← catalogue

Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 1

by unknown · English · Gutenberg #9667 · 593,392 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 1
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 1

Editor: George Gilfillan


        
Release date: January 1, 2006 [eBook #9667]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9667

Credits: Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marc D'Hooghe and the PG Online Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPECIMENS WITH MEMOIRS OF THE LESS-KNOWN BRITISH POETS, VOLUME 1 ***




Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marc D'Hooghe and the PG
Online Distributed Proofreaders











SPECIMENS WITH MEMOIRS OF THE LESS-KNOWN BRITISH POETS.

       *       *       *       *       *

With an Introductory Essay,

BY THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.

       *       *       *       *       *

IN THREE VOLS.

VOL. I.

M.DCCC.LX.




INTRODUCTORY ESSAY


We propose to introduce our 'Specimens' by a short Essay on the Origin
and Progress of English Poetry on to the days of Chaucer and of Gower.
Having called, in conjunction with many other critics, Chaucer 'the
Father of English Poetry,' to seek to go back further may seem like
pursuing antenatal researches. But while Chaucer was the sun, a certain
glimmering dawn had gone before him, and to reflect that, is the object
of the following pages.


Britain, when the Romans invaded it, was a barbarous country; and although
subjugated and long held by that people, they seem to have left it nearly
as uncultivated and illiterate as they found it. 'No magnificent remains,'
says Macaulay, 'of Latian porches and aqueducts are to be found in Britain.
No writer of British birth is to be reckoned among the masters of Latin
poetry and eloquence. It is not probable that the islanders were, at any
time, generally familiar with the tongue of their Italian rulers. From
the Atlantic to the vicinity of the Rhine the Latin has, during many
centuries, been predominant. It drove out the Celtic--it was not driven
out by the Teutonic--and it is at this day the basis of the French,
Spanish, and Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears never
to have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and could not stand its ground
before the German.' It was in the fifth century that that modification
of the German or Teutonic speech called the Anglo-Saxon was introduced
into this country. It soon asserted its superiority over the British
tongue, which seemed to retreat before it, reluctantly and proudly, like
a lion, into the mountain-fastnesses of Wales or to the rocky sea-beach
of Cornwall. The triumph was not completed all at once, but from the
beginning it was secure. The bards of Wales continued to sing, but their
strains resembled the mutterings of thunder among their own hills, only
half heard in the distant valleys, and exciting neither curiosity nor awe.
For five centuries, with the exception of some Latin words added by the
preachers of Christianity, the Anglo-Saxon language continued much as it
was when first introduced. Barbarous as the manners of the people were,
literature was by no means left without a witness. Its chief cultivators
were the monks and other religious persons, who spent their leisure in
multiplying books, either by original composition or by transcription,
including treatises on theology, historical chronicles, and a great
abundance and variety of poetical productions. These were written at first
exclusively in Latin, but occasionally, in process of time, in the Anglo-
Saxon tongue. The theology taught in them was, no doubt, crude and
corrupted, the history was stuffed with fables, and the poetry was rough
and bald in the extreme; but still they furnished a food fitted for the
awakening mind of the age. When the Christian religion reached Great
Britain, it brought necessarily with it an impulse to intellect as well
as to morality. So startling are the facts it relates, so broad and deep
the principles it lays down, so humane the spirit it inculcates, and so
ravishing the hopes it awakens, that, however disguised in superstition
and clouded by imperfect representation, it never fails to produce, in all
countries to which it comes, a resurrection of the nation's virtue, and a
revival, for a time at least, of the nation's political and intellectual
energy and genius. Hence we find the very earliest literary names in our
early annals are those of Christian missionaries. Such is said to have
been Gildas, a Briton, who lived in the first part of the sixth century,
and is the reputed author of a short history of Britain in Latin. Such was
the still more apocryphal Nennius, also called, till of late, the writer
of a small Latin historical work. Such was St Columbanus, who was born
in Ireland in 560; became a monk in the Irish monastery of Benchor; and
afterwards, at the head of twelve disciples, preached Christianity, in its
most ascetic form, in England and in France; founded in the latter country
various monasteries; and, when banished by Queen Brunehaut on account of
his stern inflexibility of character, went to Switzerland, and then to
Lombardy, proselytising the heathen, and defending, by his letters and
other writings, the peculiar tenets of the Irish Church in reference to
the time of the celebration of Easter and to the popular heresies of the
day. He died October 2, 615, in the monastery of Bobbio; and his religious
treatises and Latin poetry gave an undoubted impulse to the age's progress
in letters.

About this period the better sort of Saxons, both clergy and laity, got
into the habit of visiting Rome; while Rome, in her turn, sent emissaries
to England. Thus, while the one insensibly imbibed new knowledge as well
as devotion from the great centre, the other brought with them to our
shores importations of books, including copies of such religious classics
as Josephus and Chrysostom, and of such literary classics as Homer. About
680, died Caedmon, a monk of Whitby, one of the first who composed in
Anglo-Saxon, and some of whose compositions are preserved. Strange and
myth-like stories are told by Bede about this remarkable natural genius.
He was originally a cow-herd. Partly from want of training, and partly
from bashfulness, when the harp was given him in the hall, and he was
asked, as all others were, to raise the voice of song, Caedmon had often
to abscond in confusion. On one occasion he had retired to the stable,
where he fell into a sound sleep. He dreamed that a stranger appeared to
him, and said, 'Caedmon, sing me something.' Caedmon replied that it was
his incapacity to sing which had brought him to take refuge in the stable.
'Nay,' said the stranger, 'but thou hast something to sing.' 'What shall I
sing?' rejoined Caedmon. 'Sing the Creation,' and thereupon he began to
pour out verses, which, when he awoke, he remembered, repeated, and to
which he added others as good. The first lines are, as translated into
English, the following:--

  Now let us praise
  The Guardian of heaven,
  The might of the Creator
  And his counsel--
  The Glory!--Father of men!
  He first created,
  For the children of men,
  Heaven as a roof--
  The holy Creator!
  Then the world--
  The Guardian of mankind!
  The Eternal Lord!
  Produced afterwards
  The Earth for men--
  The Almighty Master!'

Our readers all remember the well-known story of Coleridge falling asleep
over Purchas's 'Pilgrims'; how the poem of 'Kubla Khan' came rushing
from dreamland upon his soul; and how, when awakened, he wrote it down,
and found it to be, if not sense, something better--a glorious piece
of fantastic imagination. We knew a gentleman who, slumbering while in
a state of bad health, produced, in the course of a few hours, one or
two thousand rhymed lines, some of which he repeated in our hearing
afterwards, and which were full of point and poetry. We cannot see that
Caedmon's lines betray any weird inspiration; but when rehearsed the next
day to the Abbess Hilda, to whom the town-bailiff of Whitby conducted him,
she and a circle of learned men pronounced that he had received the gift
of song direct from heaven! They, after one or two other trials of his
powers, persuaded him to become a monk in the house of the Abbess, who
commanded him to transfer to verse the whole of the Scripture history. It
is said that he was constantly employed in repeating to himself what he
had heard; or, as one of his old biographers has it, 'like a clean animal
ruminating it, he turned it into most sweet verse.' In this way he wrote
or rather improvised a vast quantity of poetry, chiefly on religious
subjects. Thorpe, in his edition of this author, has preserved a speech
of Satan, bearing a striking resemblance to some parts of Milton:--

 'Boiled within him
  His thought about his heart,
  Hot was without him,
  His due punishment.
  "This narrow place is most unlike
  That other that we formerly knew
  High in heaven's kingdom,
  Which my master bestowed on me,
  Though we it, for the All-Powerful,
  May not possess.

     *     *     *     *     *

  That is to me of sorrows the greatest,
  That Adam,
  Who was wrought of earth,
  Shall possess
  My strong seat;
  That it shall be to him in delight,
  And we endure this torment,
  Misery in this hell.

     *     *     *     *     *

  Here is a vast fire,
  Above and underneath.
  Never did I see
  A loathlier landscape.
  The flame abateth not
  Hot over hell.
  Me hath the clasping of these rings,
  This hard-polished band,
  Impeded in my course,
  Debarred me from my way.
  My feet are bound,
  My hands manacled;
  Of these hell-doors are
  The ways obstructed,
  So that with aught I cannot
  From these limb-bonds escape.
  About me lie
  Huge gratings
  Of hard iron,
  Forged with heat,
  With which me God
  Hath fastened by the neck.
  Thus perceive I that he knoweth my mind,
  And that he knew also,
  The Lord of hosts,
  That should us through Adam
  Evil befall,
  About the realm of heaven,
  Where I had power of my hands."'

Through these rude lines there flashes forth, like fire through a thick
dull grating, a powerful conception--one which Milton has borrowed and
developed--that of the Evil One feeling in his dark bosom jealousy at
young Man, almost overpowering his hatred to God; and another conception
still more striking, that of the devil's thorough conviction that all
his plans and thoughts are entirely known by his great Adversary, and
are counteracted before they are formed--

  'Thus perceive I that he knoweth my mind.'

Compare this with Milton's lines--

                       'So should I purchase dear
  Short intermission, bought with double smart.
  _This knows_ my Punisher; therefore as far
  From granting he, as I from begging peace.'

Caedmon saw, without being able fully to express, the complex idea of
Satan, as distracted between a thousand thoughts, all miserable--tossed
between a thousand winds, all hot as hell--'pale ire, envy, and despair'
struggling within him--fury at man overlapping anger at God--remorse and
reckless desperation wringing each other's miserable hands--a sense of
guilt which will not confess, a fear that will not quake, a sorrow that
will not weep, a respect for God which will not worship; and yet,
springing out of all these elements, a strange, proud joy, as though
the torrid soil of Pandemonium should flower, which makes 'the hell he
suffers seem a heaven,' compared to what his destiny might be were he
either plunged into a deeper abyss, or taken up unchanged to his former
abode of glory. This, in part at least, the monk of Whitby discerned;
but it was reserved for Milton to embody it in that tremendous figure
which has since continued to dwindle all the efforts of art, and to
haunt, like a reality, the human imagination.

Passing over some interesting but subordinate Saxon writers, such as
Ceolfrid, Abbot of Wearmouth; Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury; Felix of
Croyland; and Alcuine, King Egbert's librarian at York, we come to one
who himself formed an era in the history of our early literature--the
venerable Bede. This famous man was educated in the monastery of
Wearmouth, and there appears to have spent the whole of his quiet,
innocent, and studious life. He was the very sublimation of a book-worm.
One might fancy him becoming at last, as in the 'Metamorphoses' of Ovid,
one of the books, or rolls of vellum and parchment over which he con-
stantly pored. That he did not marry, or was given in marriage, we are
certain; but there is little evidence that he even ate or drank, walked
or slept. To read and to write seemed the 'be all and the end all' of
his existence. Important as well as numerous were his contributions
to literature. He translated from the Scriptures. He wrote religious
treatises, biographies, and commentaries upon portions of Holy Writ.
Besides his very valuable Ecclesiastical History, he composed various
pieces of Latin poetry. His works in all were forty-four in number: and
it is said that on the very day of his death (it took place in 735) he
was dictating to his amanuensis, and had just completed a book. His works
are wonderful for his time, and not the less interesting for a fine
cobweb of fable which is woven over parts of them, and which seems in
keeping with their venerable character. Thus, in speaking of the Magi who
visited the infant Redeemer, he is very particular in describing their
age, appearance, and offerings. Melchior, the first, was old, had gray
hair, and a long beard; and offered 'gold' to Christ, in, acknowledgment
of His sovereignty. Gaspar, the second, was young, and had no beard;
and he offered 'frankincense,' in recognition of our Lord's divinity.
Balthasar, the third, was of a dark complexion, had a large beard, and
offered 'myrrh' to our Saviour's humanity. We should, we confess, miss
such pleasant little myths in other old books besides Bede's Histories.
They seem appropriate to ancient works, as the beard is to the goat
or the hermit; and the truth that lies in them is not difficult to
eliminate. The next name of note in our literary annals is that of the
great Alfred. Surely if ever man was not only before his age, but before
'all ages,' it was he. A palm of the tropics growing on a naked Highland
mountain-side, or an English oak bending over one of the hot springs of
Hecla, were not a stranger or more preternatural sight than a man like
Alfred appearing in a century like the ninth. A thousand theories about
men being the creatures of their age, the products of circumstances, &c.,
sink into abeyance beside the facts of his life; and we are driven to the
good old belief that to some men the 'inspiration of the Almighty giveth
understanding;' and that their wisdom, their genius, and their excellency
do not proceed from them-selves. On his deeds of valour and patriotism it
is not necessary to dwell. These form the popular and bepraised side of
his character, but they give a very inadequate idea of the whole. On one
occasion he visited the Danish camp--a king disguised as a harper; but
he was, all his life long, a harper disguised as a king. He was at once
a warrior, a legislator, an architect, a shipbuilder, a philosopher,
a scholar, and a poet. His great object, as avowed in his last will,
was to leave his people 'free as their own thoughts.' Hence he bent the
whole force of his mind, first, to defend them from foreign foes, by
encouraging the new naval strength he had himself established; and then
to cultivate their intellects, and make them, as well as their country,
worth defending. Let us quote the glowing words of Burke:--'He was
indefatigable in his endeavours to bring into England men of learning in
all branches from every part of Europe, and unbounded in his liberality
to them. He enacted by a law that every person possessed of two hides of
land should send their children to school until sixteen. He enterprised
even a greater design than that of forming the growing generation--to
instruct even the grown, enjoining all his sheriffs and other officers
immediately to apply themselves to learning, or to quit their offices.
Whatever trouble he took to extend the benefits of learning among his
subjects, he shewed the example himself, and applied to the cultivation
of his mind with unparalleled diligence and success. He could neither
read nor write at twelve years old, but he improved his time in such
a manner, that he became one of the most knowing men of his age, in
geometry, in philosophy, in architecture, and in music. He applied
himself to the improvement of his native language; he translated several
valuable works from Latin, and wrote a vast number of poems in the Saxon
tongue with a wonderful facility and happiness. He not only excelled in
the theory of the arts and sciences, but possessed a great mechanical
genius for the executive part. He improved the manner of shipbuilding,
introduced a more beautiful and commodious architecture, and even taught
his countrymen the art of making bricks; most of the buildings having
been of wood before his time--in a word, he comprehended in the greatness
of his mind the whole of government, and all its parts at once; and what
is most difficult to human frailty was at the same time sublime and
minute.'

Some exaggeration must be allowed for in all this account of Alfred the
Great. But the fact that he left a stamp in his age so deep,--that
nothing except what was good and great has been ascribed to him,--that
the very fictions told of him are of such _vraisemblance_ and magnitude
as to FIT IN to nothing less than an extraordinary man,--and that, as
Burke says, 'whatever dark spots of human frailty may have adhered to
such a character, are entirely hid in the splendour of many shining
qualities and grand virtues, that throw a glory over the obscure period
in which he lived, and which is for no other reason worthy of our
knowledge,'--all proclaim his supremacy. Like many great men,--like
Julius Caesar, with his epilepsy--or Sir Walter Scott and Byron, with
their lameness--or Schleiermacher, with his deformed appearance,--a
physical infirmity beset Alfred most of his life, and at last carried
him off at a comparatively early age. This was a disease in his bowels,
which had long afflicted him, 'without interrupting his designs, or
souring his temper.' Nay, who can say that the constant presence of such
a memento of weakness and mortality did not operate as a strong, quiet
stimulus to do with his might what his hand found to do--to lower pride,
and to prompt to labour? If Saladin had had for his companion some such
faithful hound of sorrow, it would have saved him the ostentatious flag
stretched over his head, in the hour of wassail, with the inscription,
'Saladin, Saladin, king of kings! Saladin must die!'

Alfred wrote little that was original, but he was a copious translator.
He rendered into the Anglo-Saxon tongue--which he sought to enrich with
the fatness of other soils--the historical works of Orosius and of Bede;
nay, it is said the Fables of Aesop, and the Psalms of David--desirous,
it would seem, to teach his people morality and religion, through the
fine medium, of fiction and poetry.

Alfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, is the name of another important
contributor to Saxon literature. He wrote a grammar of his native
language, which procured him the name of the 'Grammarian,' besides a
collection of homilies, some theological treatises, and a translation
of the first seven books of the Old Testament. In imitation of Alfred,
he devoted all his energies to the instruction of the common people,
constantly writing in Anglo-Saxon, and avoiding as much as possible the
use of compound or obscure words. After him appeared Cynewulf, Bishop of
Winchester, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, and others of some note. There
was also slowly piled up in the course of ages, and by a succession of
authors, that remarkable production, 'The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.' This
is thought to have commenced soon after the reign of Alfred, and
continued till the times of Henry II. Previous, however, to the Norman
invasion, there had been a decided falling off in the learning of the
Saxons. This arose from various causes. Incessant wars tended to
conserve and increase the barbarism of the people. Various libraries
of value were destroyed by the incursions of the Danes. And not a few
bishops, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, began to consider
learning as prejudicial to piety-and grammar and ungodliness were
thought akin. The effect of this upon the subordinate clergy was most
pernicious. In the tenth century, Oswald, Archbishop of Canterbury,
found the monks of his province so grossly ignorant, not only of
letters, but even of the canonical rules of their respective orders,
that he required to send to France for competent masters to give them
instruction.

At length came the Conqueror, William, and one battle gave England to
the Normans, which had cost the Romans, the Saxons, and the Danes so
much time and blood to acquire. The people were not only conquered, but
cowed and crushed. England was as easily and effectually subdued as was
Ireland, sometime after, by Henry II. But while the Conquest was for a
season fatal to liberty, it was from the first favourable to every
species of literature, art, and poetry. 'The influence,' says Campbell,
'of the Norman Conquest upon the language of England was like that of a
great inundation, which at first buries the face of the landscape under
its waters, but which, at last subsiding, leaves behind it the elements
of new beauty and fertility. Its first effect was to degrade the Anglo-
Saxon tongue to the exclusive use of the inferior orders, and by the
transference of estates ecclesiastical benefices, and civil dignities to
Norman possessors, to give the French language, which had begun to
prevail at court from the time of Edward the Confessor, a more complete
predominance among the higher classes of society. The native gentry of
England were either driven into exile, or depressed into a state of
dependence on their conqueror, which habituated them to speak his
language. On the other hand, we received from the Normans the first
germs of romantic poetry; and our language was ultimately indebted to
them for a wealth and compass of expression which it probably would not
have otherwise possessed.'

The Anglo-Saxon, however, held its place long among the lower orders,
and specimens of it, both in prose and verse, are found a century after
the Conquest. Gradually the Norman tongue began to amalgamate with it,
and the result was, the English. At what precise year our language might
be said to begin, it is impossible to determine. Throughout the whole of
the twelfth century, great changes were taking place in the grammatical
construction, as well as in the substance of the Anglo-Saxon. Some new
words were imported from the Norman, but, as Dr Johnson remarks, 'the
language was still more materially altered by the change of its sounds,
the cutting short of its syllables, and the softening down of its
terminations, and inflections of words.' Somewhere between 1180 and
1216, the majestic speech in which Shakspeare was to write 'Macbeth'
and 'King Lear,' Lord Bacon his 'Advancement of Learning,' Milton his
'Paradise Lost' and 'Areopagitica,' Burke his 'Reflections,' and Sir
Walter Scott the Waverley Novels, and whose rough, but manly accents
were to be spoken by at least a hundred million tongues, commenced its
career, and not since Homer,

                   "on the Chian strand,
  Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
  Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea,"

had a nobler era been marked in the history of literature. For here was
a tongue born which was destined to mate even with that of Greece in
richness and flexibility, to make the language of Cicero and Virgil seem
stiff and stilted in comparison, and, if not to vie with the French in
airy grace, or with the Italian in liquid music, to excel them far in
teeming resources and robust energy. Memorable and hallowed for ever be
the hour when the 'well of English undefiled' first sparkled to the day!

