can inflict: yet, once my husband,
For womanhood, to which I am a shame,
Though once an ornament; even for his sake,
That hath redeem'd our souls, mark not my face,
Nor hack me with your sword: but let me go
Perfect and undeformed to my tomb.

I am not worthy that I should prevail
In the least suit ; no, not to speak to you,
Nor look on you, nor to be in your presence:
Yet as an abject this one suit I crave;

Fran. My God, with patience arm me ! rise, nay, rise, And I'll debate with thee. Was it for want

Thou play'dst the strumpet? Wast thou not supplied
With every pleasure, fashion, and new toy;
Nay, even beyond my calling?

Mrs Fran. I was.

Fran. Was it then disability in me? Or in thine eye seem'd he a properer man? Mrs Fran. O no.

Fran. Did not I lodge thee in my bosom? Wear thee in my heart?

Mrs Fran. You did.

Fran. I did indeed, witness my tears I did. Go bring my infants hither. O Nan, O Nan; If neither fear of shame, regard of honour, The blemish of my house, nor my dear love, Could have withheld thee from so lewd a fact, Yet for these infants, these young harmless souls, On whose white brows thy shame is character'd, And grows in greatness as they wax in yearsLook but on them, and melt away in tears. Away with them! lest as her spotted body Hath stain'd their names with stripe of bastardy, So her adulterous breath may blast their spirits With her infectious thoughts. Away with them! Mrs Fran. In this one life I die ten thousand deaths Fran. Stand up, stand up, I will do nothing rashly. I will retire awhile into my study,

And thou shalt hear thy sentence presently.

[Exit.

He returns with CRANWELL. She falls on her knees. Fran. My words are register'd in heaven already. With patience hear me. I'll not martyr thee, Nor mark thee for a strumpet; but with usage Of more humility torment thy soul, And kill thee even with kindness. Cranwell. Mr Frankford.

Fran. Good Mr Cranwell.-Woman, hear thy judg ment;

Go make thee ready in thy best attire ;
Take with thee all thy gowns, all thy apparel:
Leave nothing that did ever call thee mistress,
Or by whose sight, being left here in the house,

I may remember such a woman was.
Choose thee a bed and hangings for thy chamber;
Take with thee everything which hath thy mark,
And get thee to my manor seven miles off;
Where live; 'tis thine, I freely give it thee:
My tenants by shall furnish thee with wains
To carry all thy stuff within two hours;
No longer will I limit thee my sight.
Choose which of all my servants thou likest best,
And they are thine to attend thee.

Mrs Fran. A mild sentence.

Fran. But as thou hopest for heaven, as thou believest Thy name's recorded in the book of life,

I charge thee never after this sad day
To see me or to meet me; or to send
By word, or writing, gift, or otherwise,
To move me, by thyself, or by thy friends;
Nor challenge any part in my two children.
So farewell, Nan! for we will henceforth be
As we had never seen, ne'er more shall see.

Mrs Fran. How full my heart is, in mine eyes appears: What wants in words, I will supply in tears.

Fran. Come, take your coach, your stuff; all must along:

Servants and all make ready, all be gone. It was thy hand cut two hearts out of one.

(From Act IV. sc. vi.)

Ultimately the unhappy woman dies of revived tenderness and remorse, with the forgiving kiss of her husband on her lips.

The following description of Psyche, from Love's Mistress, is in his more elaborate manner :

Admetus. Welcome to both in one! Oh, can you tell What fate your sister hath?

Astioche and Petrea. Psyche is well.

Adm. So among mortals it is often said, Children and friends are well when they are dead. Astioche. But Psyche lives, and on her breath attend Delights that far surmount all earthly joy; Music, sweet voices, and ambrosian fare; Winds, and the light-winged creatures of the air; Clear channeled rivers, springs, and flowery meads Are proud when Psyche wantons on their streams, When Psyche on their rich embroidery treads, When Psyche gilds their crystal with her beams. We have but seen our sister, and, behold! She sends us with our laps full brimmed with gold.

Morning Ditty from 'Lucrece.' Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day; With night we banish sorrow:

Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft,
To give my love good-morrow:
Wings from the wind to please her mind,
Notes from the lark I'll borrow:
Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing,
To give my love good-morrow.
To give my love good-morrow,
Notes from them all I'll borrow.

