proof of the influence of long-cherished habits of thought, than that his decaying faculties, at this awful moment, were yet entangled with the problem which continues to this day to vex and elude the human intellect. The dying seaman was again, in imagination, on that beloved ocean over whose billows his intrepid and adventurous youth had opened a pathway, and whose mysteries had occupied him longer than the allotted span of ordinary life. The date of his death is not known, nor, except presumptively, the place where it occurred. From the presence of Eden, we may infer that he died in London. It is not known where his remains were deposited. The claims of England in the New World have been uniformly and justly rested on his discoveries. Proposals of colonization were urged, on the clearness of the title thus acquired, and the shame of abandoning it. The English language would probably be spoken in no part of America but for Sebastian Cabot. The commerce of England and her navy are admitted to have been deeply,—incalculably,—his debtors. Yet there is reason to fear, that in his extreme age, the allowance which had been solemnly granted to him for life, was fraudulently broken in upon. His birth place we have seen denied. His fame has been obscured by the English writers, and every vile calumny against him eagerly adopted and circulated. All his own maps and discoveries, drawn and written by himself,' which it was hoped might come out in print,- because so worthy monuments should not be buried in perpetual oblivion,'— have been buried in perpetual oblivion. He gave a continent to England, yet no one can point to the few feet of earth she has allowed him in return."

Thomas, Lord Vaux.

BORN A. D. 1510.-died cIRC. A. D. 1558.

Mr

THOMAS, LORD VAUX of Harwedon or Harrowden, in Northamptonshire, was the eldest son of Nicholas, the first Lord Vaux, with whom he has been confounded by Wood and others. He succeeded his father in 1523, and accompanied Cardinal Wolsey's splendid embassy to Francis I. In 1530, he took his place in parliament as a baron, and in 1532, he attended the king in his expedition to Calais He received the order of the bath at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, and was for some time captain of the island of Jersey. He died in the latter end of Mary's reign. A considerable number of poetical pieces by this nobleman are found in the Paradise of Dainty Devices.' Ellis ascribes two poems in Tottel's collection: viz. The assault of Cupid,' and that which begins 'I loath that I did love,' to him. From the prologue to Sackville's Induction,' in the Mirror for Magistrates,' it would seem that Lord Vaux had undertaken to write a history of King Edward's two sons who were murdered in the Tower, but he did not accomplish the task. Mr Ritson assigns a place among the English poets to William, son of this nobleman, but adduces no authority for doing so. There is a pleasing lightness and ease of versification in the following stanzas from Lord Vaux's poems, entitled The aged Lover's Renunciation of Love:'

THE progress of English dramatic literature affords a subject which merits the closest consideration: the historian and the philosopher are alike interested in its examination, and it may be regarded as furnishing one of the best indices that literature can afford, both of the manners and opinions of successive generations. It is this circumstance which has given some degree of importance to the name of John Heywood, who is generally allowed to have been the first writer of dramas, the subjects of which were not drawn from Scripture. As might be expected, they exhibit all the rudeness of first attempts, while the want of genius in the author appears both in the insipidity of their plots, and the cold puerilities of the dialogue. The period of Heywood's birth is unknown, but he was a native of Worth-mines near Saint Alban's in Hertfordshire, and studied some time at Oxford. On his return from the university-where his love of frolic appears to have been an effectual bar to his advancement in scholarship he had the good fortune to acquire the notice of Sir Thomas More, whose resi dence in the neighbourhood of Saint Alban's was the favourite resort of the wits of the day. Through Sir Thomas he became known to Henry VIII., and in a short time won the good opinion of the monarch, not only by his pleasantries, but by his great skill in music. At what time he began to write plays is not stated, but it is a curious fact, that the first three on the list contain satires on the clergy, who, it will be recollected, were till now the chief masters of the drama. A play between Johan the husband, Tyb the wife, and Sir Johan the priest,

