“This pleasant and speedy reverse of the former words, helped all the matter again, whereby the Duke became very pleasant, and drank a bottle of wine to Heywood, and bade a cup should always be standing by him.” His boldness with the Queen was quite that of the privileged jester, and he was recompensed for his puns and conceits when men more meritorious were neglected. The following contains good proof of his license. When the Queen once remarked to him that the priests must forego their wives, John exclaimed (and he was a very strict Catholic too), “Then your Grace must allow them _lemmans_ [sweethearts], for the clergy cannot live without _sauce_.” This epigrammatic turn was very strong upon him; and indeed many of his epigrams, of which he was the author of hundreds, are said to have been versifications of his own jokes. I have already noticed the audacity of his jests with the sovereign, a further instance of which we have in an incident connected with one of his visits to the palace. “Now, Master Heywood,” said Mary on the occasion in question, “what wind blew you to court?” “There were two,” answered audacious John; “one, that I might see your Majesty, and the other, that your Majesty might see me.” When he was told that a certain Master of Arts had assumed the ordinary attire of the court fool, “There is no great harm in that,” remarked Heywood, “he is merely a wise man in a fool’s coat; the evil is, when the fool puts over his motley the wise man’s gown.”--“How do you like my beer?” asked a host of him, “is it not well hopped?” “So well,” said Heywood, “that had it hopped a little further, it would have hopped into water.” This reminds me of a far wittier saying by a brighter English wit than Heywood--the late Douglas Jerrold; and which is better worth recording. At an hotel at Hastings, Jerrold was dining with two friends, one of whom, after dinner, ordered among other pleasant things, “a bottle of _old_ port.” “Waiter,” said Douglas, with that twinkle of the eye which was always a promise of wit, “Mind, now; a bottle of your _old_ port, not your _elder_ port.” Heywood never equalled _that_, though he gave utterance to as many witty thoughts as the wittiest man of his time. Among them was his remark, to a person complaining that the great number of lawyers would spoil the profession. “Not so,” exclaimed John; “for the more spaniels, the more game!”