Previous to this the chief of the poets, after the Conquest, were
Normans. The country whence that people came had for some time been
celebrated for poetry. France was, as to its poetic literature, divided
into two great sections--the Provençal and the Northern. The first was
like the country where it flourished--gay, flowery, and exuberant; it
swam in romance, and its rhymers delighted, when addressing large
audiences under the open skies of their delightful climate, to indulge
in compliment and fanfaronade, to sing of war, wine, and love.

The Normans produced a race of simpler poets. That some of them were men
as well as singers, is proved by the fact that it was a bard named
Taillefer who first broke the English ranks at the battle of Hastings.
After him came Philippe de Thaun, who tried to set to song the science
of his day; Thorold, the author of a romance entitled 'Roland;' Samson
de Nauteuil, the translator of Solomon's Proverbs into French verse;
Geoffrey Gaimar, who wrote a Chronicle of the Saxon kings; and one
David, a minstrel of no little note and power in his day. But a more
remarkable writer succeeded, and his work, like Aaron's rod, swallowed
up all the productions of these clever but petty poets. This was Wace,
commonly called Maistre Wace, a native of Jersey. In 1160, or as some
say 1155, Wace finished his 'Brut d'Angleterre' which is in reality a
translation into French of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote a History
of Britain from the imaginary Brutus of Troy down to Cadwallader in
689. Literature owes not a little to Wace's poem. He collected into
a permanent shape a number of traditions and legends--many of them
interesting--which had been floating through Europe, just as Macpherson
preserved in Ossian not a few real fragments of the songs of Selma. And,
as we shall see immediately, Wace's production became the basis of the
earliest of English poems.

Maistre Wace is the author also of a History of the Normans, which he
calls 'Roman de Rou;' or, 'The Romance of Rollo.' He was a great favourite
with Henry II., who bestowed on him a canonry in the Cathedral of Bayeux.
Besides Wace, there flourished about the same time Benoit, who wrote a
History of the Dukes of Normandy; and Guernes, a churchman of Pont St
Maxence in Picardy, who wrote in verse a Life of St Thomas à Becket.

At the beginning of the century following the Conquest, the chief authors,
such as Peter of Blois, John of Salisbury, Joseph of Exeter, and Geoffrey
of Monmouth, all wrote in Latin. Layamon, however, a priest of Ernesley-
upon-Severn, used the vernacular in a poem which, as we have already
hinted, was essentially a translation of Wace's 'Brut d'Angleterre.' The
most remarkable thing about Layamon's poem is the language in which it is
written-language in which you catch English in the very act of chipping
the Saxon shell, or, as Campbell happily remarks, 'the style of Layamon is
as nearly the intermediate state of the old and new languages as can be
found in any ancient specimen --something like the new insect stirring its
wings before it has shaken off the aurelia state.'

Between Layamon and Robert of Gloucester a good many miscellaneous
strains--some of a satirical, others of an amatory, and others again of
a legendary and devout style--were produced. It was customary then for
minstrels, at the instance of the clergy, to sing on Sundays devotional
strains on the harp to the assembled multitudes. At public entertainments,
during week-days, gay ditties were common. One of these is extant, but
is too coarse for quotation. It is entitled 'The Land of Cokayne,' an
allegorical satire on the luxury and vice of the Church, given under the
description of an imaginary paradise, in which the nuns are represented
as houris, and the black and grey monks as their paramours. 'Richard of
Alemaine' is a ballad, composed by an adherent of Simon de Montfort, Earl
of Leicester, after the defeat of the Royal party at the battle of Lewes
in 1264. In the year after that battle the Royal cause rallied, and the
Earl of Warren and Sir Hugh Bigod returned from exile, and helped the King
in his victory. In the battle of Lewes, Richard, King of the Romans, his
brother Henry III., and Prince Edward, with many others of the Royal
party, were taken prisoners.
[Note: See 'Richard of Alemaine,' Percy's Reliques, vol. ii., p. 2.]

The spirit and the allusions of this song shew that it was composed by
Leicester's party in the moment of their victory, and not after the
reaction which took place against their cause, and it must therefore
belong to the thirteenth century. To this period, too, probably belongs
a political satire, published by Ritson, and which Campbell thus charac-
terises:--'It is a ballad on the execution of the Scottish patriots, Sir
William Wallace and Sir Simon Frazer. The diction is as barbarous as we
should expect from a song of triumph on such a subject. It relates the
death and treatment of Wallace very minutely. The circumstance of his
being covered with a mock crown of laurel in Westminster Hall, which Stow
repeats, is there mentioned, and that of his legs being fastened with iron
fetters "_under his horse's wombe_" is told with savage exultation. The
piece was probably indited in the very year of the political murders which
it celebrates, certainly before 1314, as it mentions the skulking of
Robert Bruce, which, after the battle of Bannockburn, must have become
a jest out of season.'

Campbell quotes a love-ditty of this period, which is not devoid of
merit:--

  'For her love I cark and cave,
   For her love I droop and dare,
   For her love my bliss is bare,
             And all I wax wan.

  'For her love in sleep I slake,[1]
   For her love all night I wake,
   For her love mourning I make
             More than any man.'

[1] 'In sleep I slake:' am deprived of sleep.


And another of a pastoral vein:--

  'When the nightingale singës the woods waxen green,
  Leaf, grass, and blossom springs in Avril I ween,
  And love is to my heart gone, with one spear so keen,
  Night and day my blood it drinks, my heart doth me teen.'

About a hundred years after Layamon (in 1280) appeared a poet not
dissimilar to him, named Robert of Gloucester. His surname is unknown, and
so are the particulars of his history. We know only that he was a monk of
Gloucester Abbey, that he lived in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I.,
and that he translated the Legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and continued
the History of England down to the time of Edward I. This work is wonder-
fully minute, and, generally speaking, accurate in its topography as well
as narrative, and was of service to Selden when he wrote his Notes to
Drayton's 'Polyolbion.' It is more valuable in this respect than as a
piece of imagination.

He narrates the grandest events--such as the first crusaders bursting
into Asia, with a sword of fire hung in the firmament before them, and
beckoning them on their way--as coolly as he might the emigration of a
colony of ants. Yet, although there is little animation or poetry in his
general manner, he usually succeeds in riveting the reader's attention;
and the speeches he puts into the mouths of his heroes glow with at
least rhetorical fire. And as a critic truly remarks--'Injustice to the
ancient versifier, we should remember that he had still only a rude
language to employ, the speech of boors and burghers, which, though it
might possess a few songs and satires, could afford him no models of
heroic narration. In such an age the first occupant passes uninspired
over subjects which might kindle the highest enthusiasm in the poet of
a riper period, as the savage treads unconsciously in his deserts over
mines of incalculable value, without sagacity to discover or inplements
to explore them.' We give the following extracts from Robert of
Gloucester's poem:--


  THE SPOUTS AND SOLEMNITIES WHICH FOLLOWED KING ARTHUR'S CORONATION.

  The king was to his palace, tho the service was ydo,[1]
  Yled with his meinie,[2] and the queen to her also.
  For they held the old usages, that men with men were
  By themselve, and women by themselve also there.
  When they were each one yset, as it to their state become,
  Kay, king of Anjou, a thousand knightës nome[3]
  Of noble men, yclothed in ermine each one
  Of one suit, and served at this noble feast anon.
  Bedwer the botyler, king of Normandy,
  Nome also in his half a fair company
  Of one suit for to serve of the hotelery.
  Before the queen it was also of all such courtesy,
  For to tell all the nobley that there was ydo,
  Though my tongue were of steel, me should nought dure thereto.
  Women ne kept of no knight in druery,[4]
  But he were in arms well yproved, and atte least thrye.[5]
  That made, lo, the women the chaster life lead,
  And the knights the stalwarder, and the better in their deed.
  Soon after this noble meat, as right was of such tide,
  The knights atyled them about in eachë side,
  In fields and in meadows to prove their bachlery,[6]
  Some with lance, some with sword, without villany,
  With playing at tables, other attë chekere,[7]
  With casting, other with setting,[8] other in some other mannere.
  And which so of any game had the mastery,
  The king them of his giftës did large courtesy.
  Up the alurs[9] of the castle the ladies then stood,
  And beheld this noble game, and which knights were good.
  All the three extë dayës[10] ylastë this nobley,
  In halle's and in fieldës, of meat and eke of play.
  These men come the fourth day before the kingë there,
  And he gave them large gifts, ever as they worthy were.
  Bishoprics and churches' clerks he gave some,
  And castles and townës knights that were ycome.

[1] 'Tho the service was ydo:' when the service was done.
[2] 'Meinie:' attendants.
[3] 'Nome': brought.
[4] 'Druery.' modesty, decorum.
[5] 'Thrye:' thrice.
[6] 'Bachlery:' chivalry, courage, or youth.
[7] 'Chekere:' chess.
[8] 'With casting, other with setting:' different ways of playing at
chess.
[9] 'Alurs:' walks made within the battlements of the castle.
[10] 'Extë dayës:' high, or chief days.


AN OLD TRADITION.

It was a tradition invented by the old fablers that giants brought the
stones of Stonehenge from the most sequestered deserts of Africa, and
placed them in Ireland; that every stone was washed with juices of
herbs, and contained a medical power; and that Merlin, the magician, at
the request of King Arthur, transported them from Ireland, and erected
them in circles on the plain of Amesbury, as a sepulchral monument for
the Britons treacherously slain by Hengist. This fable is thus
delivered, without decoration, by Robert of Glocester:--

  'Sir king,' quoth Merlin then, 'such thingë's ywis
  Ne be for to shew nought, but when great need is,
  For if I said in bismare, other but it need were,
  Soon from me he would wend, the ghost that doth me lere.'[1]
  The king, then none other n'as, bid him some quaintise
  Bethink about thilk cors that so noble were and wise.[2]
  'Sir King,' quoth Merlin then, 'if thou wilt here cast
  In the honour of men, a work that ever shall ylast,
  To the hill of Kylar[3] send in to Ireland,
  After the noble stonës that there habbet[4] long ystand;
  That was the treche of giants,[5] for a quaintë work there is
  Of stonës all with art ymade, in the world such none is.
  Ne there n'is nothing that me should myd[6] strength adownë cast.
  Stood they here, as they doth there, ever a woulde last.'
  The king somdeal to-lygh[7], when he heardë this tale:
  'How might,' he said, 'such stonës, so great and so fale,[8]
  Be ybrought of so far land? And yet mist of were,
  Me would ween that in this landë no stone to wonke n'ere.'
  Sir king,' quoth Merlin, 'ne make nought an idle such laughing;
  For it n'is an idle nought that I tell this tiding.
  For in the farrest stude of Afric giants whilë fet [9]
  These stones for medicine and in Ireland them set,
  While they wonenden in Ireland to make their bathë's there,
  There under for to bathë when they sick were.
  For they would the stonës wash and therein bathe ywis;
  For is no stone there among that of great virtue n'is.'
  The king and his counsel rode the stones for to fet,
  And with great power of battle if any more them let.
  Uther, the kingë's brother, that Ambrose hett[10] also,
  In another namë ychosë was thereto,
  And fifteen thousand men, this deedë for to do,
  And Merlin for his quaintise thither went also.

[1] If I should say any thing out of wantonness or vanity, the spirit
 which teaches me would immediately leave me.
[2] Bade him use his cunning, for the sake of the bodies of those noble
and wise Britons.
[3] 'Kylar:' Kildare.
[4] 'Habbet:' have.
[5] 'The treche of giants:' 'The dance of giants.' The name of this
collection of immense stones.
[6] 'Myd:' with.
[7] 'Somdeal to-lygh:' somewhat laughed.
[8] 'Fale:' many.
[9] Giants once brought them from the furthest part of Africa.
[10] 'Hett:' was called.


  ARTHUR'S INTRIGUE WITH YGERNE.

  At the feast of Easter the king sent his sond,[1]
  That they comen all to London the high men of this lond,
  And the ladies all so good, to his noble feast wide,
  For he shouldë crown here, for the high tide.
  All the noble men of this land to the noble feast come,
  And their wivës and their daughtren with them many nome,[2]
  This feast was noble enow, and nobliche ydo;
  For many was the fair lady that ycome was thereto.
  Ygerne, Gorloys' wife, was fairest of each one,
  That was Countess of Cornëwall, for so fair n'as there none.
  The king beheld her fast enow, and his heart on her cast,
  And thoughtë, though he were wise, to do folly at last.
  He made her semblant fair enow, to none other so great.
  The earl n'as not therewith ypayed[3], when he it under get.
  After meat he nome his wife myd[4] sturdy med enow,
  And, without leave of the king, to his country drow.
  The king sentë to him then, to byleve[5] all night,
  For he must of great counsel havë some insight.
  That was for nought. Would he not, the king sent yet his sond,
  That he byleved at his parlement, for need of the lond.
  The king was, when he n'oldë not, anguyssous and wroth.
  For despite he would a-wreak be he sworë his oath,
  But he come to amendëment. His power attë last
  He garked, and went forth to Cornëwall fast.
  Gorloys his castles a store all about.
  In a strong castle he did his wife, for of her was all his doubt,
  In another himself he was, for he n'oldë nought,
  If cas[6] come, that they were both to death ybrought.
  The castle, that the earl in was, the king besieged fast,
  For he might not his gins for shame to the other cast.
  Then he was there seen not, and he speddë nought,
  Ygerne, the countessë, so much was in his thought,
  That he nustë none other wit, ne he ne might for shame
  Tell it but a privy knight, Ulfyn was his name,
  That he trustë most to. And when the knight heard thia,
  'Sir,' he said, 'I ne can wit, what rede hereof is,
  For the castle is so strong, that the lady is in,
  For I ween all the land ne should it myd strengthë win.
  For the sea goeth all about, but entry one there n'is,
  And that is up on hardë rocks, and so narrow way it is,
  That there may go but one and one, that three men within
  Might slay all the laud, ere they come therein.
  And nought for then, if Merlin at the counsel were,
  If any might, he couthë the best rede thee lere.'[7]
  Merlin was soon of sent, pled it was him soon,
  That he should the best rede say, what were to don.
  Merlin was sorry enow for the kingë's folly,
  And natheless, 'Sir king,' he said, 'there may to mast'ry,
  The earl hath two men him near, Brithoel and Jordan.
  I will make thyself, if thou wilt, through art that I can,
  Have all the formë of the earl, as thou were right he,
  And Olfyn as Jordan, and as Brithoel me.'
  This art was all clean ydo, that all changed they were,
  They three in the others' form, the solve as it were.
  Against even he went forth, nustë[8] no man that cas;
  To the castle they come right as it even was.
  The porter ysaw his lord come, and his most privy twei,
  With good heart he let his lord in, and his men bey.
  The countess was glad enow, when her lord to her come
  And either other in their arms myd great joy nome.
  When they to beddë come, that so long a-two were,
  With them was so great delight, that between them there
  Begot was the best body, that ever was in this land,
  King Arthur the noble man, that ever worthy understand.
  When the king's men nuste amorrow, where he was become,
  They fared as wodëmen, and wend[9] he were ynome.[10]
  They assaileden the castle, as it should adown anon,
  They that within were, garked them each one,
  And smote out in a full will, and fought myd there fone:
  So that the earl was yslaw, and of his men many one,
  And the castle was ynome, and the folk to-sprad there,
  Yet, though they haddë all ydo, they ne found not the king there.
  The tiding to the countess soon was ycome,
  That her lord was yslaw, and the castle ynome.
  And when the messenger him saw the earl, as him thought,
  That he had so foul plow, full sore him of thought,
  The countess made somedeal deol,[11] for no sothness they nustë.
  The king, for to glad her, beclipt her and cust.
  'Dame,' he said,' no sixt thou well, that les it is all this:
  Ne wo'st thou well I am alive. I will thee say how it is.
  Out of the castle stillëlich I went all in privity,
  That none of minë men it nustë, for to speak with thee.
  And when they mist me to-day, and nuste where I was,
  They fareden right as giddy men, myd whom no rede n'as,
  And foughtë with the folk without, and have in this mannere
  Ylore the castle and themselve, and well thou wo'st I am here.
  And for my castle, that is ylore, sorry I am enow,
  And for my men, that the king and his power slew.
  And my power is to lute, therefore I dreadë sore,
  Lestë the king us nyme[12] here, and sorrow that we were more.
  Therefore I will, how so it be, wend against the king,
  And make my peace with him, ere he us to shamë bring.'
  Forth he went, and het[13] his men if the king come,
  That they shouldë him the castle yield, ere he with strength it nome.
  So he come toward his men, his own form he nome,
  And leaved the earl's form, and the king Uther become.
  Sore him of thought the earlë's death, and in other half he found
  Joy in his heart, for the countess of spousehed was unbound,
  When he had that he would, and paysed[14] with his son,
  To the countess he went again, me let him in anon.
  "What halt[15] it to tale longë? but they were set at one,
  In great love long enow, when it n'oldë other gon;
  And had together this noble son, that in the world his pere n'as,
  The king Arthur, and a daughter, Anne her namë was.

[1] 'Sond' message.
[2] 'Nome:' took.
[3] 'Ypayed:' satisfied.
[4] 'Myd:' with.
[5] 'Byleve:' stay.
[6] 'Cas:' chance.
[7] 'Lere:' teach.
[8] 'Nustë:' knew.
[9] 'Wend:' thought.
[10] 'Ynome:' taken.
[11] 'Deol:' grief.
[12] 'Nyme:' take.
[13] 'Het:' bade.
[14] 'Paysed:' made peace.
[15] 'Halt:' holdeth.

The next name of note is Robert, commonly called De Brunne. His real name
was Robert Manning. He was born at Malton in Yorkshire; for some time
belonged to the house of Sixhill, a Gilbertine monastery in Yorkshire;
and afterwards became a member of Brunne or Browne, a priory of black
canons in the same county. When monastical writers became famous, they
were usually designated from the religious houses to which they belonged.
Thus it was with Matthew of Westminster, William of Malmesbury, and John
of Glastonbury--all received their appellations from their respective
monasteries. De Brunne's principal work is a Chronicle of the History of
England, in rhyme. It can in no way be considered an original production,
but is partly translated, and partly compiled from the writings of Maistre
Wace and Peter de Langtoft, which latter was a canon of Bridlington in
Yorkshire, of Norman origin, but born in England, and the author of an
entire History of his country in French verse, down to the end of the
reign of Edward I. Brunne's Chronicle seems to have been written about
the year 1303. We extract the Prologue, and two other passages:--


  THE PROLOGUE.