is the title of one: A merry play between the Pardoner and the Frere, the Curate and Neybour Pratte,' is that of another: while the third is named 'The play called the four P's. a new and a very merry Interlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Potycary, a Pedlar.' It is not impossible but that Henry might have some share in instigating the wit to these sarcasms on that class of men whom he had so many reasons in the latter years of his reign to aim at humbling. His successor, different as he was in disposition to his father, continued to treat Heywood with regard; but on the accession of Mary to the throne, he became not merely a favourite at court, but an attendant on the private hours of her majesty, when the cares of royalty and her own melancholy disposition involved her in the most gloomy reflections. He had possessed her countenance at an early period of his life, but she was now in a situation to reward him highly for his devotion to her amusement, and such was the pleasure she took in his humorous conversation, that even in her last illness he frequently was admitted to her chamber. Some specimens of his wit have been preserved, and the following is given by Puttenham in his Art of Poetry, but the story, it is probable, loses something of its spirit in the telling: "Some speech" says Puttenham, "may be when it is spoken, very undecent, yet the same having something added to it, may be more pretty and decent, as happened on a time at the duke of Northumberland's board, where merry John Heywood was allowed to sit at the table's end. The duke had a very noble and honourable mind always to pay his debts well, and when he lacked money, would not stick to sell the greatest part of his plate so he had done a few days before. Heywood being loath to call for his drink so oft as he was dry, turned his eye toward the cupboard, and said, 'I find great miss of your Grace's standing cups.' The duke thinking he had spoken it of some knowledge that his plate was lately sold, said somewhat sharply, Why, sir, will not those cups serve as good a man as yourself?' Heywood readily replied, Yes, if it please your Grace; but I would have one of them stand still at my elbow, full of drink, that I might not be driven to trouble your man so often to call for it.' This pleasant and speedy reverse of the former words holpe all the matter again; whereupon the duke became very pleasant, and drank a bottle of wine to Heywood, and bid a cup should always be standing by him."

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The death of Queen Mary placed Heywood in a situation which seemed to him fraught with dangers. There is too much reason to fear that, bigotted as he is said to have been in his religion, he took as great a share as a wit and jester could take, in heaping odium on the persecuted protestants, and hardening the hearts of their enemies against the appeals of mercy. With the dread natural to conscious injustice even in its meanest instruments, he immediately prepared to quit the country, and fled with his family to Mechlin in Brabant. How long he lived after his retreat to the continent is unknown, the date of his death, like that of his birth, having escaped the inquiries of his biographers. A conjecture, however, has been formed that he lived to be old, from the circumstance, that he is known to have been still alive when one of his sons was thirty years of age. With regard to his character as a man of letters, he can scarcely be said to have exercised any great influence on the literature of his day. That he wrote plays

which were unconnected with the mysteries of religion is true; but this was rather owing to his love of jest, and the readiness with which jests and sarcasms will be listened to in any form, than to his good taste, or a perception of the proper sphere of the drama. His productions were among the earliest results of that increasing good sense which pervaded the nation; but they had not sufficient merit in themselves to be taken as examples, nor had the author sufficient vigour of mind or thought to sow the seeds of a new literature. The work in which the character of his mind, perhaps, may be best discovered, is the collection of epigrams which he wrote on the most common proverbs of the country. Some of these exhibit considerable ingenuity, and no lack of that species of wit which is easiest ripened by a knowledge of the world: the reader will be able to understand the nature of these compositions from the following:

Into a beggar's hand, that alms did crave,
Instead of one penny, two pence one gave,
Which done, he said, Beggar, happy thou art,
For to thee my hand is better than my heart.
That is (quoth the beggar) as it chanceth now,
The better for me, and the worse for yow.

The next is on another well known phrase:

It is mery in hall when beardes wagge all.'
Husband, for this these wordes to mind I call;
This is meant by men in their merri eatinge,

Not to wag their beardes in brawling or threatinge:

Wyfe! the meaning hereof differeth not two pinnes.