Wake from thy nest, robin-red breast;
Sing, birds, in every furrow;
And from each bill let music shrill

Give my fair love good-morrow. Blackbird and thrush in every bush

Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrowYou pretty elves, amongst yourselves, Sing my fair love good-morrow. To give my love good-morrow, Sing, birds, in every furrow.

Song from the 'Fair Maid of the Exchange.' Ye little birds that sit and sing

Amidst the shady valleys,

And see how Phillis sweetly walks

Within her garden alleys;

Go, pretty birds, about her bower,
Sing, pretty birds, she may not lower.
Ah me, methinks I see her frown!
Ye pretty wantons, warble.

Go tell her through your chirping bills
As you by me are bidden,
To her is only known my love,
Which from the world is hidden;
Go, pretty birds, and tell her so,
See that your notes strain not too low,
For still methinks I see her frown!
Ye pretty wantons, warble.

Go tune your voices' harmony,
And sing I am her lover;

Strain loud and sweet, that every note

With sweet content may move her ; And she that hath the sweetest voice, Tell her I will not change my choice. Yet still methinks I see her frown!

Ye pretty wantons, warble.

O fly, make haste, see, see, she falls
Into a pretty slumber;
Sing round about her rosy bed

That waking she may wonder;
Say to her 'tis her lover true

That sendeth love to you, to you;

And when you hear her kind reply, Return with pleasant warblings.

Vivid similes, not always in the happiest taste, often occur, as in:

My friend and I

Like two chain-bullets side by side will fly Through the jaws of death;

and in :

Astonishment,

Fear, and amazement beat upon my heart,
Even as a madman beats upon a drum.

Mr Symonds has pointed out that Love's Mistress contains early specimens of classical burlesque.

The boy by chance upon her fan had spilled
A cup of nectar: oh, how Juno swore!

I told my aunt I'd give her a new san To let Jove's page be Cupid's serving manhardly sounds like the style of 1636. It is rather startling to find in The Fair Maid of the Exchange -though Heywood is in nowise responsible for our surprise that the 'amorous gallant,' who is far from careful of delicacy either in speech or deed, is called Bowdler-an odd example of the irony of history before the event!

A curious specimen of Heywood's miscellaneous work-interesting in various ways, though really a very poor specimen of metrical bookmaking-is The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells (1635). Spite of its name, this odd folio is much more detailed in its account of the unblessed angels, of diabolic possession, of enchantments, necromancy, astrology, white magic, black magic, levitation, unholy pacts with the devil, witchcraft, incubi and succubæ, and the stories of 'magitions' such as Faust and Cornelius Agrippa. Satan's invisible kingdom is indeed displayed at greater length than the kingdom of grace. The work, usually called a poem, is really a disquisition in nine books, half of each book being in very wooden verse, followed by a 'theologicall, philosophicall, poeticall, historicall, apothegmaticall, hierogliphicall, and emblematicall' commentary, continuation, or expansion in excellent prose. The books are named after nine orders of celestial beings-Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Vertues, Powers, Principates, Arch-angels, and Angels proper, following exactly the arrange

ment in Dionysius the Areopagite, De Cœlesti Hierarchia (compare Milton's favourite 'Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers'). Heywood's 'Lucifer charg'd with insolence and spleene' inevitably suggests Milton's sons of 'Belial flown with insolence and wine,' and makes it likely that Milton knew Heywood's book, the plan of which is extraordinarily elastic. The first book, for example, treats the arguments for the being of God, refutes at great length the 'tenents of Atheisme and Saducisme,' deals with false gods, idolatry in general, and the 'malice of the divell.' The second book discusses the nature of God, the Trinity, and the deity of Christ in such verses as the following:

The sacred Scriptures are sufficient warrant
By many texts to make the Trine apparant,
As from the first creation we may prove-
God did create, God said, the Spirit did move.
Create imports the Father; said the Sonne;
The Spirit that mov'd, the Holy Ghost.
Come to the Gospell, to Saint Paul repaire;
Of him, through him, and for him all things are;
To whom be everlasting praise. Amen!
In which it is observed by Origen,

This done,

Of, through, and for three Persons to imply,
And the word him the Godhead's Unity.