  'Lordlingës that be now here,
  If ye willë listen and lere,
  All the story of England,
  As Robert Mannyng written it fand,
  And in English has it shewed,
  Not for the leared but for the lewed;[1]
  For those that on this land wonn
  That the Latin ne Frankys conn,[2]
  For to have solace and gamen
  In fellowship when they sit samen,
  And it is wisdom for to witten
  The state of the land, and have it written,
  "What manner of folk first it wan,
  And of what kind it first began.
  And good it is for many things,
  For to hear the deeds of kings,
  Whilk were fools, and whilk were wise,
  And whilk of them couth[3] most quaintise;
  And whilk did wrong, and whilk right,
  And whilk maintained peace and fight.
  Of their deedës shall be my saw,
  In what time, and of what law,
  I shall you from gre to gre,[4]
  Since the time of Sir Noe:
  From Noe unto Eneas,
  And what betwixt them was,
  And from Eneas till Brutus' time,
  That kind he tells in this rhyme.
  For Brutus to Cadwallader's,
  The last Briton that this land lees.
  All that kind and all the fruit
  That come of Brutus that is the Brute;
  And the right Brute is told no more
  Than the Britons' timë wore.
  After the Britons the English camen,
  The lordship of this land they nameu;
  South and north, west and east,
  That call men now the English gest.
  When they first among the Britons,
  That now are English then were Saxons,
  Saxons English hight all oliche.
  They arrived up at Sandwiche,
  In the kings since Vortogerne
  That the land would them not werne, &c.
  One Master Wace the Frankës tells
  The Brute all that the Latin spells,
  From Eneas to Cadwallader, &c.
  And right as Master Wacë says,
  I tell mine English the same ways,' &c.

[1] 'Lowed:' ignorant.
[2] 'Conn:' know.
[3] 'Couth:' knew.
[4] 'Gre:' step.


  KING VORTIGERN'S MEETING WITH PRINCESS KODWEN.

  Hengist that day did his might,
  That all were glad, king and knight,
  And as they were best in glading,
  And wele cop schotin[1] knight and king,
  Of chamber Rouewen so gent,
  Before the king in hall she went.
  A cup with wine she had in hand,
  And her attire was well-farand.[2]
  Before the king on knee set,
  And in her language she him gret.
    'Lauerid[3] king, Wassail,' said she.
  The king asked, what should be.
  In that language the king ne couth.[4]
  A knight the language lered[5] in youth.
  Breg hight that knight, born Bretoun,
  That lered the language of Sessoun.[6]
  This Breg was the latimer,[7]
  What she said told Vortager.
  'Sir,' Breg said, 'Rowen you greets,
  And king calls and lord you leets.[8]
  This is their custom and their gest,
  When they are at the ale or feast.
  Ilk man that louis quare him think,
  Shall say Wosseil, and to him drink.
  He that bidis shall say, Wassail,
  The other shall say again, Drinkhail.
  That says Wosseil drinks of the cup,
  Kissing his fellow he gives it up.
  Drinkheil, he says, and drinks thereof,
  Kissing him in bourd and skof.'[9]
  The king said, as the knight 'gan ken,[10]
  Drinkheil, smiling on Rouewen.
  Rouwen drank as her list,
  And gave the king, sine[11] him kist.
  There was the first wassail in deed,
  And that first of fame gede.[12]
  Of that wassail men told great tale,
  And wassail when they were at ale,
  And drinkheil to them that drank,
  Thus was wassail tane[13] to thank.
    Fele sithës[14] that maiden ying,[15]
  Wassailed and kist the king.
  Of body she was right avenant,[16]
  Of fair colour, with sweet semblant.[17]
  Her attire full well it seemed,
  Mervelik[18] the king she quemid.[19]
  Out of measure was he glad,
  For of that maiden he were all mad.
  Drunkenness the fiend wrought,
  Of that paen[20] was all his thought.
  A mischance that time him led,
  He asked that paen for to wed.
  Hengist wild not draw a lite,[21]
  But granted him, allë so tite.[22]
  And Hors his brother consented soon.
  Her friendis said, it were to don.
  They asked the king to give her Kent,
  In douery to take of rent.
  Upon that maiden his heart so cast,
  That they asked the king made fast.
  I ween the king took her that day,
  And wedded her on paien's lay.[23]
  Of priest was there no benison
  No mass sungen, no orison.
  In seisine he had her that night.
  Of Kent he gave Hengist the right.
  The earl that time, that Kent all held,
  Sir Goragon, that had the sheld,
  Of that gift no thing ne wist
  To[24] he was cast out with[25] Hengist.

[1] 'Schotin:' sending about the cups briskly.
[2] 'Well-farand:' very rich.
[3] 'Lauerid:' lord.
[4] 'Ne couth:' knew not.
[5] 'Lered:' learned.
[6] 'Sessoun:' Saxons.
[7] 'Latimer:' _for_ Latiner, or Latinier, an interpreter.
[8] 'Leets:' esteems.
[9] 'Skof:' sport, joke.
[10] 'Ken:' to signify.
[11] 'Sine:' then.
[12] 'Cede:' went.
[13] 'Tane:' taken.
[14] 'Sithës:' many times.
[15] 'Ying:' young.
[16] 'Avenant:' handsome.
[17] 'Semblant:' countenance.
[18] 'Mervelik:' marvellously.
[19] 'Quemid:' pleased.
[20] 'Paen:' pagan, heathen.
[21] 'Wild not draw a lite:' would not fly off a bit.
[22] 'Tite:' happeneth.
[23] 'On paien's lay:' in pagan's law; according to the heathenish
custom.
[24] 'To:' till.
[25] 'With:' by.


  THE ATTACK OF RICHARD I. ON A CASTLE HELD BY THE SARACENS.

  The dikes were fullë wide that closed the castle about,
  And deep on ilka side, with bankis high without.
  Was there none entry that to the castle 'gan ligg,[1]
  But a strait kaucë;[2] at the end a draw-brig,
  With great double chainës drawen over the gate,
  And fifty armed swainës porters at that gate.
  With slingës and mangonels they cast to king Richard,
  Our Christians by parcels casted againward.
  Ten sergeants of the best his targe 'gan him bear
  That eager were and prest[3] to cover him and to were.[4]
  Himself as a giant the chainës in two hew,
  The targe was his warant,[5] that none till him threw.
  Eight unto the gate with the targe they yede,
  Fighting on a gate, under him they slew his steed,
  Therefore ne would he cease, alone into the castele
  Through them all would press; on foot fought he full wele.
  And when he was within, and fought as a wild lión,
  He fondred the Sarazins otuynne,[6] and fought as a dragon,
  Without the Christians 'gan cry, 'Alas! Richard is taken;'
  Then Normans were sorry, of countenance 'gan blaken,
  To slay down and to' stroy never would they stint,
  They left fordied[7] no noye,[8] ne for no wound no dint,
  That in went all their press, maugre the Sarazins all,
  And found Richard on dais fighting, and won the hall.

[1] 'Ligg:' lying.
[2] 'Kaucë:' causey.
[3] 'Prest:' ready.
[4] 'Were:' defend.
[5] 'Warant:' guard.
[6] 'He fondred the Sarazins otuynne:' he formed the Saracens into two
parties.
[7] 'Fordied:' undone.
[8] 'No noye:' annoy.

Of De Brunne, Warton judiciously remarks--'Our author also translated
into English rhymes the treatise of Cardinal Bonaventura, his
contemporary, _De coena et passione Domini, et paenis S. Mariae
Virgins_. But I forbear to give more extracts from this writer, who
appears to have possessed much more industry than genius, and cannot at
present be read with much pleasure. Yet it should be remembered that
even such a writer as Robert de Brunne, uncouth and unpleasing as he
naturally seems, and chiefly employed in turning the theology of his age
into rhyme, contributed to form a style, to teach expression, and to
polish his native tongue. In the infancy of language and composition,
nothing is wanted but writers;--at that period even the most artless
have their use.'

Here we may allude to the introduction of romantic fiction into English
poetry. This had, as we have seen, reigned in France. There troubadours
in Provence, and men more worthy of the name of poets in Normandy, had
long sung of Brutus, of Charlemagne, and of Rollo. And thence a class,
called sometimes Joculators, sometimes Jongleurs, and sometimes
Minstrels, issued, harp in hand, wandering to and fro, and singing tales
of chivalry and love, composed either by themselves, or by other poets
living or dead. (We refer our readers to our first volume of Percy's
'Reliques,' for a full account of this class, and of the poetry they
produced.) These wanderers reached England in due time and brought with
them compositions which found favour and excited emulation, or at least
imitation, in our vernacular genius. Hence came a great swarm of
romances, all more or less derived from the French, even when Saxon in
subject and style; such as 'Sir Tristrem,' (which Sir Walter Scott tried
in vain to prove to be written by the famous Thomas the Rhymer, of
Ercildoun, or Earlston, in Berwickshire, who died before 1299;) 'The
Life of Alexander the Great,' said to be written by Adam Davie, Marshall
of Stratford-le-Bow, who lived about 1312; 'King Horn,' which certainly
belongs to the latter part of the thirteenth century; 'The Squire of Low
Degree; 'Sir Guy;' 'Sir Degore;' 'The King of Tars;' 'King Robert of
Sicily;' 'La Mort d'Arthur;' 'Impodemon;' and, more lately, 'Sir Libius;'
'Sir Thopas;' 'Sir Isenbras;' 'Gawan and Gologras;' and 'Sir Bevis.'
Richard I. also formed the subject of a very popular romance. We give
extracts from it:--


THE SOLDAN SALADIN SENDS KING RICHARD A HORSE.

  'Thou sayst thy God is full of might:
  Wilt thou grant with spear and shield,
  To detryve the right in the field,
  With helm, hauberk, and brandës bright,
  On strongë steedës good and light,
  Whether be of more power,
  Thy God almight, or Jupiter?
  And he sent rue to sayë this
  If thou wilt have an horse of his,
  In all the lands that thou hast gone
  Such ne thou sawest never none:
  Favel of Cyprus, ne Lyard of Prys,[1]
  Be not at need as he is;
  And if thou wilt, this samë day,
  He shall be brought thee to assay.'
  Richard answered, 'Thou sayest well
  Such a horse, by Saint Michael,
  I would have to ride upon.----
  Bid him send that horse to me,
  And I shall assay what he be,
  If he be trusty, withoutë fail,
  I keep none other to me in battail.'
  The messengers then homë went,
  And told the Soldan in present,
  That Richard in the field would come him unto:
  The rich Soldan bade to come him unto
  A noble clerk that couldë well conjure,
  That was a master necromansour:
  He commanded, as I you tell,
  Thorough the fiendë's might of hell,
  Two strong fiendë's of the air,
  In likeness of two steedës fair,
  Both like in hue and hair,
  As men said that there were:
  No man saw never none sich;
  That one was a mare iliche,
  That other a colt, a noble steed,
  Where that he were in any mead,
  (Were the knight never so bold.)
  When the mare neigh wold,
  (That him should hold against his will,)
  But soon he wouldë go her till,
  And kneel down and suck his dame,
  Therewith the Soldan with shame
  Shouldë king Richard quell,
  All this an angel 'gan him tell,
  That to him came about midnight.
  'Awake,' he said, 'Goddis knight:
  My Lord doth thee to understand
  That thee shalt come an horse to land,
  Fair it is, of body ypight,
  To betray thee if the Soldan might;
  On him to ride have thou no drede
  For he thee helpë shall at need.'

The angel gives king Richard several directions about managing this
infernal horse, and a general engagement ensuing, between the Christian
and Saracen armies,

  He leapt on horse when it was light;
  Ere he in his saddle did leap
  Of many thingës he took keep.--
  His men brought them that he bade,
  A square tree of forty feet,
  Before his saddle anon he it set,
  Fast that they should it brase, &c.
  Himself was richëly begone,
  From the crest right to the tone,[2]
  He was covered wondrously wele
  All with splentës of good steel,
  And there above an hauberk.
  A shaft he had of trusty werk,
  Upon his shoulders a shield of steel,
  With the libards[3] painted wele;
  And helm he had of rich entaile,
  Trusty and true was his ventaile:
  Upon his crest a dovë white,
  Significant of the Holy Sprite,
  Upon a cross the dovë stood
  Of gold ywrought rich and good,
  God[4] himself, Mary and John,
  As he was done the rood upon,[5]
  In significance for whom he fought,
  The spear-head forgat he nought,
  Upon his shaft he would it have
  Goddis name thereon was grave;
  Now hearken what oath he sware,
  Ere they to the battaile went there:
  'If it were so, that Richard might
  Slay the Soldan in field with fight,
  At our willë evereachone
  He and his should gone
  Into the city of Babylon;
  And the king of Macedon
  He should have under his hand;
  And if the Soldan of that land
  Might slay Richard in the field
  With sword or spearë under shield,
  That Christian men shouldë go
  Out of that land for evermo,
  And the Saracens their will in wold.'
  Quoth king Richard, 'Thereto I hold,
  Thereto my glove, as I am knight.'
  They be armed and ready dight:
  King Richard to his saddle did leap,
  Certes, who that would takë keep
  To see that sight it were sair;
  Their steedës rannë with great ayre,[6]
  All so hard as they might dyre,[7]
  After their feetë sprang out fire:
  Tabors and trumpettës 'gan blow:
  There men might see in a throw
  How king Richard, that noble man,
  Encountered with the Soldan,
  The chief was toldë of Damas,
  His trust upon his marë was,
  And therefor, as the book[8] us tells,
  His crupper hungë full of bells,
  And his peytrel[9] and his arsowne[10]
  Three mile men might hear the soun.
  His mare neighed, his bells did ring,
  For greatë pride, without lesing,
  A falcon brode[11] in hand he bare,
  For he thought he wouldë there
  Have slain Richard with treasoun
  When his colt should kneelë down,
  As a colt shouldë suck his dame,
  And he was 'warë of that shame,
  His ears with wax were stopped fast,
  Therefore Richard was not aghast,
  He struck the steed that under him went,
  And gave the Soldan his death with a dent:
  In his shieldë verament
  Was painted a serpent,
  With the spear that Richard held
  He bare him thorough under his sheld,
  None of his armour might him last,
  Bridle and peytrel all to-brast,
  His girthës and his stirrups also,
  His ruare to groundë wentë tho;
  Maugre her head, he made her seech
  The ground, withoutë morë speech,
  His feet toward the firmament,
  Behinde him the spear outwent
  There he fell dead on the green,
  Richard smote the fiend with spurrës keen,
  And in the name of the Holy Ghost
  He driveth into the heathen host,
  And as soon as he was come,
  Asunder he brake the sheltron,[12]
  And all that ever afore him stode,
  Horse and man to the groundë yode,
  Twenty foot on either side.
  When the king of France and his men wist
  That the mast'ry had the Christian,
  They waxed bold, and good heart took,
  Steedës bestrode, and shaftës shook.

[1] 'Favel of Cyprus, ne Lyard of Prys:' Favel of Cyprus, and Lyard of
Paris, horses of Kichard's.
[2] 'Tone:' toes.
[3] 'Libards:' leopards.
[4] 'God:' our Saviour.
[5] 'As he was done the rood upon:' as he died upon the cross.
[6] 'Ayre:' ire.
[7] 'Dyre:' dare.
[8] 'The book:' the French romance.
[9] 'Peytrel:' the breast-plate or breast-band of a horse.
[10] 'Arsowne:' saddle-bow.
[11] 'falcon brode:' F. bird.
[12] 'Sheltrou:' 'schiltron:' soldiers drawn up in a circle.

From 'Sir Degore' we quote the description of a dragon, which Warton
thinks drawn by a master:--


  DEGORE AND THE DRAGON.

  Degorë went forth his way,
  Through a forest half a day:
  He heard no man, nor sawë none,
  Till it past the high none,
  Then heard he great strokës fall,
  That it made greatë noise withal,
  Full soonë he thought that to see,
  To weetë what the strokes might be:
  There was an earl, both stout and gay,
  He was come there that samë day,
  For to hunt for a deer or a doe,
  But his houndës were gone him fro.
  Then was there a dragon great and grim,
  Full of fire and also venim,
  With a wide throat and tuskës great,
  Upon that knight fast 'gan he beat.
  And as a lion then was his feet,
  His tail was long, and full unmeet:
  Between his head and his tail
  Was twenty-two foot withouten fail;
  His body was like a wine tun,
  He shone full bright against the sun:
  His eyes were bright as any glass,
  His scales were hard as any brass;
  And thereto he was necked like a horse,
  He bare his head up with great force:
  The breath of his mouth that did out blow
  As it had been a fire on lowe[1].
  He was to look on, as I you tell,
  As it had been a fiend of hell.
  Many a man he had shent,
  And many a horsë he had rent.

[1] 'On lowe:' in flame.

From Davie's supposed 'Life of Alexander' we extract a description of a
battle, which shews some energy of genius:--


  A BATTLE

  Alisander before is ryde,
  And many gentle a knight him myde;[1]
  As for to gather his meinie free,
  He abideth under a tree:
  Forty thousand of chivalry
  He taketh in his company,
  He dasheth him then fast forthward,
  And the other cometh afterward.
  He seeth his knightës in mischief,
  He taketh it greatly a grief,
  He takes Bultyphal[2] by the side,
  So as a swallow he 'ginneth forth glide.
  A duke of Persia soon he met,
  And with his lance he him grett.
  He píerceth his breny, cleaveth his shieldë,
  The heartë tokeneth the yrnë;
  The duke fell downë to the ground,
  And starf[3] quickly in that stound:
  Alisander aloud then said,
  Other toll never I ne paid,
  Yet ye shallen of mine pay,
  Ere I go more assay.
  Another lance in hand he hent,
  Against the prince of Tyre he went
  He ... him thorough the breast and thare
  And out of saddle and crouthe him bare,
  And I say for soothë thing
  He brake his neck in the falling.
  ... with muchel wonder,
  Antiochus haddë him under,
  And with sword would his heved[4]
  From his body have yreaved:
  He saw Alisander the goodë gome,
  Towards him swithë come,
  He lete[5] his prey, and flew on horse,
  For to save his owen corse:
  Antiochus on steed leap,
  Of none woundës ne took he keep,
  And eke he had fourë forde
  All ymade with spearës' ord.[6]
  Tholomeus and all his felawen[7]
  Of this succour so weren welfawen,
  Alysander made a cry hardy,
  'Ore tost aby aby.'
  Then the knightës of Achaÿ
  Jousted with them of Araby,
  They of Rome with them of Mede,
  Many land....
  Egypt jousted with them of Tyre,
  Simple knights with richë sire:
  There n'as foregift ne forbearing
  Betweenë vavasour[8] ne king;
  Before men mighten and behind
  Cunteck[9] seek and cunteck find.
  With Persians foughten the Gregeys,[10]
  There was cry and great honteys.[11]
  They kidden[12] that they weren mice,
  They broken spearës all to slice.
  There might knight find his pere,
  There lost many his distrere:[13]
  There was quick in little thraw,[14]
  Many gentle knight yslaw:
  Many armë, many heved[15]
  Some from the body reaved:
  Many gentle lavedy[16]
  There lost quick her amy.[17]
  There was many maim yled,[18]
  Many fair pensel bebled:[19]
  There was swordës liklaking,[20]
  There was spearës bathing,
  Both kingës there sans doute
  Be in dash'd with all their route, &c.

[1] 'Myde:' with.
[2] 'Bultyphal:' Bucephalus.
[3] 'Starf:' died.
[4] 'Heved: head.
[5] 'Lete:' left.
[6] 'Ord:' point.
[7] 'Felawen;' fellows.
[7] 'Vavasour:' subject.
[8] 'Cunteck:' strife.
[9] 'Gregeys:' Greeks.
[10] 'Honteys:' shame.
[11] 'Kidden:' thought.
[12] 'Distrere:' horse.
[13] 'Little thraw:' short time.
[14] 'Heved:' head.
[15] 'Lavedy:' lady.
[16] 'Amy:' paramour.
[17] 'Yled:' led along, maimed.
[18] 'Many fair pensel bebled:' many a banner sprinkled with blood.
[19] 'Liklaking:' clashing.

Davie was also the author of an original poem, entitled, 'Visions in
Verse,' and of the 'Battle of Jerusalem,' in which he versifies a French
romance. In this production Pilate is represented as challenging our
Lord to single combat!

