Though not a lyrist in any high sense of the word, Heywood at times produced songs remarkable for purity and freshness. To one of these in the _Fair Maid of the Exchange_ I have already called attention. Not less beautiful is a morning ditty, which begins “Pack, clouds away,” in the _Rape of Lucrece_. The patriotic war-song in the First Part of _King Edward IV._, “Agincourt, Agincourt, know ye not Agincourt?” is full of fire; while a humorous catch, “The Spaniard loves his ancient slop,” must have been a favourite with the groundlings, since it occurs in both _The Rape of Lucrece_ and _A Challenge for Beauty_. There is plenty of proof that Heywood could write good words for street melodies. That his English style is generally free, flowing, and vernacular admits of no question; yet such were the contradictions of the age in which he lived, that he must needs at intervals display his erudition by the pedantic coinage of new phrases. Such words as “trifurk,” to “diapason,” “sonance,” “cathedral state,” “tenebrous,” “mœchal,” “monomachy,” “obdure” for “obdurate,” all of which occur in _The Rape of Lucrece_, demand for their inventor the emetic which Jonson in _The Poetaster_ administered to Marston, and prove conspicuously how a little learning on the lips of an honest playwright is a dangerous thing. _The Rape of Lucrece_, as I have before hinted, is nothing but the narrative of Livy divided into tableaux with no artistic consistency. It contains the whole story of Tullia’s ambition and the death of Servius, the journey of Brutus to Delphi, the fulfilment of the oracle, the betrayal of Gabii, the camp at Ardea, the crime of Tarquin, the rising of the Roman nobles, the war with Porsena, and the stories of Horatius and Scevola. The characters are devoid of personal reality. Lucrece herself is more a type of innocence than a true woman. Of the minor characters which fill out the play, by far the most original is Valerius. His part must have been a favourite with the London audience, for on the title-page we read: “with the several songs in their apt places by Valerius, the merry lord among the Roman peers.” Instead of fooling, sulking, or gaming, as the other nobles do beneath the Tarquin tyranny, he does nothing but sing. It is impossible to extract from him a word of sense in sober prose. But love songs, loose songs, drinking songs, dirges, street cries, a Scotch song, a Dutch song, and pastoral ditties, with rhymes on the names of public houses, public women, ale, wine, and so forth, flow from him in and out of season. He is the most striking instance of the licence with which the poets of the time were forced to treat their subjects for the sake of the gallery. Some of his verses are full of exquisite feeling; others are grossly coarse; some are comical, and others melancholy; but all are English. When Valerius first hears of the outrage offered to Lucrece, he breaks out into a catch of the most