Room is found, in prose or verse, for discussing the creation of sun, moon, and stars, and their motions; the constellations, and the myths involved; astrology; the creation of man and the fall of the angels, the fall of man, the redemption, and Scripture story; together with the torments of hell, sketches of the ancient philosophical systems, mediæval theology, Mahomet and his 'Alcaron,' the hideous superstition of the Ethnicks, Finlanders, Laplanders, and 'Bothnienses.' Heywood's own views are supported by copious citations and translations from Homer, Lucian, Virgil, Mahomet, Avicenna, Abenzoar, the Jewish Rabbis, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Hermes Trismegistus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Olaus Magnus, Dante, and hundreds of less-known authors ('Hear Faustus Andrelinus, an excellent poet'! he says, meaning Andrelini, an Italian writer of Latin verse who died in 1518). His (Italian) quotations from Dante prove him to have been one of the earliest English students of Dante. And there is room not merely for innumerable blood-curdling witch-stories, but for apparently any pleasing anecdote or sound observation that occurs to him, often utterly irrelevant to the argument in hand. Thus, apropos of a meditation on death, comes a singular glimpse of contemporary treatment of English poets:

Mans life's a Goale and Death end of the race,
And thousand sundry wayes point to the place. . .
For now the conqueror with the captive 's spread
On one bare earth as on the common bed. . .
The servant with the master, and the maid
Stretcht by her mistresse: both their heads are laid
Upon a common pillow. . . .

...

Blinde Homer in the grave lies doubly darke,

Against him now base Zoylus dares not barke.

From this he suddenly goes off to complain that, though Homer's fame is undisputed, in modern England 'impudent sycophants and ballading knaves' overbear 'meriting men.' Further, whereas 'past ages did the antient poets grace' by giving them their full style, often adding to their name the place of their birth or the nature of their work, so that with their worth encreast their stiles, the most grac'd with three names at least,' in England it is quite otherwise. Then he seems inconsequently to justify the usage. And after quoting George Buchanan on the poverty of poets, he grumbles that now 'the puny assumes the name of poet,' and shamelessly

Taskes such artists as have took degree
Before he was a fresh man; and because,
No good practitioner in the stage lawes,

He miss'd the applause he aim'd at, hee 'l devise
Another course his name to immortalise ;
Imploring divers pens, failing in 's owne,

To support that which others have cried down. Incapable poets and dramatists in his time, in fact, were not merely insolent to their seniors who had been moderately successful, but having failed themselves, had recourse to log-rolling, no less. This is the principal part of the excursus :

Our moderne Poets to that passe are driven,
Those names are curtal'd which they first had given;
And, as we wisht to have their memories drown'd,
We scarcely can afford them halfe their sound.

Greene, who had in both Academies ta'ne
Degree of Master, yet could never gaine
To be call'd more than Robin: who had he
Profest ought save the Muse, Serv'd, and been Free
After a seven yeares Prentiseship; might have
(With credit too) gone Robert to his grave.
Marlo, renown'd for his rare art and wit,
Could ne're attaine beyond the name of Kit;
Although his Hero and Leander did

Merit addition rather. Famous Kid
Was call'd but Tom. Tom. Watson, though he wrote
Able to make Apollo's selfe to dote

Upon his Muse; for all that he could strive,
Yet never could to his full name arrive.
Tom. Nash (in his time of no small esteeme)
Could not a second syllable redeeme.
Excellent Bewmont, in the formost ranke
Of the rar'st Wits, was never more than Franck.
Mellifluous Shake-speare, whose inchanting Quill
Commanded Mirth or Passion, was but Will.
And famous Johnson, though his learned Pen
Be dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben.

Fletcher and Webster, of that learned packe
None of the mean'st, yet neither was but Jacke.
Deckers but Tom; nor May, nor Middleton.
And hee's now but Jacke Foord, that once were John.
Nor speake I this, that any here exprest,
Should thinke themselves lesse worthy than the rest,
Whose names have their full syllable and sound;
Or that Franck, Kit, or Jacke are the least wound
Unto their fame and merit. I for my part
(Thinke others what they please) accept that heart
Which courts my love in most familiar phrase ;
And that it takes not from my paines or praise.