In 1349, died Richard Rollo, a hermit, and a verse-writer. He lived a
secluded life near the nunnery of Hampole in Yorkshire, and wrote a
number of devotional pieces, most of them very dull. In 1350, Lawrence
Minot produced some short narrative ballads on the victories of Edward
III., beginning with Halidon Hill, and ending with the siege of Guisnes
Castle. His works lay till the end of the last century obscure in a MS.
of the Cotton Collection, which was supposed to be a transcript of the
Works of Chaucer. On a spare leaf of the MS. there had been accidentally
written a name, probably that of its original possessor, 'Richard
Chawsir.' This the getter-up of the Cotton catalogue imagined to be the
name of Geoffrey Chaucer. Mr Tyrwhitt, while foraging for materials to
his edition of 'The Canterbury Tales,' accidentally found out who the
real writer was; and Ritson afterwards published Minot's ballads, which
are ten in number, written in the northern dialect, and in an alliterative
style, and with considerable spirit and liveliness. He has been called the
Tyrtaeus of his age.

We come now to the immediate predecessor of Chaucer--Robert Langlande.
He was a secular priest, born at Mortimer's Cleobury, in Shropshire,
and educated at Oriel College, Oxford. He wrote, towards the end of the
fourteenth century, a very remarkable work, entitled, 'Visions of William
concerning Piers Plowman.' The general object of this poem is to denounce
the abuses of society, and to inculcate, upon both clergy and laity, their
respective duties. One William is represented as falling asleep among the
Malvern Hills, and sees in his dream a succession of visions, in which
great ingenuity, great boldness, and here and there a powerful vein of
poetry, are displayed. Truth is described as a magnificent tower, and
Falsehood as a deep dungeon. In one canto Religion descends, and gives
a long harangue about what should be the conduct of society and of
individuals. Bribery and Falsehood, in another part of the poem, seek a
marriage with each other, and make their way to the courts of justice,
where they find many friends. Some very whimsical passages are introduced.
The Power of Grace confers upon Piers Plowman, who stands for the
Christian Life, four stout oxen, to cultivate the field of Truth. These
are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the last of whom is described as the
gentlest of the team. She afterwards assigns him the like number of stots
or bullocks, to harrow what the evangelists had ploughed, and this new
horned team consists of Saint or Stot Ambrose, Stot Austin, Stot Gregory,
and Stot Jerome.

Apart from its fantastic structure, 'Piers Plowman' was not only a sign
of the times, but did great service in its day. His voice rings like
that of Israel's minor prophets--like Nahum or Hosea--in a dark and
corrupt age. He proclaims liberal and independent sentiments, he attacks
slavery and superstition, and he predicts the doom of the Papacy as with
a thunder-knell. Chaucer must have felt roused to his share of the
reformatory work by the success of 'Piers Plowman;' Spenser is suspected
to have read and borrowed from him; and even Milton, in his description
of a lazar-house in 'Paradise Lost,' had him probably in his eye. (See
our last extract from 'Piers.')

On account of the great merit and peculiarity of this work we proceed to
make rather copious extracts.


  HUMAN LIFE.

  Then 'gan I to meten[1] a marvellous sweven,[2]
  That I was in wilderness, I wist never where:
  As I beheld into the east, on high to the sun,
  I saw a tower on a loft, richly ymaked,
  A deep dale beneath, a dungeon therein,
  With deep ditches and dark, and dreadful of sight:
  A fair field full of folk found I there between,
  Of all manner men, the mean and the rich,
  Working and wand'ring, as the world asketh;
  Some put them to the plough, playeden full seld,
  In setting and sowing swonken[3] full hard:
  And some put them to pride, &c.

[1] 'Meten:' dream.
[2] 'Sweven:' dream.
[3] 'Swonken:' toiled.


  ALLEGORICAL PICTURES.

  Thus robed in russet, I roamed about
  All a summer season, for to seek Dowell
  And freyned[1] full oft, of folk that I met
  If any wight wist where Dowell was at inn,
  And what man he might be, of many man I asked;
  Was never wight as I went, that me wysh[2] could
  Where this lad lenged,[3] lessë or more,
  Till it befell on a Friday, two friars I met
  Masters of the Minors,[4] men of greatë wit.
  I halsed them hendely,[5] as I had learned,
  And prayed them for charity, ere they passed further,
  If they knew any court or country as they went
  Where that Dowell dwelleth, do me to wit,[6]
  For they be men on this mould, that most widë walk
  And know countries and courts, and many kinnes[7] places,
  Both princes' palaces, and poor mennë's cotes,
  And Dowell, and Doevil, where they dwell both.
  'Amongst us,' quoth the Minors, 'that man is dwelling
  And ever hath as I hope, and ever shall hereafter.'
  Contra, quod I, as a clerk, and cumsed to disputen,
  And said them soothly, _Septies in die cadit justus_,
  Seven sythes,[8] sayeth the book, sinneth the rightful,
  And whoso sinneth, I say, doth evil as methinketh,
  And Dowell and Doevil may not dwell together,
  Ergo he is not alway among you friars;
  He is other while elsewhere, to wyshen[9] the people.
  'I shall say thee, my son,' said the friar then,
  'How seven sithes the saddë[10] man on a day sinneth,
  By a forvisne'[11] quod the friar, 'I shall thee fair shew;
  Let bring a man in a boat, amid the broad water,
  The wind and the water, and the boatë wagging,
  Make a man many time, to fall and to stand,
  For stand he never so stiff, he stumbleth if he move,
  And yet is he safe and sound, and so him behoveth,
  For if he ne arise the rather, and raght[12] to the steer,
  The wind would with the water the boat overthrow,
  And then were his life lost through latches[13] of himself.
  And thus it falleth,' quod the friar, 'by folk here on earth,
  The water is lik'ned to the world, that waneth and waxeth,
  The goods of this world are likened to the great waves
  That as winds and weathers, walken about,
  The boat is liken'd to our body, that brittle is of kind,
  That through the flesh, and the frailë world
  Sinneth the saddë man, a day seven times,
  And deadly sin doeth he not, for Dowell him keepeth,
  And that is Charity the champion, chief help against sin,
  For he strengtheth man to stand, and stirreth man's soul,
  And though thy body bow, as boatë doth in water,
  Aye is thy soulë safe, but if thou wilt thyself
  Do a deadly sin, and drenchë[14] so thy soul,
  God will suffer well thy sloth, if thyself liketh,
  For he gave thee two years' gifts, to teme well thyself,
  And that is wit and free-will, to every wight a portion,
  To flying fowlës, to fishes, and to beasts,
  And man hath most thereof, and most is to blame
  But if he work well therewith, as Dowell him teacheth.'
  'I have no kind knowing,' quoth I, 'to conceive all your wordës
  And if I may live and look, I shall go learnë better;
  I beken[15] the Christ, that on the crossë died;'
  And I said, 'The samë save you from mischance,
  And give you grace on this ground good me to worth.'
  And thus I went wide where, walking mine one
  By a wide wilderness, and by a woodë's side,
  Bliss of the birdës brought me on sleep,
  And under a lind[16] on a land, leaned I a stound[17]
  To lyth[18] the layës, those lovely fowlës made,
  Mirth of their mouthës made me there to sleep.
  The marvellousest metelles mettë[19] me then
  That ever dreamed wight, in world as I went.
  A much man as me thought, and like to myself,
  Came and called me, by my kindë[20] namë.
  'What art thou,' quod I then, 'thou that my namë knowest?'
  'That thou wottest well,' quod he, 'and no wight better.'
  'Wot I what thou art?' Thought said he then,
  'I have sued[21] thee this seven years, see ye me no rather?'
  'Art thou Thought?' quoth I then, 'thou couldest me wyssh[22]
  Where that Dowell dwelleth, and do me that to know.'
  'Dowell, and Dobetter, and Dobest the third,' quod he,
  'Are three fair virtues, and be not far to find,
  Whoso is true of his tongue, and of his two handës,
  And through his labour or his lod, his livelod winneth,
  And is trusty of his tayling,[23] taketh but his own,
  And is no drunkelow ne dedigious, Dowell him followeth;
  Dobet doth right thus, and he doth much more,
  He is as low as a lamb, and lovëly of speech,
  And helpeth all men, after that them needeth;
  The baggës and the bigirdles, he hath to-broke them all,
  That the earl avarous heldë and his heirës,
  And thus to mammons many he hath made him friends,
  And is run to religion, and hath rend'red[24] the Bible
  And preached to the people Saint Paulë's wordës,
  _Libenter suffertis insipientes, cum sitis ipsi sapientes_.

       *       *       *       *       *

  And suffereth the unwise with you for to live,
  And with glad will doth he good, for so God you hoteth.[25]
  Dobest is above both, and beareth a bishop's cross
  Is hooked on that one end to halye[26] men from hell;
  A pike is on the potent[27] to pull down the wicked
  That waiten any wickedness, Dowell to tene;[28]
  And Dowell and Dobet amongst them have ordained
  To crown one to be king, to rule them boeth,
  That if Dowell and Dobet are against Dobest,
  Then shall the king come, and cast them in irons,
  And but if Dobest bid for them, they be there for ever.
  Thus Dowell and Dobet, and Dobestë the third,
  Crowned one to be king, to keepen them all,
  And to rule the realmë by their three wittës,
  And none otherwise but as they three assented.'
  I thanked Thought then, that he me thus taught,
  And yet favoureth me not thy suging, I covet to learn
  How Dowell, Dobest, and Dobetter do among the people.
  'But Wit can wish[29] thee,' quoth Thought, 'where they three dwell,
  Else wot I none that can tell that now is alive.'
  Thought and I thus, three dayës we yeden[30]
  Disputing upon Dowell, dayë after other.
  And ere we were 'ware, with Wit 'gan we meet.
  He was long and leanë, like to none other,
  Was no pride on his apparel, nor poverty neither;
  Sad of his semblance, and of soft cheer;
  I durst not move no matter, to make him to laugh,
  But as I bade Thought then be mean between,
  And put forth some purpose to prevent his wits,
  What was Dowell from Dobet, and Dobest from them both?
  Then Thought in that timë said these wordës;
  'Whether Dowell, Dobet, and Dobest be in land,
  Here is well would wit, if Wit could teach him,
  And whether he be man or woman, this man fain would espy,
  And work as they three would, this is his intent.'
  'Here Dowell dwelleth,' quod Wit, 'not a day hence,
  In a castle that kind[31] made, of four kinds things;
  Of earth and air is it made, mingled together
  With wind and with water, witterly[32] enjoined;
  Kindë hath closed therein, craftily withal,
  A leman[33] that he loveth, like to himself,
  Anima she hight, and Envy her hateth,
  A proud pricker of France, _princeps hujus mundi_,
  And would win her away with wiles and he might;
  And Kind knoweth this well, and keepeth her the better.
  And doth her with Sir Dowell is duke of these marches;
  Dobet is her damosel, Sir Dowell's daughter,
  To serve this lady lelly,[34] both late and rathe.[35]
  Dobest is above both, a bishop's pere;
  That he bids must be done; he ruleth them all.
  Anima, that lady, is led by his learning,
  And the constable of the castle, that keepeth all the watch,
  Is a wise knight withal, Sir Inwit he hight,
  And hath five fair sonnës by his first wife,
  Sir Seewell and Saywell, and Hearwell-the-end,
  Sir Workwell-with-thy-hand, a wight man of strength,
  And Sir Godfray Gowell, great lordës forsooth.
  These five be set to save this lady Anima,
  Till Kind come or send, to save her for ever.'
  'What kind thing is Kind,' quod I, 'canst thou me tell?'--
  'Kind,' quod Wit, 'is a creator of all kinds things,
  Father and former of all that ever was maked,
  And that is the great God that 'ginning had never,
  Lord of life and of light, of bliss and of pain,
  Angels and all thing are at his will,
  And man is him most like, of mark and of shape,
  For through the word that he spake, wexen forth beasts,
  And made Adam, likest to himself one,
  And Eve of his ribbë bone, without any mean,
  For he was singular himself, and said _Faciamus_,
  As who say more must hereto, than my wordë one,
  My might must helpë now with my speech,
  Even as a lord should make letters, and he lacked parchment,
  Though he could write never so well, if he had no pen,
  The letters, for all his lordship, I 'lieve were never ymarked;
  And so it seemeth by him, as the Bible telleth,
  There he saidë, _Dixit et facta sunt_.
  He must work with his word, and his wit shew;
  And in this manner was man made, by might of God Almighty,
  With his word and his workmanship, and with life to last,
  And thus God gave him a ghost[36] of the Godhead of heaven,
  And of his great grace granted him bliss,
  And that is life that aye shall last, to all our lineage after;
  And that is the castle that Kindë made, Caro it hight,
  And is as much to meanë as man with a soul,
  And that he wrought with work and with word both;
  Through might of the majesty, man was ymaked.
  Inwit and Allwits closed been therein,
  For love of the lady Anima, that life is nempned.[37]
  Over all in man's body, she walketh and wand'reth,
  And in the heart is her home, and her most rest,
  And Inwit is in the head, and to the heartë looketh,
  What Anima is lief or loth,[38] he leadeth her at his will
  Then had Wit a wife, was hotë Dame Study,
  That leve was of lere, and of liche boeth.
  She was wonderly wrought, Wit me so teached,
  And all staring, Dame Study sternëly said;
  'Well art thou wise,' quoth she to Wit, 'any wisdoms to tell
  To flatterers or to foolës, that frantic be of wits;'
  And blamed him and banned him, and bade him be still,
  With such wisë wordës, to wysh any sots,
  And said, '_Noli mittere_, man, _margaritae_, pearls,
  Amongë hoggës, that havë hawes at will.
  They do but drivel thereon, draff were them lever,[39]
  Than all precious pearls that in paradise waxeth.[40]
  I say it, by such,' quod she, 'that shew it by their works,
  That them were lever[41] land and lordship on earth,
  Or riches or rentës, and rest at their will,
  Than all the sooth sawës that Solomon said ever.
  Wisdom and wit now is not worth a kerse,[42]
  But if it be carded with covetise, as clothers kemb their wool;
  Whoso can contrive deceits, and conspire wrongs,
  And lead forth a lovëday,[43] to let with truth,
  He that such craftës can is oft cleped to counsel,
  They lead lords with lesings, and belieth truth.
  Job the gentle in his gests greatly witnesseth
  That wicked men wielden the wealth of this world;
  The Psalter sayeth the same, by such as do evil;
  _Ecce ipsi peccatores abundantes in seculo obtinuerunt divitias_.
  Lo, saith holy lecture, which lords be these shrewes?
  Thilkë that God giveth most, least good they dealeth,
  And most unkind be to that comen, that most chattel wieldeth.[44]
  _Quae perfecisti destrutxerunt, justus autem, &c_.
  Harlots for their harlotry may have of their goodës,
  And japers and juggelers, and janglers of jestës,
  And he that hath holy writ aye in his mouth,
  And can tell of Tobie, and of the twelve apostles,
  Or preach of the penance that Pilate falsely wrought
  To Jesu the gentle, that Jewës to-draw:
  Little is he loved that such a lesson sheweth;
  Or daunten or draw forth, I do it on God himself,
  But they that feign they foolës, and with fayting[45] liveth,
  Against the lawë of our Lord, and lien on themself,
  Spitten and spewen, and speak foulë wordës,
  Drinken and drivellen, and do men for to gape,
  Liken men, and lie on them, and lendeth them no giftës,
  They can[46] no more minstrelsy nor music men to glad,
  Than Mundie, the miller, of _multa fecit Deus_.
  Ne were their vile harlotry, have God my truth,
  Shouldë never king nor knight, nor canon of Paul's
  Give them to their yearë's gift, nor gift of a groat,
  And mirth and minstrelsy amongst men is nought;
  Lechery, losenchery,[47] and losels' talës,
  Gluttony and great oaths, this mirth they loveth,
  And if they carpen[48] of Christ, these clerkës and these lewed,
  And they meet in their mirth, when minstrels be still,
  When telleth they of the Trinity a talë or twain,
  And bringeth forth a blade reason, and take Bernard to witness,
  And put forth a presumption to prove the sooth,
  Thus they drivel at their dais[49] the Deity to scorn,
  And gnawen God to their gorge[50] when their guts fallen;
  And the careful[51] may cry, and carpen at the gate,
  Both a-hunger'd and a-thirst, and for chill[52] quake,
  Is none to nymen[53] them near, his noyel[54] to amend,
  But hunten him as a hound, and hoten[55] him go hence.
  Little loveth he that Lord that lent him all that bliss,
  That thus parteth with the poor; a parcel when him needeth
  Ne were mercy in mean men, more than in rich;
  Mendynauntes meatless[56] might go to bed.
  God is much in the gorge of these greatë masters,
  And amongës mean men, his mercy and his workës,
  And so sayeth the Psalter, I have seen it oft.
  Clerks and other kinnes men carpen of God fast,
  And have him much in the mouth, and meanë men in heart;
  Friars and faitours[57] have founden such questions
  To please with the proud men, sith the pestilence time,
  And preachen at St Paulë's, for pure envy of clerks,
  That folk is not firmed in the faith, nor free of their goods,
  Nor sorry for their sinnës, so is pride waxen,
  In religion, and in all the realm, amongst rich and poor;
  That prayers have no power the pestilence to let,
  And yet the wretches of this world are none 'ware by other,
  Nor for dread of the death, withdraw not their pride,
  Nor be plenteous to the poor, as pure charity would,
  But in gains and in gluttony, forglote goods themself,
  And breaketh not to the beggar, as the book teacheth.
  And the more he winneth, and waxeth wealthy in riches,
  And lordeth in landës, the less good he dealeth.
  Tobie telleth ye not so, takë heed, ye rich,
  How the bible book of him beareth witness;
  Whoso hath much, spend manly, so meaneth Tobit,
  And whoso little wieldeth, rule him thereafter;
  For we have no letter of our life, how long it shall endure.
  Suchë lessons lordës shouldë love to hear,
  And how he might most meinie, manlich find;
  Not to fare as a fiddeler, or a friar to seek feasts,
  Homely at other men's houses, and haten their own.
  Elenge[58] is the hall every day in the week;
  There the lord nor the lady liketh not to sit,
  Now hath each rich a rule[59] to eaten by themself
  In a privy parlour, for poorë men's sake,
  Or in a chamber with a chimney, and leave the chief hall
  That was made for mealës men to eat in.'--
  And when that Wit was 'ware what Dame Study told,
  He became so confuse he cunneth not look,
  And as dumb as death, and drew him arear,
  And for no carping I could after, nor kneeling to the earth
  I might get no grain of his greatë wits,
  But all laughing he louted, and looked upon Study,
  In sign that I shouldë beseechen her of grace,
  And when I was 'ware of his will, to his wife I louted
  And said, 'Mercie, madam, your man shall I worth
  As long as I live both late and early,
  For to worken your will, the while my life endureth,
  With this that ye ken me kindly, to know to what is Dowell.'
  'For thy meekness, man,' quoth she, 'and for thy mild speech,
  I shall ken thee to my cousin, that Clergy is hoten.[60]
  He hath wedded a wife within these six moneths,
  Is syb[61] to the seven arts, Scripture is her name;
  They two as I hope, after my teaching,
  Shall wishen thee Dowell, I dare undertake.'
  Then was I as fain as fowl of fair morrow,
  And gladder than the gleeman that gold hath to gift,
  And asked her the highway where that Clergy[62] dwelt.
  'And tell me some token,' quoth I, 'for time is that I wend.'
  'Ask the highway,' quoth she, 'hencë to suffer
  Both well and woe, if that thou wilt learn;
  And ride forth by riches, and rest thou not therein,
  For if thou couplest ye therewith, to Clergy comest thou never,
  And also the likorous land that Lechery hight,
  Leave it on thy left half, a largë mile and more,
  Till thou come to a court, keep well thy tongue
  From leasings and lyther[63] speech, and likorous drinkës,
  Then shalt thou see Sobriety, and Simplicity of speech,
  That each might be in his will, his wit to shew,
  And thus shall ye come to Clergy that can many things;
  Say him this sign, I set him to school,
  And that I greet well his wife, for I wrote her many books,
  And set her to Sapience, and to the Psalter glose;
  Logic I learned her, and many other laws,
  And all the unisons to music I made her to know;
  Plato the poet, I put them first to book,
  Aristotle and other more, to argue I taught,
  Grammer for girlës, I gard[64] first to write,
  And beat them with a bales but if they would learn;
  Of all kindës craftës I contrived toolës,
  Of carpentry, of carvers, and compassed masons,
  And learned them level and line, though I look dim;
  And Theology hath tened[65] me seven score timës;
  The more I muse therein, the mistier it seemeth,
  And the deeper I divine, the darker me it thinketh.

