STEPHEN, the author of the Pastime of Pleasure, flourished in the reign of Henry VII. Little is known of his personal history, except that he was a native of Suffolk, and that he styled himself "gentleman and groome of the chamber to the famous prynce and seconde Solomon, Kyng Henrye the Seventh." He is known to have been a great favourite with the king, who took much pleasure in his recitations from the old English poets. A common admiration of the literature of France, in which both were proficient, cemented their feelings of mutual esteem. The dates of Hawes' birth and death are alike unknown. The Pastime of Pleasure, for which he is chiefly remembered, is a long and somewhat tedious allegory; exhibiting, however, more invention than any similar work of that day. The poem describes the life and adventures of the Prince Graunde Amour, who is enamoured of La Bel Puccell, and who, to make himself worthy of her, studies, in the Tower of Doctrine under the Ladies Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, and Music. He then visits the Tower of Geometry, and finally that of Chivalry; and, after proving his valour by various exploits, he at length gains the hand of La Bel Puccell, with whom he spends the rest of his life. The details of the allegory are wrought out with very considerable skill, and the poem is useful as showing the advancement of the language towards that perfection which it reached under the master-minds of the Elizabethan era.