Note 33 — SOME ACCOUNT OF MIDDLETON AND HIS WORKS.

Written, we are told, by Sir William Lower, on Middleton’s Michaelmas Term. They are given by Chetwood in “An Account of the Author,” prefixed to a reprint of Blurt Master Constable, which forms part of a small volume entitled A Select Collection of Old Plays, Dublin, 1750. Middleton, as Chetwood previously informs us, “lived to a very great age.... We may judge of his longævity by his works; since his first play was acted in 1601, and his last in 1665[!].... That he was much esteem’d by his brother poets, we may judge by four lines of sir William Lower upon his comedy call’d A Michaelmas Term, 1663”! Now, Michaelmas Term was certainly not produced in Middleton’s “halting age,” having been licensed the 15th May, 1607, and printed during the same year; see vol. i. p. 413; there is no edition of it bearing date 1663; and, moreover, Sir William Lower died in 1662. The lines are cited indeed by Oldys, in a MS. note on Langbaine’s Account of Engl. Dram. Poets, p. 373 (British Museum); but he doubtless copied them from Chetwood’s volume, of which he has transcribed the title, p. 371.