[1] 'Freyned:' inquired.
[2] 'Wysh:' inform.
[3] 'Lenged:' lived.
[4] 'Minors:' the friars minors.
[5] 'Halsed them hendely:' saluted them kindly.
[6] 'Do me to wit:' make me to know.
[7] 'Kinnes:' sorts of.
[8] 'Sythes:' times.
[9] 'Wyshen:' inform, teach.
[10] 'Saddë:' sober, good.
[11] 'Forvisne:' similitude.
[12] 'Raght:' reach.
[13] 'Latches:' laziness.
[14] 'Drenchë:' drown.
[15] 'Beken:' confess.
[16] 'Lind:' lime-tree.
[17] 'A stound:' a while.
[18] 'Lyth:' listen.
[19] 'Mettë:' dreamed.
[20] 'Kinde:' own.
[21] 'Sued:' sought.
[22] 'Wyssh:' inform.
[23] 'Tayling:' dealing.
[24] 'Rend'red:' translated.
[25] 'Hoteth:' biddeth.
[26] 'Halve:' draw.
[27] 'Potent:' staff.
[28] 'Tene:' grieve.
[29] 'Wish:' inform.
[30] 'Yeden:' went.
[31] 'Kind:' nature.
[32] 'Witterly:' cunningly.
[33] 'Leman:' paramour.
[34] 'Lelly:' fair.
[35] 'Rathe:' early.
[36] 'Ghost:' spirit.
[37] 'Nempned:' named.
[38] 'Loth:' willing.
[39] 'Lever:' rather.
[40] 'Waxeth: grow.
[41] 'Them were lever:' they had rather.
[42] 'Kerse:' curse.
[43] 'Lovëday:'lady.
[44] 'Wieldeth:' commands.
[45] 'Fayting:' deceiving.
[46] 'Can:' know.
[47] 'Losenchery:' lying.
[48] 'Carpen:' speak.
[49] 'Dais:' table.
[50] 'Gorge:' throat.
[51] 'Careful:' poor.
[52] 'Chill:' cold.
[53] 'Nymen:' take.
[54] 'Noye:' trouble.
[55] 'Hoten:' order.
[56] 'Mendynauntes meatless:' beggars supperless.
[57] 'Faitours:' idle fellows.
[58] 'Elenge:' strange, deserted.
[59] 'Rule:' custom.
[60] 'Hoten:' named.
[61] 'Syb:' mother.
[62] 'Clergy:' learning.
[63] 'Lyther:' wanton.
[64] 'Gard:' made.
[65] 'Tened:' grieved.


  COVETOUSNESS.

  And then came Covetise; can I him no descrive,
  So hungerly and hollow, so sternëly he looked,
  He was bittle-browed and baberlipped also;
  With two bleared eyen as a blindë hag,
  And as a leathern pursë lolled his cheekës,
  Well sider than his chin they shivered for cold:
  And as a bondman of his bacon his beard was bidrauled,
  With a hood on his head, and a lousy hat above.
  And in a tawny tabard,[1] of twelve winter age,
  Allë torn and baudy, and full of lice creeping;
  But that if a louse could have leapen the better,
  She had not walked on the welt, so was it threadbare.
  'I have been Covetise,' quoth this caitiff,
  'For sometime I served Symmë at style,
  And was his prentice plight, his profit to wait.
  First I learned to lie, a leef other twain
  Wickedly to weigh, was my first lesson:
  To Wye and to Winchester I went to the fair
  With many manner merchandise, as my master me hight.--
  Then drave I me among drapers my donet[2] to learn.
  To draw the lyfer along, the longer it seemed
  Among the rich rays,' &c.

[1] 'Tabard:' a coat.
[2] 'Donet:' lesson.


  THE PRELATES.

  And now is religion a rider, a roamer by the street,
  A leader of lovëdays,[1] and a loudë[2] beggar,
  A pricker on a palfrey from manor to manor,
  An heap of houndës at his arse as he a lord were.
  And if but his knave kneel, that shall his cope bring,
  He loured on him, and asked who taught him courtesy.

[1] 'Lovëdays:' ladies.
[2] 'Loudë:' lewd.


  MERCY AND TRUTH.

  Out of the west coast, a wench, as methought,
  Came walking in the way, to heavenward she looked;
  Mercy hight that maidë, a meek thing withal,
  A full benign birdë, and buxom of speech;
  Her sister, as it seemed, came worthily walking,
  Even out of the east, and westward she looked,
  A full comely creature, Truth she hight,
  For the virtue that her followed afeared was she never.
  When these maidens met, Mercy and Truth,
  Either asked other of this great marvel,
  Of the din and of the darkness, &c.


  NATURE, OR KIND, SENDING FORTH HIS DISEASES FROM THE PLANETS, AT
  THE COMMAND OF CONSCIENCE, AND OF HIS ATTENDANTS, AGE AND DEATH.

  Kind Conscience then heard, and came out of the planets,
  And sent forth his forriours, Fevers and Fluxes,
  Coughës and Cardiacles, Crampës and Toothaches,
  Rheumës, and Radgondes, and raynous Scallës,
  Boilës, and Botches, and burning Agues,
  Phreneses and foul Evil, foragers of Kind!
  There was 'Harow! and Help! here cometh Kind,
  With Death that is dreadful, to undo us all!'
  The lord that liveth after lust then aloud cried.
  _Age the hoar, he was in the va-ward,
  And bare the banner before Death: by right he it claimed._
  Kindë came after, with many keenë sorës,
  As Pocks and Pestilences, and much people shent.
  So Kind through corruptions, killed full many:
  Death came driving after, and all to dust pashed
  Kings and Kaisers, knightës and popës.
  Many a lovely lady, and leman of knights,
  Swooned and swelted for sorrow of Death's dints.
  Conscience, of his courtesy, to Kind he besought
  To cease and sufire, and see where they would
  Leave Pride privily, and be perfect Christian,
  And Kind ceased then, to see the people amend.


'Piers Plowman' found many imitators. One wrote 'Piers the Plowman's
Crede;' another, 'The Plowman's Tale;' another, a poem on 'Alexander the
Great; 'another, on the 'Wars of the Jews;' and another, 'A Vision of
Death and Life,' extracts from all which may be found in Warton's
'History of English Poetry.'

We close this preliminary essay by giving a very ancient hymn to the
Virgin, as a specimen of the once universally-prevalent alliterative
poetry.


  I.

  Hail be you, Mary, mother and may,
  Mild, and meek, and merciable;
  Hail, folliche fruit of soothfast fay,
  Against each strife steadfast and stable;
  Hail, soothfast soul in each, a say,
  Under the sun is none so able;
  Hail, lodge that our Lord in lay,
  The foremost that never was founden in fable;
  Hail, true, truthful, and tretable,
  Hail, chief ychosen of chastity,
  Hail, homely, hendy, and amiable:
  _To pray for us to thy Sonë so free!_  AVE.


  II.

  Hail, star that never stinteth light;
  Hail, bush burning that never was brent;
  Hail, rightful ruler of every right,
  Shadow to shield that should be shent;
  Hail, blessed be you blossom bright,
  To truth and trust was thine intent;
  Hail, maiden and mother, most of might,
  Of all mischiefs an amendëment;
  Hail, spice sprung that never was spent;
  Hail, throne of the Trinity;
  Hail, scion that God us soon to sent,
  _You pray for us thy Sonë free!_ AVE.


  III.

  Hail, heartily in holiness;
  Hail, hope of help to high and low;
  Hail, strength and stel of stableness;
  Hail, window of heaven wowe;
  Hail, reason of righteousness,
  To each a caitiff comfort to know;
  Hail, innocent of angerness,
  Our takel, our tol, that we on trow;
  Hail, friend to all that beoth forth flow;
  Hail, light of love, and of beauty,
  Hail, brighter than the blood on snow:
  _You pray for us thy Sonë free!_ AVE.


  IV.

  Hail, maiden; hail, mother; hail, martyr trew;
  Hail, kindly yknow confessour;
  Hail, evenere of old law and new;
  Hail, builder bold of Christë's bower;
  Hail, rose highest of hyde and hue;
  Of all fruitë's fairest flower;
  Hail, turtle trustiest and true,
  Of all truth thou art treasour;
  Hail, pured princess of paramour;
  Hail, bloom of brere brightest of ble;
  Hail, owner of earthly honour:
  _You pray for us thy Sonë so free!_ AVE, &c.


  V.

  Hail, hendy; hail, holy emperess;
  Hail, queen courteous, comely, and kind;
  Hail, destroyer of every strife;
  Hail, mender of every man's mind;
  Hail, body that we ought to bless,
  So faithful friend may never man find;
  Hail, lever and lover of largëness,
  Sweet and sweetest that never may swynde;
  Hail, botenere[1] of every body blind;
  Hail, borgun brightest of all bounty,
  Hail, trewore then the wode bynd:
  _You pray for us thy Sonë so free!_ AVE.


  VI.

  Hail, mother; hail, maiden; hail, heaven queen;
  Hail, gatus of paradise;
  Hail, star of the sea that ever is seen;
  Hail, rich, royal, and righteous;
  Hail, burde yblessed may you bene;
  Hail, pearl of all perrie the pris;
  Hail, shadow in each a shower shene;
  Hail, fairer than that fleur-de-lis,
  Hail, chere chosen that never n'as chis;
  Hail, chief chamber of charity;
  Hail, in woe that ever was wis:
  _You pray for us thy Sonë so free!_ AVE, &c. &c.

[1] 'Botenere:' helper.




ADVERTISEMENT.

It will be observed that, in the specimens given of the earlier poets, the
spelling has been modernised on the principle which has been so generally
approved in its application to the text of Chaucer and of Spenser.

On a further examination of the material for 'Specimens and Memoirs of the
less-known British Poets,' it has been deemed advisable to devote three
volumes to this _résumé_, and merely to give extracts from Cowley, instead
of following out the arrangement proposed when the issue for this year was
announced. In this space it has been found possible to present the reader
with specimens of almost all those authors whose writings were at any
period esteemed. The series will thus be rendered more perfect, and will
include the complete works of the authors whose entire writings are by
a general verdict regarded as worthy of preservation; together with
representations of the style, and brief notices of the poets who have,
during the progress of our literature, occupied a certain rank, but whose
popularity and importance have in a great measure passed.

It is confidently hoped that the arrangements now made will give a
completeness to the First Division of the Library Edition of the British
Poets--from Chaucer to Cowper--which will be acceptable and satisfactory
to the general reader.

Edinburgh, July 1860.




CONTENTS.

       *       *       *       *       *

FIRST PERIOD.

JOHN GOWER
  The Chariot of the Sun
  The Tale of the Coffers or Caskets, &c.
  Of the Gratification which the Lover's Passion receives from
    the Sense of Hearing

JOHN BARBOUR
  Apostrophe to Freedom
  Death of Sir Henry de Bohun

ANDREW WYNTOUN

BLIND HARRY
  Battle of Black-Earnside
  The Death of Wallace

JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND
  Description of the King's Mistress

JOHN THE CHAPLAIN--THOMAS OCCLEVE

JOHN LYDGATE
  Canace, condemned to Death by her Father Aeolus, sends to her guilty
    Brother Macareus the last Testimony of her unhappy Passion
  The London Lyckpenny

HARDING, KAY, &c.

ROBERT HENRYSON
  Dinner given by the Town Mouse to the Country Mouse
  The Garment of Good Ladies

WILLIAM DUNBAR
  The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins through Hell
  The Merle and Nightingale

GAVIN DOUGLAS
  Morning in May

HAWES, BARCLAY, &c.

SKELTON
  To Miss Margaret Hussey

SIR DAVID LYNDSAY
  Meldrum's Duel with the English Champion Talbart
  Supplication in Contemption of Side Tails

THOMAS TUSSER
  Directions for Cultivating a Hop-garden
  Housewifely Physic
  Moral Reflections on the Wind

VAUX, EDWARDS, &c.

GEORGE GASCOIGNE
  Good-morrow
  Good-night

THOMAS SACKVILLE, LORD BUCKHURST AND EARL OF DORSET
  Allegorical Characters from 'The Mirror of Magistrates'
  Henry Duke of Buckingham in the Infernal Regions

JOHN HARRINGTON
  Sonnet on Isabella Markham
  Verses on a most stony-hearted Maiden

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
  To Sleep
  Sonnets

ROBERT SOUTHWELL
  Look Home
  The Image of Death
  Love's Servile Lot
  Times go by Turns

THOMAS WATSON
  The Nymphs to their May-Queen
  Sonnet

THOMAS TURBERVILLE
  In praise of the renowned Lady Aime, Countess of Warwick

UNKNOWN
  Harpalus' Complaint of Phillida's Love bestowed on Corin, who loved
    her not, and denied him that loved her
  A Praise of his Lady
  That all things sometime find Ease of their Pain, save only the Lover
  From 'The Phoenix' Nest'
  From the same
  The Soul's Errand

       *       *       *       *       *

SECOND PERIOD.

FROM SPENSER TO DRYDEN.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT
  To Ben Jonson
  On the Tombs in Westminster
  An Epitaph

SIR WALTER RALEIGH
  The Country's Recreations
  The Silent Lover
  A Vision upon 'The Fairy Queen'
  Love admits no Rival

JOSHUA SYLVESTER
  To Religion
  On Man's Resemblance to God
  The Chariot of the Sun

RICHARD BARNFIELD
  Address to the Nightingale

ALEXANDER HUME
  Thanks for a Summer's Day

OTHER SCOTTISH POETS

SAMUEL DANIEL
  Richard II., the morning before his Murder in Pomfret Castle
  Early Love
  Selections from Sonnets

SIR JOHN DAVIES
  Introduction to the Poem on the Soul of Man
  The Self-subsistence of the Soul
  Spirituality of the Soul

GILES FLETCHER
  The Nativity
  Song of Sorceress seeking to tempt Christ
  Close of 'Christ's Victory and Triumph'

JOHN DONNE
  Holy Sonnets
  The Progress of the Soul

MICHAEL DRAYTON
  Description of Morning

EDWARD FAIRFAX
  Rinaldo at Mount Olivet

SIR HENRY WOTTON
  Farewell to the Vanities of the World
  A Meditation

RICHARD CORBET
  Dr Corbet's Journey into France

BEN JONSON
  Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke
  The Picture of the Body
  To Penshurst
  To the Memory of my beloved Master, William Shakspeare, and what
    he hath left us
  On the Portrait of Shakspeare

VERE, STORBER, &c

THOMAS RANDOLPH
  The Praise of Woman
  To my Picture
  To a Lady admiring herself in a Looking-glass

ROBERT BURTON
  On Melancholy

THOMAS CAREW
  Persuasions to Love
  Song
  To my Mistress sitting by a River's Side
  Song
  A Pastoral Dialogue
  Song

SIR JOHN SUCKLING
  Song
  A Ballad upon a Wedding
  Song

WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT
  Love's Darts
  On the Death of Sir Bevil Grenville
  A Valediction

WILLIAM BROWNE
  Song
  Song
  Power of Genius over Envy
  Evening
  From 'Britannia's Pastorals'
  A Descriptive Sketch

WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EARL OF STIRLING
  Sonnet

WILLIAM DRUMMOND
  The River of Forth Feasting
  Sonnets
  Spiritual Poems

PHINEAS FLETCHER
  Description of Parthenia
  Instability of Human Greatness
  Happiness of the Shepherd's Life
  Marriage of Christ and the Church


       *       *       *       *       *


SPECIMENS, WITH MEMOIRS, OF THE LESS-KNOWN BRITISH POETS.




JOHN GOWER


Very little is told us (as usual in the beginnings of a literature) of
the life and private history of Gower, and that little is not specially
authentic or clearly consistent with itself. His life consists mainly of
a series of suppositions, with one or two firm facts between--like a few
stepping-stones insulated in wide spaces of water. He is said to have
been born about the year 1325, and if so must have been a few years
older than Chaucer; whom he, however, outlived. He was a friend as well
as contemporary of that great poet, who, in the fifth book of his
'Troilus and Cresseide,' thus addresses him:--

  'O moral Gower, this bookë I direct,
  To thee and the philosophical Strood,
  To vouchsafe where need is to correct,
  Of your benignities and zealës good.'

Gower, on the other hand, in his 'Confessio Amantis,' through the mouth
of Venus, speaks as follows of Chaucer:--

  'And greet well Chaucer when ye meet,
  As my disciple and my poët;
  For 'in the flower of his youth,
  In sundry wise, as he well couth,
  Of ditties and of songës glad,
  The whichë for my sake he made,
  The laud fulfill'd is over all,' &c.

The place of Gower's birth has been the subject of much controversy.
Caxton asserts that he was a native of Wales. Leland, Bales, Pits,
Hollingshed, and Edmondson contend, on the other hand, that he belonged
to the Statenham family, in Yorkshire. In proof of this, a deed is
appealed to, which is preserved among the ancient records of the Marquis
of Stafford. To this deed, of which the local date is Statenham, and the
chronological 1346, one of the subscribing witnesses is _John Gower_ who
on the back of the deed is stated, in the handwriting of at least a
century later, to be '_Sr John Gower the Poet_'. Whatever may be thought
of this piece of evidence, 'the proud tradition,' adds Todd, who had
produced it, 'in the Marquis of Stafford's family has been, and still
is, that the poet was of Statenham; and who would not consider the
dignity of his genealogy augmented by enrolling among its worthies the
moral Gower?'

From his will we know that he possessed the manor of Southwell, in the
county of Nottingham, and that of Multon, in the county of Suffolk. He
was thus a rich man, as well as probably a knight. The latter fact is
inferred from the circumstance of his effigies in the church of St Mary
Overies wearing a chaplet of roses, such as, says Francis Thynne, 'the
knyghtes in old time used, either of gold or other embroiderye, made
after the fashion of roses, one of the peculiar ornamentes of a knighte,
as well as his collar of S.S.S., his guilte sword and spurres. Which
chaplett or circle of roses was as well attributed to knyghtes, the
lowest degree of honor, as to the higher degrees of duke, erle, &c.,
being knyghtes, for so I have seen John of Gaunte pictured in his
chaplett of roses; and King, Edwarde the Thirde gave his chaplett to
Eustace Rybamonte; only the difference was, that as they were of lower
degree, so had they fewer roses placed on their chaplett or cyrcle of
golde, one ornament deduced from the dukes crowne, which had the roses
upon the top of the cyrcle, when the knights had them only upon the
cyrcle or garlande itself.'

