There is spirit
of a quiet and steady kind in the scenes of war and adventure that
follow: Heywood, like Caxton before him, makes of Saturn and the Titans
very human and simple figures, whose doings and sufferings are presented
with child-like straightforwardness in smooth and fluent verse and in
dialogue which wants neither strength nor ease nor propriety. The
subsequent episode of Danae is treated with such frank and charming
fusion of realism and romance as could only have been achieved in the
age of Shakespeare. To modern readers it may seem unfortunate for
Heywood that a poet who never (to the deep and universal regret of all
competent readers) followed up the dramatic promise of his youth, as
displayed in the nobly vivid and pathetic little tragedy of "Sir Peter
Harpdon's End," should in our day have handled the story of Danae and
the story of Bellerophon so effectively as to make it impossible for the
elder poet either to escape or to sustain comparison with the author of
"The Earthly Paradise"; but the most appreciative admirers of Morris
will not be the slowest or the least ready to do justice to the
admirable qualities displayed in Heywood's dramatic treatment of these
legends.
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