If any one to me so bluntly com,

I hold he loves me best that calls me Tom.
Heare but the learned Buchanan complaine,
In a most passionate Elegiacke straine;
And what emphaticall phrases he doth use
To waile the wants that wait upon the Muse.
The Povertie (saith he) adde unto these,
Which still attends on the Aönides, &c.

Dodsley included only two of Heywood's plays (1744). The old Shakespeare Society printed a dozen (1842-51). Not till 1874 was there a complete edition of all the plays then known-twenty-three -in 6 vols. by Mr Pearson; The Captives, as we have said, was printed by Mr Bullen in 1885. The 'Mermaid' edition, edited by Mr Symonds (1888), contains five plays. See also Symonds, Shakespeare's Predecessors; and Ward, History of the English Drama.

Robert Burton.

Robert Burton, the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, was born at Lindley, in Leicestershire, 8th February 1577; entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1593; and in 1599 was elected student of Christ Church. In 1614 he took his B.D., and two years later was presented by his college to the vicarage of St Thomas at Oxford, and about 1630 by Lord Berkeley to the rectory of Segrave in his native county. Both livings he kept with much ado to his dying day,' and appears to have continued all his life at Christ Church, where he died 25th January 1639, and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral. His death took place very near the time he had long since foretold by the calculation of his own nativity-for he believed in and practised the art of judicial astrology: hence arose, as we learn from Anthony Wood, a false report that he had 'sent up his soul to heaven thro' a slip about his neck.' Burton is thus described by Wood: He was an exact mathematician, a curious calculator of nativities, a general read scholar, a thro' paced philologist, and one that understood the surveying of lands well. As he was by many accounted. a severe student, a devourer of authors, a melancholy and humorous [i.e. subject to 'the humours'] person; so by others, who knew him well, a person of great honesty, plain dealing, and charity. I have heard some of the antients of Christ Church often say that his company was very merry, facete, and juvenile, and no man in his time did surpass him for his ready and dextrous interlarding his common discourses among them with verses from the poets or sentences from classical authors, which being then all the fashion in the university made his company more acceptable.' Little is known of his life, but according to Bishop Kennet's Register and Chronicle (1728), 'In an interval of Vapours he would be extreamely pleasant, and raise Laughter in any Company. Yet I have heard that nothing at last could make him laugh, but going down to the Bridge-foot in Oxford, and hearing the Bargemen scold and storm and swear at one another, at which he would set his Hands to his Sides, and laugh most profusely.' There is, however, a strong presumption that the anecdote is a mythical trans

ference to Burton of the idiosyncratic relaxation he says his prototype permitted himself (page 437).

The first edition of the Anatomy of Melancholy, by 'Democritus Junior' (1621), was in quarto; and four more editions in folio were published within the author's lifetime, each with successive alterations and additions. The final form of the book was the sixth edition (1651-52), printed from the author's annotated copy. It is divided into three divisions, each subdivided into sections, members, and subsections. Part I. treats of the causes and symptoms of melancholy, Part II. of the cure of melancholy, and Part III. of love melancholy and religious melancholy. In the long and interesting

preface, 'Democritus to the Reader,' Burton gives an account of himself and his studies, and is his own best critic: 'I have laboriously collected this Cento out of divers Writers, and that sine injuria, I have wronged no authors, but given every man his own.' Of his style he says: 'I neglect phrases, and labor wholly to inform my reader's understanding, and not to please his ear; 'tis not my study or intent to compose neatly, which an Orator requires, but to express myself readily and plainly as it happens. So that as a River runs sometimes precipitate and swift, then dul and slow; now direct, then per ambages; now deep, then shallow; now muddy, then clear; now broad, then narrow; doth stile flow: now serious, then light; now comical, then satyrical; now more elaborate, then remisse, as the present subject required, or as at that time I was affected.'

my

This strange book is far more systematic than the superficial reader is apt to imagine. It is indeed a farrago from all, even the most out-of-the