It has been said that Gower as well as Chaucer studied in the Temple.
This, however, Thynne doubts, on the ground that 'it is most certeyn
to be gathered by cyrcumstances of recordes that the lawyers were not
in the Temple until towardes the latter parte of the reygne of Kinge
Edwarde the Thirde, at whiche tyme Chaucer was a grave manne, holden in
greate credyt and employed in embassye;' and when, of course, Gower,
being his senior, must have been 'graver' still.

There is scarcely anything more to relate of the personal career of our
poet. In his elder days he became attached to the House of Lancaster,
under Thomas of Woodstock, as Chaucer did under John of Gaunt. It is
said that the two poets, who had been warm friends, at last quarrelled,
but obscurity rests on the cause, the circumstances, the duration, and
the consequences of the dispute. Gower, like some far greater bards,
--Milton for instance, and those whom Milton has commemorated,

  'Blind Thamyris and blind Moeonides,
  And Tiresiaa and Phineus, prophets old,'--

was sometime ere his death deprived of his sight, as we know on his own
authority. It appears from his will that he was still living in 1408,
having outlived Chaucer eight years. This will is a curious document.
It is that of a very rich and very superstitious Catholic, who leaves
bequests to churches, hospitals, to priors, sub-priors, and priests,
with the significant request '_ut orent pro me_'--a request which, for
the sake of the poor soul of the 'moral Gower,' was we trust devoutly
obeyed, although we are irresistibly reminded of the old rhyme,

  'Pray for the soul of Gabriel John,
  Who died in the year one thousand and one;
  You may if you please, or let it alone,
        For it's all one
        To Gabriel John,
  Who died in the year one thousand and one.'

There is no mention of children in the will, and hence the assertion of
Edmondson, who, in his genealogical table of the Statenham family, says
that Thomas Gower, the governor of the castle of Mans in the times of
the Fifth and Sixth Henrys, was the only son of the poet, and that of
Glover, who, in his 'Visitation of Yorkshire,' describes Gower as
married to a lady named Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edward Sadbowrughe,
Baron of the Exchequer, by whom he had five sons and three daughters,
must both fall to the ground. According to the will, Gower's wife's name
was Agnes, and he leaves to her £100 in legacy, besides his valuable
goods and the rents accruing from his aforesaid manors of Multon, in
Suffolk, and Southwell, in Nottinghamshire. His body was, according
to his own direction, buried in the monastery of St Mary Overies, in
Southwark, (afterwards the church of St Saviour,) where a monument, and
an effigies, too, were erected, with the roses of a knight girdling the
brow of one who was unquestionably a true, if not a great poet.

In Warton's 'History of English Poetry,' and in the 'Illustrations of
the Lives and Writings of Gower and Chaucer' by Mr Todd, there will be
found ample and curious details about MS. poems by Gower, such as fifty
sonnets in French; a 'Panegyrick on Henry IV.,' half in Latin and half
in English, a short elegiac poem on the same subject, &c.; besides a
large work, entitled 'Speculum Meditantis,' a poem in French of a moral
cast; and 'Vox Clamantis,' consisting of seven books of Latin elegiacs,
and chiefly filled with a metrical account of the insurrections of the
Commons in the reign of Richard II. In the dedication of this latter
work to Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, Gower speaks of his blindness
and his age. He says, 'Hanc epistolam subscriptam corde devoto misit
_senex et cecus_ Johannes Gower reverendissimo in Christo patri ac
domino suo precipuo domino Thome de Arundell, Cantuar. Archiepö.' &c.
Warton proves that the 'Vox Clamantis' was written in the year 1397, by
a line in the Bodleian manuscript of the poem, 'Hos ego _bis deno_
Ricardo regis in anno.' Richard II. began, it is well known, to reign in
the year 1377, when ten years of age, and, of course, the year 1397 was
the twentieth of his reign. It follows from this, that for eleven years
at least before his death Gower had been _senex et cecus_, helpless
through old age and blindness.

The 'Confessio Amantis' is the only work of Gower's which is printed and
in English. The rest are still slumbering in MS.; and even although the
'Vox Clamantis' should put in a sleepy plea for the resurrection of
print, on the whole we are disposed to say, better for all parties that
it and the rest should slumber on. But the 'Confessio Amantis' is
altogether a remarkable production. It is said to have been written at
the command of Richard II., who, meeting our poet rowing on the Thames,
near London, took him on board the royal barge, and requested him to
_book some new thing_. It is an English poem, in eight books, and was
first printed by Caxton in the year 1483. The 'Speculum Meditantis,'
'Vox Clamantis,' and 'Confessio Amantis,' are, properly speaking, parts
of one great work, and are represented by three volumes upon Gower's
curious tomb in the old conventual church of St Mary Overies already
alluded to--a church, by the way, which the poet himself assisted in
rebuilding in the elegant shape which it retains to this day.

The 'Confessio' is a large unwieldy collection of poetry and prose,
superstition and science, love and religion, allegory and historical
facts. It is crammed with all varieties of learning, and a perverse but
infinite ingenuity is shewn in the arrangement of its heterogeneous
materials. In one book the whole mysteries of the Hermetic philosophy
are expounded, and the wonders of alchymy dazzle us in every page.
In another, the poet scales the heights and sounds the depths of
Aristotelianism. From this we have extracted in the 'Specimens' a
glowing account of 'The Chariot of the Sun.' Throughout the work, tales
and stories of every description and degree of merit are interspersed.
These are principally derived from an old book called 'Pantheon; or,
Memoriae Seculorum,'--a kind of universal history, more studious of
effect than accuracy, in which the author ranges over the whole history
of the world, from the creation down to the year 1186. This was a
specimen of a kind of writing in which the Middle Ages abounded--namely,
chronicles, which gradually superseded the monkish legends, and for
a time eclipsed the classics themselves; a kind of writing hovering
between history and fiction, embracing the widest sweep, written in a
barbarous style, and swarming with falsehoods; but exciting, interesting,
and often instructive, and tending to kindle curiosity, and
create in the minds of their readers a love for literature.

Besides chronicles, Gower had read many romances, and alludes to them
in various parts of his works. His 'Confessio Amantis' was apparently
written after Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cresseide,' and after 'The Flower
and the Leaf,' inasmuch as he speaks of the one and imitates the other
in that poem. That Chaucer had not, however, yet composed his 'Testament
of Love,' appears from the epilogue to the 'Confessio,' where Gower is
ordered by Venus, who expresses admiration of Chaucer for the early
devotion of his muse to her service, to say to him at the close--

  'Forthy, now in his daies old,
   Thou shalt him tell this message,
   That he upon his later age
   To set an end of all his work,
   As he which is mine owen clerk,
   Do make his Testament of Love,
   As thou hast done thy shrift above,
   So that my court it may record'--

the 'shrift' being of course the 'Confessio Amantis.' In 'The Canterbury
Tales' there are several indications that Chaucer was indebted to Gower
--'The Man of Law's Tale' being borrowed from Gower's 'Constantia,' and
'The Wife of Bath's Tale' being founded on Gower's 'Florent.'

After all, Gower cannot be classed with the greater bards. He sparkles
brightly chiefly from the depth of the darkness through which he shines.
He is more remarkable for extent than for depth, for solidity than for
splendour, for fuel than for fire, for learning than for genius.


THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN.

Of goldë glist'ring spoke and wheel
The Sun his cart hath fair and wele,
In which he sitteth, and is croned[1]
With bright stonës environed:
Of which if that I speakë shall,
There be before in special
Set in the front of his corone
Three stones, whichë no person
Hath upon earth; and the first is
By name cleped Leucachatis.
That other two cleped thus
Astroites and Ceraunus;
In his corone, and also behind,
By oldë bookës as I find,
There be of worthy stonës three,
Set each of them in his degree.
Whereof a crystal is that one,
Which that corone is set upon:
The second is an adamant:
The third is noble and evenant,
Which cleped is Idriades.
And over this yet natheless,
Upon the sidës of the werk,
After the writing of the clerk,
There sitten fivë stones mo.[2]
The Smaragdine is one of tho,[3]
Jaspis, and Eltropius,
And Vendides, and Jacinctus.
Lo thus the corone is beset,
Whereof it shineth well the bet.[4]
And in such wise his light to spread,
Sits with his diadem on head,
The Sunnë shining in his cart:
And for to lead him swith[5] and smart,
After the bright dayë's law,
There be ordained for to draw,
Four horse his chare, and him withal,
Whereof the namës tell I shall.
Eritheus the first is hote,[6]
The which is red, and shineth hot;
The second Acteos the bright;
Lampes the thirdë courser hight;
And Philogens is the ferth,
That bringen light unto this earth,
And go so swift upon the heaven,
In four and twenty hourës even,
The cartë with the brightë sun
They drawen, so that over run
They have under the circles high,
All middë earth in such an hie.[7]

And thus the sun is over all
The chief planet imperial,
Above him and beneath him three.
And thus between them runneth he,
As he that hath the middle place
Among the seven: and of his face
Be glad all earthly creatures,
And taken after the natures
Their ease and recreation.
And in his constellation
Who that is born in special,
Of good-will and of liberal
He shall be found in allë place,
And also stand in muchel grace
Toward the lordës for to serve,
And great profit and thank deserve.

And over that it causeth yet
A man to be subtil of wit,
To work in gold, and to be wise
In everything, which is of prise.[8]
But for to speaken in what coast
Of all this earth he reigneth most,
As for wisdom it is in Greece,
Where is appropred thilk spece.[9]

[1] 'Croned:' crowned.
[2] 'Mo:' more.
[3] 'Tho:' those.
[4] 'Bet:' better.
[5] 'Swith:' swift.
[6] 'Hot:' named.
[7] 'Hie:' haste.
[8] 'Prise:' value.
[9] 'Thilk spece:' that kind.


THE TALE OF THE COFFERS OR CASKETS, &c.

In a chroniquë thus I read:
About a kingë, as must need,
There was of knightës and squiers
Great rout, and ekë officers:
Some of long timë him had served,
And thoughten that they have deserved
Advancëment, and gone without:
And some also been of the rout,
That comen but a while agon,
And they advanced were anon.

These oldë men upon this thing,
So as they durst, against the king
Among themselves complainen oft:
But there is nothing said so soft,
That it ne cometh out at last:
The king it wist, anon as fast,
As he which was of high prudence:
He shope[1] therefore an evidence
Of them that 'plainen in the case
To know in whose default it was:
And all within his own intent,
That none more wistë what it meant.
Anon he let two coffers make,
Of one semblànce, and of one make,
So like, that no life thilkë throw,[2]
The one may from that other know:
They were into his chamber brought,
But no man wot why they be wrought,
And natheless the king hath bede
That they be set in privy stede,[3]
As he that was of wisdom sly;
When he thereto his timë sih,[4]
All privily that none it wist,
His ownë handës that one chest
Of fine gold, and of fine perrie,[5]
The which out of his treasury
Was take, anon he filled full;
That other coffer of straw and mull,[6]
With stonës meynd[7] he fill'd also:
Thus be they full bothë two.
So that erliche[8] upon a day
He bade within, where he lay,
There should be before his bed
A board up set and fairë spread:
And then he let the coffers fet[9]
Upon the board, and did them set,
He knew the namës well of tho,[10]
The which against him grutched[11] so,
Both of his chamber, and of his hall,
Anon and sent for them all;
And saidë to them in this wise:

'There shall no man his hap despise:
I wot well ye have longë served,
And God wot what ye have deserved;
But if it is along[12] on me
Of that ye unadvanced be,
Or else if it be long on yow,
The soothë shall be proved now:
To stoppë with your evil word,
Lo! here two coffers on the board;
Choose which you list of bothë two;
And witteth well that one of tho
Is with treasure so full begon,
That if he happë thereupon
Ye shall be richë men for ever:
Now choose and take which you is lever,[13]
But be well 'ware ere that ye take,
For of that one I undertake
There is no manner good therein,
Whereof ye mighten profit win.
Now go together of one assent,
And taketh your advisëment;
For but I you this day advance,
It stands upon your ownë chance,
All only in default of grace;
So shall be shewed in this place
Upon you all well afine,[14]
That no defaultë shall be mine.'

They kneelen all, and with one voice
The king they thanken of this choice:
And after that they up arise,
And go aside and them advise,
And at lastë they accord
(Whereof their talë to record
To what issue they be fall)
A knight shall speakë for them all:
He kneeleth down unto the king,
And saith that they upon this thing,
Or for to win, or for to lose,
Be all advised for to choose.

Then took this knight a yard[15] in hand,
And go'th there as the coffers stand,
And with assent of every one
He lay'th his yardë upon one,
And saith the king[16] how thilkë same
They chose in reguerdon[17] by name,
And pray'th him that they might it have.

The king, which would his honour save,
When he had heard the common voice,
Hath granted them their ownë choice,
And took them thereupon the key;
But for he wouldë it were see
What good they have as they suppose,
He bade anon the coffer unclose,
Which was fulfill'd with straw and stones:
Thus be they served all at ones.

This king then in the samë stede,
Anon that other coffer undede,
Where as they sawen great richés,
Well morë than they couthen [18] guess.

'Lo!' saith the king, 'now may ye see
That there is no default in me;
Forthy[19] myself I will acquite,
And beareth ye your ownë wite[20]
Of that fortune hath you refused.'

Thus was this wisë king excused:
And they left off their evil speech.
And mercy of their king beseech.

[1] 'Shope:' contrived.
[2] 'Thilkë throw:' at that time.
[3] 'Stede:' place.
[4] 'Sih:' saw.
[5] 'Perrie:' precious stones.
[6] 'Mull:' rubbish.
[7] 'Meynd:' mingled.
[8] 'Erlich:' early.
[9] 'Fet:' fetched.
[10] 'Tho:' those.
[11] 'Grutched:' murmured.
[12] 'Along:' because of.
[13] 'Lever:' preferable.
[14] 'Afine:' at last.
[15] 'Yard:' rod.
[16] 'Saith the king:' saith to the king.
[17] 'Reguerdon:' as their reward.
[18] 'Couthen:' could.
[19] 'Forthy:' therefore.
[20] 'Wite:' blame.


OF THE GRATIFICATION WHICH THE LOVERS PASSION RECEIVES
FROM THE SENSE OF HEARING.

Right as mine eyë with his look
Is to mine heart a lusty cook
Of lovë's foodë delicate;
Right so mine ear in his estate,
Where as mine eyë may nought serve,
Can well mine heartë's thank deserve;
And feeden him, from day to day,
With such dainties as he may.

For thus it is that, over all
Where as I come in special,
I may hear of my lady price:[1]
I hear one say that she is wise;
Another saith that she is good;
And some men say of worthy blood
That she is come; and is also
So fair that nowhere is none so:
And some men praise her goodly chere.[2]
Thus everything that I may hear,
Which soundeth to my lady good,
Is to mine ear a lusty food.
And eke mine ear hath, over this,
A dainty feastë when so is
That I may hear herselvë speak;
For then anon my fast I break
On suchë wordës as she saith,
That full of truth and full of faith
They be, and of so good disport,
That to mine earë great comfórt
They do, as they that be delices
For all the meats, and all the spices,
That any Lombard couthë[3] make,
Nor be so lusty for to take,
Nor so far forth restoratif,
(I say as for mine ownë life,)
As be the wordës of her mouth
For as the windës of the south
Be most of allë debonaire;[4]
So, when her list to speakë fair,
The virtue of her goodly speech
Is verily mine heartë's leech.

And if it so befall among,
That she carol upon a song,
When I it hear, I am so fed,
That I am from myself so led
As though I were in Paradise;
For, certes, as to mine avìs,[5]
When I hear of her voice the steven,[6]
Methink'th it is a bliss of heaven.

And eke in other wise also,
Full oftë time it falleth so,
Mine carë with a good pitànce[7]
Is fed of reading of romance
Of Ydoine and of Amadas,
That whilom weren in my case;
And eke of other many a score,
That loveden long ere I was bore.
For when I of their lovës read,
Mine eare with the tale I feed,
And with the lust of their histoire
Sometime I draw into memoire,
How sorrow may not ever last;
And so hope cometh in at last.

[1] 'Price:' praise.
[2] 'Chere:' mien.
[3] 'Couthë:' knows to.
[4] 'Debonaire:' gentle.
[5] 'Avis:' opinion.
[6] 'Steven:' sound.
[7] 'Pitance:' allowance.




JOHN BARBOUR.


The facts known about this Scottish poet are only the following. He
seems to have been born about the year 1316, in, probably, the city of
Aberdeen. This is stated by Hume of Godscroft, by Dr Mackenzie, and
others, but is not thoroughly authenticated. Some think he was the son
of one Andrew Barbour, who possessed a tenement in Castle Street,
Aberdeen; and others, that he was related to one Robert Barbour, who, in
1309, received a charter of the lands of Craigie, in Forfarshire, from
King Robert the Bruce. These, however, are mere conjectures, founded
upon a similarity of name. It is clear, from Barbour's after rank in
the Church, that he had received a learned education, but whether in
Arbroath or Aberdeen is uncertain. We know, however, that a school of
divinity and canon law had existed at Aberdeen since the reign of
Alexander II., and it is conjectured that Barbour first studied there,
and then at Oxford. In the year 1357, he was undoubtedly Archdeacon of
Aberdeen, since we find him, under this title, nominated by the Bishop
of that diocese, one of the Commissioners appointed to meet in Edinburgh
to take measures to liberate King David, who had been captured at the
battle of Nevil's Cross, and detained from that date in England. It
seems evident, from the customs of the Roman Catholic Church, that he
must have been at least forty when he was created Archdeacon, and this
is a good reason for fixing his birth in the year 1316.

In the same year, Barbour obtained permission from Edward III., at the
request of the Scottish King, to travel through England with three
scholars who were to study at Oxford, probably at Balliol College, which
had, a hundred years nearly before, been founded and endowed by the wife
of the famous John Balliol of Scotland. Some years afterwards, in
November 1364, he got permission to pass, accompanied by four horsemen,
through England, to pursue his studies at the same renowned university.
In the year 1365, we find another casual notice of our Scottish bard. A
passport has been found giving him permission from the King of England
to travel, in company with six horsemen, through that country on their
way to St Denis', and other sacred places. It is evident that this was
a religious pilgrimage on the part of Barbour and his companions.

A most peripatetic poet; verily, he must have been; for we find another
safe-conduct, dated November 1368, granted by Edward to Barbour,
permitting him, to pass through England, with two servants and their
horses, on his way to France, for the purpose of pursuing his studies
there. Dr Jamieson (see his 'Life of Barbour') discovers the poet's name
in the list of Auditors of the Exchequer.

Barbour has himself told us that he commenced his poem in the 'yer of
grace, a thousand thre hundyr sevynty and five,' when, of course, he
was in his sixtieth year, or, as he says, 'off hys eld sexty.' It is
supposed that David II.--who died in 1370--had urged Barbour to engage
in the work, which was not, however, completed till the fifth year of
his successor, Robert II., who gave our poet a pension on account of it.
This consisted of a sum of ten pounds Scots from the revenues of the
city of Aberdeen, and twenty shillings from the burgh mails. Mr James
Bruce, to whose interesting Life of Barbour, in his 'Eminent Men of
Aberdeen,' we are indebted for many of the facts in this narrative,
says, 'The latter of these sums was granted to him, not merely during
his own life, but to his assignees; and the Archdeacon bequeathed it to
the dean, canons, the chapter, and other ministers of the Cathedral of
Aberdeen, on condition that they should for ever celebrate a yearly mass
for his soul. At the Reformation, when it came to be discovered that
masses did no good to souls in the other world, it is probable that this
endowment reverted to the Crown.'

