Mr Collier remarks of Heywood's "Spider and Fly:"] "This parable, apologue, or allegory (for it is one and all three), is not perhaps so 'dull, tedious, and trifling,' as Warton contends; and if it be without much 'fancy,' it has both meaning and moral. In 'the conclusion,' Heywood informs us that he began the work twenty years before it was finished, and that he did nothing to it during an interval of nineteen years. He adds, that it was commenced 'with the first, and ended with the last,' of his poor works. The maid who sweeps down the spider he explains to mean Queen Mary, in 'sense allegorical' also." Wilson, in his "Rhetorique," published in 1553, speaks of Heywood's "Proverbs" as then in print.[311] They were also republished in 1561; and the title-page professes that the work has been "newly overseen, and somewhat corrected, by the sayde John Heywood." The only copy I have met with is imperfect at the end, and the title-page does not state who was the printer of it. "John Heywoodes Woorkes" were printed collectively in 156[2]; they consist of proverbs and epigrams. Winstanley expressed a doubt whether the author of the epigrams and of the plays were not different persons. The following epigram will be sufficient to set that fact beyond contradiction, and at the same time exhibit a specimen of the author's manner:-- "Art thou _Heywood_ with the mad mery wit? Ye, forsooth, master, that same is euen hit. Art thou _Heywood_ that applyeth mirth more then thrift? Ye, sir, I take mery mirth a golden gift. Art thou _Heywood_ that hath made many mad plaies? Ye, many playes, fewe good woorkes in all my daies. Art thou _Heywood_ that hath made men mery long? Ye, and will, if I be made mery among. Art thou _Heywood_ that woulde be made mery now? Ye, sir, helpe me to it now, I beseche yow." Winstanley and Philips ascribe to him falsely the "Pinner of Wakefield" and "Philotus," [the latter] printed at Edinburgh, 1603. Fuller[312] mentions a book written by our author, entitled "Monumenta literaria," which are said to be _Non tam lambore condita, quam lepore condita_. [But this was not by John Heywood. It is apparently _Thomas_ Heywood's account of the "English Poets" referred to by more than one of his contemporaries. The curious old relic here reprinted went through three _known_ editions,[313] of which the earliest may be assigned to 1540 or thereabouts, the latest bearing date 1569. The colophon of the former will be found at the end.] DRAMATIS PERSONAE. A PALMER. A PARDONER. AN APOTHECARY. A PEDLAR. THE FOUR P.P.[314]