in _The World and Child_, about 1506, they are expressly summed up in one Vice,--Folly; in _Lusty Juventus_, _Like wil to Like_, and several other moral interludes after 1550, the Vice parades as son or grandson to the Devil; and finally, about 1578, while each of the minor Vices represents "one sin particularly," the Vice himself embodies "all sins generally." It must be sufficiently evident by this time that the derivation of this name, in spite of a half-dozen misleading conjectures, is no other than that which is obvious. I notice, however, that Mr. Pollard regards the etymology from _vitium_ as still doubtful, "because in one of the earliest instances in which the Vice is specifically mentioned by name, he plays the part of Mery Report, who is a jester pure and simple, without any connection with any of the Deadly Sins." But the Vice or Folly had been known for two or three centuries in allegorical and satirical literature, and for a century and a half in the religious drama before 1530, and the designation had acquired a supplementary and degraded connotation when used in the _Wether_, _Jacke Jugeler_, etc., as a player's term or means of advertisement. About his function and habits, also, various misconceptions have gathered. I have, for instance, referred to Malone's statement that he was a constant attendant upon the Devil. Nothing could be more misleading. The Devil appears in at least two morals unattended by a Vice of any kind,[51] and the Vice appears in twenty-five or thirty without a Devil. They appear together in but eight[52] that I know of; and in only four[53] can the Vice be said to "attend." That he eggs the demons on to twit or torment the Devil, I cannot discover in more than two plays,--_Like wil to Like_, and _All for Money_. Since the days of Harsnet and Ben Jonson it has been reported that the Vice of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made a practice of riding to hell on the Devil's back. But I have already pointed out that he does this in only one play before 1580. The same _Like wil to Like_ is the only play in which he specifically "belabours the fiend." I know of no other in which that merriment was even likely to occur. In fact most of these attributions belong, not to the Vice of the morals and interludes, but to one of the later substitutes for him, the Vice-clown, such as Miles in _Friar Bacon_, or Iniquity in _The Devil is an Ass_.