Barbour also wrote a poem under what seems now the strange title, 'The
Brute.' This was in reality a metrical history of Scotland, commencing
with the fables concerning Brutus, or 'Brute,' who, according to ancient
legends, was the great-grandson of Aeneas--came over from Italy, the
land of his birth--landed at Totness, in Devonshire--destroyed the
giants who then inhabited Albion--called the island 'Britain' from his
own name, and became its first monarch. From this original fable,
Barbour is supposed to have wandered on through a hundred succeeding
stories of similar value, till he came down to his own day. There can be
little regret felt, therefore, that the book is totally lost. Wynton, in
his 'Chronicle,' refers to it in commendatory terms; but it cannot be
ascertained from his notices whether it was composed in Scotch or in
Latin.

Barbour died about the beginning of the year 1396, eighty years of age.
Lord Hailes ascertained the time of his death from the Chartulary of
Aberdeen, where, under the date of 10th August 1398, mention is made of
'quondam Joh. Barber, Archidiaconus, Aberd., and where it is said that
he had died two years and a half before, namely, in 1396.'

His great work, 'The Bruce,' or more fully, 'The History of Robert
Bruce, King of the Scots,' does not appear to have been printed till
1616 in Edinburgh. Between that date and the year 1790, when Pinkerton's
edition appeared, no less than twenty impressions were published, (the
principal being those of Edinburgh in 1620 and 1648; Glasgow, 1665; and
Edinburgh, 1670--all in black letter,) so popular immediately became the
poem. Pinkerton's edition is in three volumes, and has a preface, notes,
and a glossary, all of considerable value. The MS. was copied from a
volume in the Advocates' Library, of the date of 1489, which was in the
handwriting of one John Ramsay, believed to have been the prior of a
Carthusian monastery near Perth. Pinkerton first divided 'The Bruce'
into books. It had previously, like the long works of Naerius and
Ennius, the earliest Roman poets, consisted of one entire piece, woven
'from the top to the bottom without seam,' like the ancient simple
garments in Jewry. The late respectable and very learned Dr Jamieson, of
Nicolson Street United Secession Church, Edinburgh, well known as the
author of the 'Scottish Dictionary,' 'Hermes Scythicus,' &c., published,
in 1820, a more accurate edition of 'The Bruce,' along with Blind
Harry's 'Wallace,' in two quarto volumes.

In strict chronology Barbour belongs to an earlier date than Chaucer,
having been born and having died a few years before him. But as the
first Scotch poet who has written anything of length, with the exception
of the author of the 'Romance of Sir Tristrem,' he claims a conspicuous
place in our 'Specimens.' He was singularly fortunate in the choice of
a subject. With the exception of Wallace, there is no name in Scottish
history that even yet calls up prouder associations than that of Robert
Bruce. The incidents in his history,--the escape he made from English
bondage to rescue his country from the same yoke; his rise refulgent
from the stroke which, in the cloisters of the Gray Friars, Dumfries,
laid the Red Comyn low; his daring to be crowned at Scone; his frequent
defeats; his lion-like retreat to the Hebrides, accompanied by one or
two friends, his wife meanwhile having been carried captive, three of
his brothers hanged, and himself supposed to be dead; the romantic
perils he survived, and the victories he gained amidst the mountains
where the deep waters of the river Awe are still telling of his name,
and the echoes of Ben Cruachan repeating the immortal sound; his sudden
reappearance on the west coast of Scotland, where, as he 'shook his
Carrick spear,' his country rose, kindling around him like heather on
flame; the awful suspense of the hour when it was announced that Edward
I., the tyrant of the Ragman's Roll, the murderer of Wallace, was
approaching with a mighty army to crush the revolt; the electrifying
news that he had died at Sark, as if struck by the breath of the fatal
Border, which he had reached, but could not overpass; the bloody
summer's day of Bannockburn, in which Edward II. was repelled, and the
gallant army of his father annihilated; the energy and wisdom of the
Bruce's civil administration after the victory; the less famous, but
noble battle of Byland, nine years after Bannockburn, in which he again
smote the foes of his country; and the recognition which at last he
procured, on the accession of Edward III., of the independence of
Scotland in 1329, himself dying the same year, his work done and his
glory for ever secured,--not to speak of the beautiful legends which
have clustered round his history like ivy round an ancestral tower--of
the spider on the wall, teaching him the lesson of perseverance, as he
lay in the barn sad and desponding in heart--of the strange signal-light
upon the shore near his maternal castle of Turnberry, which led him to
land, while

  'Dark red the heaven above it glow'd,
  Dark red the sea beneath it flow'd,
  Red rose the rocks on ocean's brim,
  In blood-red light her islets swim,
  Wild screams the dazzled sea-fowl gave,
  Dropp'd from their crags a plashing wave,
  The deer to distant covert drew,
  The blackcock deem'd it day, and crew;'

and last, not least, the adventures of his gallant, unquenchable heart,
when, in the hand of Douglas,--meet casket for such a gem!--it marched
onwards, as it was wont to do, in conquering power, toward the Holy
Land;--all this has woven a garland round the brow of Bruce which every
civilised nation has delighted to honour, and given him besides a share
in the affections and the pride of his own land, with the joy of which
'no stranger can intermeddle.'

Bruce has been fortunate in his laureates, consisting of three of
Scotland's greatest poets,--Barbour, Scott, and Burns. The last of these
has given us a glimpse of the patriot-king, revealing him on the brow of
Bannockburn as by a single flash of lightning. The second has, in 'The
Lord of the Isles,' seized and sung a few of the more romantic passages
of his history. But Barbour has, with unwearied fidelity and no small
force, described the whole incidents of Bruce's career, and reared to
his memory, not an insulated column, but a broad and deep-set temple of
poetry.

Barbour's poem has always been admired for its strict accuracy of
statement, to which Bower, Wynton, Hailes, Pinkerton, Jamieson, and Sir
Walter Scott all bear testimony; for the picturesque force of its
natural descriptions; for its insight into character, and the lifelike
spirit of its individual sketches; for the martial vigour of its battle-
pictures; for the enthusiasm which he feels, and makes his reader feel,
for the valiant and wise, the sagacious and persevering, the bold,
merciful, and religious character of its hero, and for the piety which
pervades it, and proves that the author was not merely a churchman in
profession, but a Christian at heart. Its defects of rude rhythm,
irregular constructions, and obsolete phraseology, are those of its age;
but its beauties, its unflagging interest, and its fine poetic spirit,
are characteristic of the writer's own genius.


APOSTROPHE TO FREEDOM.

Ah! freedom is a noble thing!
Freedom makes man to have liking!
Freedom all solace to man gives:
He lives at ease that freely lives!
A noble heart may have none ease,
Nor nought else that may him please,
If freedom fail; for free liking
Is yearned o'er all other thing.
Nay, he that aye has lived free,
May not know well the property,
The anger, nor the wretched doom,
That is coupled to foul thirldom.
But if he had assayed it,
Then all perquier[1] he should it wit:
And should think freedom more to prize
Than all the gold in world that is.

[1] 'Perquier:' perfectly.


DEATH OF SIR HENRY DE BOHUN.

And when the king wist that they were
In hale[1] battle, coming so near,
His battle gart[2] he well array.
He rode upon a little palfrey,
Laughed and jolly, arrayand
His battle, with an axe in hand.
And on his bassinet he bare
A hat of tyre above aye where;
And, thereupon, into tok'ning,
An high crown, that he was king.
And when Gloster and Hereford were
With their battle approaching near,
Before them all there came ridand,
With helm on head and spear in hand,
Sir Henry the Bohun, the worthy,
That was a wight knight, and a hardy,
And to the Earl of Hereford cousin;
Armed in armis good and fine;
Came on a steed a bowshot near,
Before all other that there were:
And knew the king, for that he saw
Him so range his men on raw,[3]
And by the crown that was set
Also upon his bassinet.
And toward him he went in hy.[4]
And the king so apertly[5]
Saw him come, forouth[6] all his feres,[7]
In hy till him the horse he steers.
And when Sir Henry saw the king
Come on, forouten[8] abasing,
To him he rode in full great hy.
He thought that he should well lightly
Win him, and have him at his will,
Since he him horsed saw so ill.
Sprent they samen into a lyng;[9]
Sir Henry miss'd the noble king;
And he that in his stirrups stood,
With the axe, that was hard and good,
With so great main, raucht[10] him a dint,
That neither hat nor helm might stint
The heavy dush that he him gave,
The head near to the harns[11] he clave.
The hand-axe shaft frushit[12] in two;
And he down to the yird[13] 'gan go
All flatlings, for him failed might.
This was the first stroke of the fight,
That was performed doughtily.
And when the king's men so stoutly
Saw him, right at the first meeting,
Forouten doubt or abasing,
Have slain a knight so at a straik,
Such hardment thereat 'gan they take,
That they come on right hardily.
When Englishmen saw them so stoutly
Come on, they had great abasing;
And specially for that the king
So smartly that good knight has slain,
That they withdrew them everilk ane,
And durst not one abide to fight:
So dread they for the king his might.
When that the king repaired was,
That gart his men all leave the chase,
The lordis of his company
Blamed him, as they durst, greatumly,
That be him put in aventure,
To meet so stith[14] a knight, and stour,
In such point as he then was seen.
For they said, well it might have been
Cause of their tynsal[15] everilk ane.
The king answer has made them nane,
But mainit[16] his hand-axe shaft so
Was with the stroke broken in two.

[1] 'Hale:' whole.
[2] 'Gart:' caused.
[3] 'Haw:' row
[4] 'Hy:' haste
[5] 'Apertly:' openly, clearly.
[6] 'Forouth:' beyond.
[7] 'Feres:' companions.
[8] 'Forouten:' without.
[9] 'Sprent they samen into a lyng:' they sprang forward at once,
     against each other, in a line.
[10] 'Raucht:' reached.
[11] 'Harns:' brains.
[12] 'Frushit:' broke.
[13] 'Yird:' earth.
[14] 'Stith:' strong.
[15] 'Tynsal:' destruction.
[16] 'Mainit:' lamented.




ANDREW WYNTOUN.


This author, who was prior of St Serf's monastery in Loch Leven, is the
author of what he calls 'An Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland.' It appeared
about the year 1420. It is much inferior to the work of Barbour in
poetry, but is full of historical information, anecdote, and legend. The
language is often sufficiently prosaic. Thus the poet begins to describe
the return of King David II. from his captivity, referred to above.

  'Yet in prison was king Davy,
  And when a lang time was gane bye,
  Frae prison and perplexitie
  To Berwick castle brought was he,
  With the Earl of Northamptoun,
  For to treat there of his ransoun;
  Some lords of Scotland come there,
  And als prelates that wisest were,' &c.

Contemporary, or nearly so, with Wyntoun were several other Scottish
writers, such as one Hutcheon, of whom we know only that he is
designated of the 'Awle Ryall,' or of the Royal Hall or Palace, and that
he wrote a metrical romance, of which two cantos remain, called 'The
Gest of Arthur;' and another, named Clerk of Tranent, the author of a
romance, entitled 'The Adventures of Sir Gawain.' Of this latter also
two cantos only are extant. Although not perhaps deserving to have even
portions of them extracted, they contain a good deal of poetry. A
person, too, of the name of Holland, about whose history we have no
information, produced a satirical poem, called 'The Howlate,' written in
the allegorical form, and bearing some resemblance to 'Pierce Plowman's
Vision.'




BLIND HARRY.


Although there are diversities of opinion as to the exact time when this
blind minstrel flourished, we prefer alluding to him at this point,
where he stands in close proximity to Barbour, the author of a poem on
a subject so cognate to 'Wallace' as 'Bruce.' Nothing is known of Harry
but that he was blind from infancy, that he composed this poem, and
gained a subsistence by reciting or singing portions of it through the
country. Another Wandering Willie, (see 'Redgauntlet,') he 'passed like
night from land to land,' led by his own instincts, and wherever he met
with a congenial audience, he proceeded to chant portions of the noble
knight's achievements, his eyes the while twinkling, through their sad
setting of darkness, with enthusiasm, and often suffused with tears.
In some minds the conception of this blind wandering bard may awaken
ludicrous emotions, but to us it suggests a certain sublimity. Blind
Harry has powerfully described Wallace standing in the light and
shrinking from the ghost of Fawdoun, (see the 'Battle of Black-
Earnside,' in the 'Specimens,') but Harry himself seems walking in the
light of the ghost of Wallace, and it ministers to him, not terror, but
inspiration. Entering a cot at night, and asked for a tale, he begins,
in low tones, to recite that frightful apparition at Gaskhall, and the
aged men and the crones vie with the children in drawing near the 'ingle
bleeze,' as if in fire alone lay the refuge from

                'Fawdoun, that ugly sire,
  That haill hall he had set into a fire,
  As to his sight, his OWN HEAD IN HIS HAND.'

Arriving in a village at the hour of morning rest and refreshment, he
charms the swains by such words as

  'The merry day sprang from the orient
   With beams bright illuminate the Occident,
   After Titan Phoebus upriseth fair,
   High in the sphere the signs he made declare.
   Zephyrus then began his morning course,
   The sweet vapour thus from the ground resourse,' &c.--

and the simple villagers wonder at hearing these images from one who is
blind, not seeing the sun. As the leaves are rustling down from the
ruddy trees of late autumn, he sings to a little circle of wayside
wanderers--

  'The dark region appearing wonder fast,
   In November, when October was past,

     *       *       *       *       *

   Good Wallace saw the night's messenger,
   Phoebus had lost his fiery beams so clear;
   Out of that wood they durst not turn that side
   For adversours that in their way would hide.'

And while on the verge of the December sky, the wintry sun is trembling
and about to set as if for ever, then is the Minstrel's voice heard
sobbing amidst the sobs of his hearers, as he tells how his hero's sun
went down while it was yet day.

  'On Wednesday the false Southron furth brocht
   To martyr him as they before had wrocht,
   Of men in arms led him a full great rout,
   With a bauld sprite guid Wallace blent about.'

There can be little doubt that Blind Harry, during his lifetime, became
a favourite, nay, a power in the realm. Wherever he circulated, there
circulated the fame of Wallace; there, his deeds were recounted; there,
hatred of a foreign foe, and love to their native land, were inculcated
as first principles; and long after the Homer of Scotland had breathed
his last, and been consigned perhaps to some little kirkyard among the
uplands, his lays continued to live; and we know that such a man as
Burns (who read them in the modern paraphrase of William Hamilton of
Gilbertfield, a book which was, till within a somewhat recent period,
a household god in the libraries of the Scotch) derived from the old
singer much of 'that national prejudice which boiled in his breast till
the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest.' If Barbour, as we said,
was fortunate in his subject, still more was Blind Harry in his. The
interest felt in Wallace is of a deeper and warmer kind than that which
we feel in Bruce. Bruce was of royal blood; Wallace was from an ancient
but not wealthy family. Bruce stained his career by one great crime
--great in itself, but greater from the peculiar notions of the age
--the murder of Comyn in the sanctuary of Dumfries; on the character of
Wallace no similar imputation rests. Wallace initiated that plan of
guerilla warfare,--that fighting now on foot and now on the wing, now
with beak and now with talons, now with horns and now with hoofs,--which
Bruce had only to perfect. Wallace was unsuccessful, and was besides
treated by the King of England with revolting barbarity; while Bruce
became victorious: and, as we saw in our remarks on Chaucer, it is the
unfortunate brave who stamp themselves most forcibly on a nation's
heart, and it is the red letters, which tell of suffering and death,
which are with most difficulty erased from a nation's tablets. On Bruce
we look somewhat as we regard Washington,--a great, serene man, who,
after long reverses, nobly sustained, gained a notable national triumph;
to Wallace we feel, as the Italians do to Garibaldi, as a demon of
warlike power,--blending courage and clemency, enthusiasm and skill,
daring and determination, in proportions almost superhuman,--and we cry
with the poet,

  'The sword that seem'd fit for archangel to wield,
     Was light in his terrible hand.'

We have often regretted that Sir Walter Scott, who, after all, has not
done full justice to Bruce in that very unequal and incondite poem 'The
Lord of the Isles,' had not bent his strength upon the Ulysses bow of
Wallace, and filled up that splendid sketch of a part of his history to
be found near the beginning of 'The Fair Maid of Perth.' As it is, after
all that a number of respectable writers, such as Miss Porter, Mrs
Hemans, Findlay, the late Mr Macpherson of Glasgow, and others, have
done--in prose or verse, in the novel, the poem, or the drama--to
illustrate the character and career of the Scottish hero, Blind Harry
remains his poet.

It is necessary to notice that Harry derived, by his own account, many
of the facts of his narrative from a work by John Blair, a Benedictine
monk from Dundee, who acted as Wallace's chaplain, and seems to have
composed a life of him in Latin, which is lost. Besides these, he
doubtless mingled in the story a number of traditions--some true, and
some false--which he found floating through the country. His authority
in reference to certain disputed matters, such as Wallace's journey to
France, and his capture of the Red Rover, Thomas de Longueville, who
became his fast friend and fellow-soldier, was not long ago entirely
established by certain important documents brought to light by the
Maitland Club. It is probable that some other of his supposed
misstatements--always excepting his ghost-stories--may yet receive from
future researches the confirmation they as yet want. Blind Harry, living
about a century and a half after the era of Wallace, and at a time when
tradition was the chief literature, was not likely to be able to test
the evidence of many of the circumstances which he narrated; but he
seems to speak in good faith: and, after all, what Paley says is
unquestionably true as a general principle--'Men tell lies about minute
circumstantials, but they rarely invent.'


BATTLE OF BLACK-EARNSIDE.