Betweene wagginge of men's heardes and women's chinnes.

The following is of a graver nature.:

Where will is good, and wit is yll,

There wisedome can no manner skyll.

Where wit is good, and will is yll,

There wisedome sitteth all silent still.

Where wit and will are both two ill,

There wisedome no way meddle will.
Where wit and will well ordered be,
There wisedome maketh a trinitee.

Some of the epigrams are much longer; and his 'Dialogue' on the 'Effectual Proverbs in the English tongue,' is regularly divided into chapters. Beside his plays and the work now mentioned, he wrote another called A Parable of the Spider and the Fly.' Of this poem, Harrison in Holinshed's chronicle, ungraciously remarks: "One also hath made a booke of the Spider and the Flie, wherein he dealeth so profoundlie, and beyond all measure of skill, that neither he himselfe that made it, neither aine one that readeth it, can reach unto the meaning thereof." Modern critics have not endeavoured to reverse this sentence, and Warton observes that perhaps, "there never was so dull, so tedious, and trifling an apologue; without fancy, meaning, or moral;" and that the author "seems to have intended a fable on the burlesque construction; but we know not when he would be serious and when witty, whether he means to make the reader laugh, or to give him advice." The work, in fact, was forgotten at a very early period, and Heywood's, fame, even among the curious, rests solely on his epigrams.

Roger Ascham.

BORN CIRC. A. D. 1515.—died a. d. 1568.

ROGER ASCHAM was born at Kirkby-Wiske, a village near Northallerton in Yorkshire, about the year 1515. His father, John Ascham, was house-steward in the noble family of Scroop; his mother, Margaret, was allied to several considerable families. These two good people are said to have lived together in harmony and affection for the long period of sixty-seven years, and to have at last died on the same hour of the same day. Roger, the third son of this worthy pair, while yet a youth, was received into the family of Sir Anthony Wingfield, and enjoyed, with that gentleman's sons, the benefit of private education under a domestic tutor. Discovering an early fondness for reading, and having made rapid progress in classical learning, his generous patron, pleased with the proofs which his young elevé gave of genius and docility, determined to afford him the advantage of an university-education; and, in 1530, sent him to St John's college, Cambridge.

With the peculiar talents for the study of languages which Ascham possessed, it was fortunate for him that he entered upon life at a period when the attention of the whole educated world was turned towards the revival and advancement of learning, in connexion with the rapid progress of the art of printing, and Greek and Roman authors were edited with diligence, and read and studied with avidity throughout the republic of letters. The college in which young Ascham was entered, had caught the spirit of the age. Dr Metcalf, the master, was, as Ascham himself informs us, "a man meanly learned himself, but not meanly affectioned to set forward learning in others; and," he adds, "I lacked not his favour to further me in learning." Hugh Fitzherbert, his tutor, was a good scholar, and possessed a happy facility of teaching; and his friend Pemberton, who was ready on all occasions to assist him in his studies, was a great proficient in Greek learning. Ascham, from his entrance upon academic life, felt an ardent desire to excel in learning, and devoted himself with uncommon industry to his studies. According to the maxim, "Qui docet, discit," he thought that a language might be best learned by teaching it; and, as soon as he had made some progress in Greek, he undertook to instruct boys in the rudiments of that language. In his reading, he observed a rule well worth the attention of students, to "lose no time in the perusal of mean or unprofitable books." Cicero and Cæsar, in particular, he studied as his best guides in writing the Latin language, and he formed his style upon these excellent models. In the 18th year of his age, Ascham took his first degree of A. B., and was, about a month afterwards, chosen fellow of the college. Notwithstanding his uncommon merit, his election to the fellowship was attended with some difficulty, on account of the favourable disposition which he had discovered towards the reformed religion. "Being a boy, new bachelor in arts," says he, "I chanced among my companions to speak against the pope, which matter was then in every man's mouth. **** My talk came to Dr Metcalf's earI was called before him and the seniors, and after grievous rebuke and