Kerlie beheld unto the bold Heroun,
Upon Fawdoun as he was looking down,
A subtil stroke upward him took that tide,
Under the cheeks the grounden sword gart[1] glide,
By the mail good, both halse[2] and his craig-bane[3]
In sunder strake; thus ended that chieftain,
To ground he fell, feil[4] folk about him throng,
'Treason,' they cried, 'traitors are us among.'
Kerlie, with that, fled out soon at a side,
His fellow Steven then thought no time to bide.
The fray was great, and fast away they yeed,[5]
Both toward Earn; thus 'scaped they that dread.
Butler for woe of weeping might not stint.
Thus recklessly this good knight have they tint.[6]
They deemed all that it was Wallace' men,
Or else himself, though they could not him ken;
'He is right near, we shall him have but[7] fail,
This feeble wood may little him avail.'
Forty there pass'd again to Saint Johnstoun,
With this dead corpse, to burying made it boune.[8]
Parted their men, syne[9] divers ways they rode,
A great power at Dupplin still there 'bode.
To Dalwryeth the Butler pass'd but let,[10]
At sundry fords the gate[11] they unbeset,[12]
To keep the wood while it was day they thought.
As Wallace thus in the thick forest sought,
For his two men in mind he had great pain,
He wist not well if they were ta'en or slain,
Or 'scaped haill[13] by any jeopardy.
Thirteen were left with him, no more had he;
In the Gaskhall their lodging have they ta'en.
Fire got they soon, but meat then had they nane;
Two sheep they took beside them of a fold,
Ordain'd to sup into that seemly hold:
Graithed[14] in haste some food for them to dight:[15]
So heard they blow rude horns upon height.
Two sent he forth to look what it might be;
They 'bode right long, and no tidings heard he,
But bousteous[16] noise so bryvely blowing fast;
So other two into the wood forth pass'd.
None came again, but bousteously can blaw,
Into great ire he sent them forth on raw.[17]
When that alone Wallace was leaved there,
The awful blast abounded meikle mare;[18]
Then trow'd he well they had his lodging seen;
His sword he drew of noble metal keen,
Syne forth he went whereat he heard the horn.
Without the door Fawdoun was him beforn,
As to his sight, his own head in his hand;
A cross he made when he saw him so stand.
At Wallace in the head he swakked[19] there,
And he in haste soon hint[20] it by the hair,
Syne out again at him he could it cast,
Into his heart he greatly was aghast.
Right well he trow'd that was no sprite of man,
It was some devil, that sic[21] malice began.
He wist no wale[22] there longer for to bide.
Up through the hall thus wight Wallace can glide,
To a close stair, the boards they rave[23] in twin,[24]
Fifteen foot large he lap out of that inn.
Up the water he suddenly could fare,
Again he blink'd what 'pearance he saw there,
He thought he saw Fawdoun, that ugly sire,
That haill[25] hall he had set into a fire;
A great rafter he had into his hand.
Wallace as then no longer would he stand.
Of his good men full great marvel had he,
How they were tint through his feil[26] fantasy.
Trust right well that all this was sooth indeed,
Suppose that it no point be of the creed.
Power they had with Lucifer that fell,
The time when he parted from heaven to hell.
By sic mischief if his men might be lost,
Drowned or slain among the English host;
Or what it was in likeness of Fawdoun,
Which brought his men to sudden confusion;
Or if the man ended in ill intent,
Some wicked sprite again for him present.
I cannot speak of sic divinity,
To clerks I will let all sic matters be:
But of Wallace, now forth I will you tell.
When he was won out of that peril fell,
Right glad was he that he had 'scaped sa,[27]
But for his men great mourning can he ma.[28]
Flait[29] by himself to the Maker above
Why he suffer'd he should sic paining prove.
He wist not well if that it was God's will;
Right or wrong his fortune to fulfil,
Had he pleas'd God, he trow'd it might not bo
He should him thole[30] in sic perplexity.
But great courage in his mind ever drave,
Of Englishmen thinking amends to have.
As he was thus walking by him alone
Upon Earnside, making a piteous moan,
Sir John Butler, to watch the fords right,
Out from his men of Wallace had a sight;
The mist again to the mountains was gone,
To him he rode, where that he made his moan.
On loud he speir'd,[31] 'What art thou walks that gate?'
'A true man, Sir, though my voyage be late;
Errands I pass from Down unto my lord,
Sir John Stewart, the right for to record,
In Down is now, newly come from the King.'
Then Butler said, 'This is a selcouth[32] thing,
You lied all out, you have been with Wallace,
I shall thee know, ere you come off this place;'
To him he start the courser wonder wight,
Drew out a sword, so made him for to light.
Above the knee good Wallace has him ta'en,
Through thigh and brawn in sunder strake the bane.[33]
Derfly[34] to dead the knight fell on the land.
Wallace the horse soon seized in his hand,
An ackward stroke syne took him in that stead,
His craig in two; thus was the Butler dead.
An Englishman saw their chieftain was slain,
A spear in rest he cast with all his main,
On Wallace drave, from the horse him to bear;
Warily he wrought, as worthy man in weir.[35]
The spear ho wan withouten more abode,
On horse he lap,[36] and through a great rout rode;
To Dalwryeth he knew the ford full well:
Before him came feil[37] stuffed[38] in fine steel.
He strake the first, but bade,[39] on the blasoun,[40]
Till horse and man both fleet[41] the water down.
Another soon down from his horse he bare,
Stamped to ground, and drown'd withouten mair.[42]
The third he hit in his harness of steel,
Throughout the cost,[43] the spear it brake some deal.
The great power then after him can ride.
He saw no waill[44] there longer for to bide.
His burnish'd brand braithly[45] in hand he bare,
Whom he hit right they follow'd him na mair.[46]
To stuff the chase feil freiks[47] follow'd fast,
But Wallace made the gayest aye aghast.
The muir he took, and through their power yede,
The horse was good, but yet he had great dread
For failing ere he wan unto a strength,
The chase was great, skail'd[48] over breadth and length,
Through strong danger they had him aye in sight.
At the Blackford there Wallace down can light,
His horse stuffed,[49] for way was deep and lang,
A large great mile wightly on foot could gang.[50]
Ere he was hors'd riders about him cast,
He saw full well long so he might not last.
Sad[51] men indeed upon him can renew,
With returning that night twenty he slew,
The fiercest aye rudely rebutted he,
Keeped his horse, and right wisely can flee,
Till that he came the mirkest[52] muir amang.
His horse gave over, and would no further gang.

[1] 'Gart:' caused.
[2] 'Halse:' throat.
[3] 'Craig-bane:' neck-lone.
[4] 'Feil:' many.
[5] 'Yeed:' went.
[6] 'Tint:' lost.
[7] 'But:' without.
[8] 'Boune:' ready.
[9] 'Sync:' then.
[10] 'But let:' without impediment.
[11] 'Gate:' way.
[12] 'Unbeset:' surround.
[13] 'Haill:' wholly.
[14] 'Graithed:' prepared.
[15] 'Dight:' Make ready.
[16] 'Bousteous:' boisterous.
[17] 'On raw:' one after another.
[18] 'Meikle mare:' much more.
[19] 'Swakked:' pitched.
[20] 'Hint:' took.
[21] 'Sic:' such.
[22] 'Wale:' advantage.
[23] 'Rave:' split.
[24] 'Twin:' twain.
[25] 'Haill:'whole.
[26] 'Feil:' great.
[27] 'Sa:' so.
[28] 'Ma:' make.
[29] 'Flait:' chided.
[30] 'Thole:' suffer.
[31] 'Speir'd:' asked.
[32] 'Selcouth:' strange.
[33] 'Bane:' bone.
[34] 'Derfly:' Quickly.
[35] 'Weir:' war.
[36] 'Lap:' leaped.
[37] 'Feil:' many.
[38] 'Stuffed:' armed.
[39] 'But bade:' without delay.
[40] 'Blasoun:' dress over armour.
[41] 'Fleet:' float.
[42] 'Mair:' more.
[43] 'Cost:' side.
[44] 'Waill:' advantage.
[45] 'Braithly:' violently.
[46] 'Na mair:' no more.
[47] 'Feil freiks:' many fierce fellows.
[48] 'Skail'd:' spread.
[49] 'Stuffed:' blown.
[50] 'Gang:' go.
[51] 'Sad:' steady.
[52] 'Mirkest:' darkest.


THE DEATH OF WALLACE.

On Wednesday the false Southron forth him brought
To martyr him, as they before had wrought.[1]
Of men in arms led him a full great rout.
With a bold sprite good Wallace blink'd about:
A priest he ask'd, for God that died on tree.
King Edward then commanded his clergy,
And said, 'I charge you, upon loss of life,
None be so bold yon tyrant for to shrive.
He has reign'd long in contrare my highness.'
A blithe bishop soon, present in that place;
Of Canterbury he then was righteous lord;
Against the king he made this right record,
And said, 'Myself shall hear his confessioun,
If I have might, in contrare of thy crown.
An[2] thou through force will stop me of this thing,
I vow to God, who is my righteous king,
That all England I shall her interdict,
And make it known thou art a heretic.
The sacrament of kirk I shall him give:
Syne[3] take thy choice, to starve[4] or let him live.
It were more 'vail, in worship of thy crown,
To keep such one in life in thy bandoun,[5]
Than all the land and good that thou hast reft,
But cowardice thee aye from honour dreft.[6]
Thou hast thy life rougin[7] in wrongous deed;
That shall be seen on thee, or on thy seed.'
The king gart[8] charge they should the bishop tae,[9]
But sad[10] lords counselled to let him gae.
All Englishmen said that his desire was right.
To Wallace then he raiked[11] in their sight,
And sadly heard his confession till an end:
Humbly to God his sprite he there commend,
Lowly him served with hearty devotion
Upon his knees, and said an orison.
A psalter-book Wallace had on him ever,
From his childhood from it would not dissever;
Better he trow'd in voyage[12] for to speed.
But then he was despoiled of his weed.[13]
This grace he ask'd at Lord Clifford, that knight,
To let him have his psalter-book in sight.
He gart a priest it open before him hold,
While they till him had done all that they would.
Steadfast he read for ought they did him there;
Foil[14] Southrons said that Wallace felt no sair.[15]
Good devotion so was his beginning,
Continued therewith, and fair was his ending;
Till speech and spirit at once all can fare
To lasting bliss, we trow, for eveermair.

[1] 'Wrought:' contrived.
[2] 'An:' if.
[3] 'Syne:' then.
[4] 'Starve:' perish.
[5] 'Bandoun:' disposal.
[6] 'Dreft:' drove.
[7] 'Rougin:' spent.
[8] 'Gart:' caused.
[9] 'Tae:' take.
[10] 'Sad:' grave.
[11] 'Raiked:' walked.
[12] 'Voyage:' journey to heaven.
[13] 'Weed:' clothes.
[14] 'Feil:' many.
[15] 'Sair:' sore.




JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND.


Here we have a great ascent from our former subject of biography--from
Blind Harry to James I.--from a beggar to a king. But in the Palace of
Poetry there are 'many mansions,' and men of all ranks, climes,
characters, professions, and we had almost added _talents_, have been
welcome to inhabit there. For, even as in the House Beautiful, the weak
Ready-to-halt and the timid Much-afraid were as cheerfully received as
the strong Honest and the bold Valiant-for-truth; so Poetry has inspired
children, and seeming fools, and maniacs, and mendicants with the finest
breath of her spirit. The 'Fable-tree' Fontaine is as immortal as
Corneille; Christopher Smart's 'David' shall live as long as Milton's
'Paradise Lost;' and the rude epic of a blind wanderer, whose birth,
parentage, and period of death are all alike unknown, shall continue to
rank in interest with the productions of one who inherited that kingdom
of Scotland, the independence of which was bought by the successive
efforts and the blended blood of Wallace and Bruce.

Let us now look for a moment at the history and the writings of this
'Royal Poet.' The name will suggest to all intelligent readers the title
of one of the most pleasing papers in Washington Irving's 'Sketch-book.'
James I. was the son of Robert III. of Scotland,--a character familiar
to all from the admirable 'Fair Maid of Perth,'--and of Annabella
Stewart. He was created Earl of Carrick; and after the miserable death
of the Duke of Rothesay, his elder brother, his father, apprehensive of
the further designs of Albany, determined to send James to France, to
find an asylum and receive his education in that friendly Court. On his
way, the vessel was captured off Flamborough Head by an English cruiser,
(the 13th of March 1405,) and the young prince, with his attendants, was
conveyed to London, and committed to the Tower. As there was a truce
between the two nations at the time, this was a flagrant outrage on the
law of nations, and has indelibly disgraced the memory of Henry IV.,
who, when some one remonstrated with him on the injustice of the
detention, replied, with cool brutality, 'Had the Scots been grateful,
they ought to have sent the youth to me, for I understand French well.'
Here for nineteen years,--during the remainder of the life of Henry IV.,
and the whole of the reign of Henry V.,--James continued. He was
educated, however, highly, according to the fashion of these times,
--instructed in the languages, as well as in music, painting,
architecture, horticulture, dancing, fencing, poetry, and other
accomplishments. Still it must have fretted his high spirit to be
passing his young life in prison, while without horses were stamping,
plumes glistening, trumpets sounding, tournaments waging, and echoes
from the great victories of Henry V. in France ringing around. One
sweetener of his solitude, however, he at length enjoyed. Having been
transferred from the Tower to Windsor Castle, he beheld one day from its
windows that beautiful vision he has described in 'The King's Quhair,'
(see 'Specimens.') This was Lady Jane or Joanna Beaufort, daughter of
the Earl of Somerset, niece of Richard II., and grand-daughter of John
of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. She was a lady of great beauty and
accomplishments as well as of high rank, and James, even before he knew
her name, became deeply enamoured. The passion was returned, and their
mutual attachment had by and by an important bearing upon his prospects.

In 1423, the Duke of Bedford being now the English Regent, the friends
of James renewed negotiations--often attempted before in vain--for his
return to his native land, where his father had been long dead, and
which, torn by factions and steeped in blood, was sorely needing his
presence. Commissioners from the two kingdoms met at Pontefract on the
12th of May 1423, when, in presence of the young King, and with his
consent, matters were arranged. The English coolly demanded £40,000 to
defray the expense of James's nurture and education, (as though a _bill_
were handed in to a man who had been unjustly detained in prison on
a false charge, ere he left its walls,) insisted on the immediate
departure of the Scots from France, where a portion of them were
fighting in the French army, and procured the assent of the Scottish
Privy Council to the marriage of James with his beloved Jane Beaufort.
A truce, too, with Scotland was concluded for seven years. All this was
settled; and soon after, in the Church of St Mary Overies, Southwark,
so often alluded to in the 'Life of Gower,' the happy pair were wed.
It seemed a most auspicious event for both countries, and to augur
the substitution of permanent peace for casual and temporary truces.
To Lady Jane Beaufort it gave a crown, and a noble, gallant, and gifted
prince to share it withal. On James it bestowed a lady of great beauty,
who was regarded, too, with gratitude as having lightened the load of
his captivity, and been a sunshine in his shady place, and--least
consideration--who brought him a dowry of £10,000, which was, in fact,
a remission of the fourth part of his ransom.

Attended by a magnificent retinue, the royal pair set out for Scotland.
They were met at Durham by three hundred of the principal nobility and
gentry, twenty-eight of whom were retained by the English as hostages
for the national faith. Arrived on his native soil, James, at Melrose
Abbey, gave his solemn assent on the Holy Gospels to the treaty; and
seldom have the Eildon Hills returned a louder and more joyous shout
of acclamation than now welcomed back to the kingdom of his fathers
the 'Royal Poet.' He proceeded to Edinburgh, where he celebrated Easter
with great pomp, and a month later, he and his queen were solemnly
crowned inthe Abbey Church at Scone. This was in 1424. He lived after
this only thirteen years; but the period of his reign has always been
thought a glorious interlude in the dark early history of Scotland.
He set himself, with considerable success, to curb the exorbitant
power of the nobles, sacrificing some of them, such as Albany, to his
just indignation. He passed many useful regulations in reference to
the coinage, the constitution, and the commerce of the country. He
suppressed with a strong hand some of the gangs of robbers and 'sorners'
which abounded, founding instead the order of Bedesmen or King's
Beggars, immortalised since in the character of Edie Ochiltree. He
stretched a strong hand over the refractory Highland chieftains. While
keeping at first on good terms with the English Court, he turned with a
fonder eye to the French as the ancient allies of Scotland, and in 1436
gave his daughter Margaret in marriage to the Dauphin. This step roused
the jealousy of his southern neighbours, who tried even to intercept the
fleet that was conveying the bride across the Channel, whereupon James,
stung to fury, proclaimed war against England, and in August commenced
the siege of Roxburgh Castle. The castle, after being environed for
fifteen days, was about to fall into his hands, when the Queen suddenly
arrived in the camp, and communicated some information, probably
referring to a threatened conspiracy of the nobles, which induced him
to throw up the siege, disband his army, and return northward in haste.
This unexpected step probably retarded, but could not prevent the
dreadful purpose of death which had already been formed against the
King.

In October 1436, he held his last Parliament in Edinburgh, in which,
amidst many other enactments, we find, curiously enough, a prefiguration
of the Forbes Mackenzie Act, in a decree that all taverns should be shut
at nine o'clock. In the end of the year he determined on retiring to
Perth, where (in the language of Gibbon, applied to Timour) 'he was
expected by the Angel of Death.' It is said that, when about to cross
the Frith of Forth, then called the Scottish Sea, a Highland woman, who
claimed the character of a prophetess, like Meg Merrilees in fiction,
met the cavalcade, and cried out, with a loud voice, 'My Lord the King,
if you pass this water you shall never return again alive;' but as she
was concluded to be mad or drunk, her warning was scorned. He betook
himself to the convent of the Black Friars, where Christmas was being
celebrated with great pomp and splendour. Meanwhile Robert Grahame, and
Walter, Earl of Athole, the King's own uncle, actuated, the former by
revenge on account of the resumption of some lands improperly granted
to his family, and the latter by a desire to succeed to the Crown, had
formed a plot against James's life. Several warnings, besides that of
the Highland seeress, the King received, but he heeded them not, and,
like most of the doomed, was in unnaturally high spirits, as if the
winding-sheet far up his breast had been a wedding-robe.

It is the evening of the 20th of February 1437. James and his nobles and
ladies are seated at table till deep into the night, engaged in chess,
music, and song. Athole, like another Judas, has supped with them, and
gone out at a late hour. A tremendous knocking is heard at the gate. It
is the Highland prophetess, who, having followed the monarch to Perth,
is seeking to force her way into the room. The King tells her, through
his usher, that he cannot receive her to-night, but will hear her
tidings to-morrow. She retires reluctantly, murmuring that they will for
ever rue their refusal to admit her into the royal presence. About an
hour after this, James calls for the _Voidee_, or parting-cup, and the
company disperse. Sir Robert Stewart, the chamberlain, who is in the
confidence of the conspirators, is the last to retire, having previously
destroyed the locks and removed the bars of the doors of the royal bed-
chamber and the outer room adjoining. The King is standing before the
fire, in his night-gown and slippers, and talking gaily with the Queen
and her ladies, when torches are seen flashing up from the garden, and
the clash of arms and the sound of angry voices is heard from below. A
sense of the dread reality bursts on them in an instant. The Queen and
the ladies run to secure the door of the chamber, while James, seizing
the tongs, wrenches up one of the boards of the floor and takes refuge
in a vault beneath. This was wont to have an opening to the outer court,
but it had unfortunately been built up of late by his own orders. There,
under the replaced boards, cowers the King, while the Queen and her
women seek to barricade the door. One brave young lady, Catherine
Douglas, thrusts her beautiful arm into the staple from which the bolt
had been removed. It is broken in a moment, and she sinks back, to bear,
with her descendants--a family well known in Scotland--the name of
_Barlass_ ever since. The murderers, who had previously killed in the
passage one Walter Straiton, a page, rush in, with naked swords,
wounding the ladies, striking, and well-nigh killing the Queen, and
crying, with frantic imprecations, 'This is but a woman! Where is
James?' Finding him not in the chamber, they leave it, and disperse
through the neighbouring apartments in search.

James, who had become wearied of his immurement, and thought the
assassins were gone, calls now on one of the ladies to aid him in coming
out of his place of concealment. But while this is being effected, one
of the murderers returns. The cry, 'Found, found,' rings through the
halls; and after a violent but unarmed resistance, the King is, with
circumstances of horrible barbarity, first mangled, then run through the
body, and then despatched with daggers. In vain he offers half his
kingdom for his life; and when he seeks a confessor from Grahame, the
ruffian replies, 'Thou shalt have no confessor but this sword.' It is
satisfactory to know that the Queen made her escape, and that the
criminals were punished, although the tortures they endured are such
as human nature shrinks from conceiving, and history with a shudder
records.

       *       *       *       *       *

We turn with pleasure from King James's life and death to his poetry,
although there is so little of it that a sentence or two will suffice.
'The King's Quhair' is a poem conceived very much in the spirit, and
written in the style of Chaucer, whose works were favourites with James.
There is the same sympathy with nature, and the same perception of _its_
relation to and unconscious sympathy with human feelings, and the same
luscious richness in the description, alike of the early beauties of
spring and of youthful feminine loveliness, although this seems more
natural in the young poet James than in the sexagenarian author of 'The
Canterbury Tales.' There is nothing even in Chaucer we think finer than
the picture of Lady Jane Beaufort in the garden, particularly in the
lines--

  'Or are ye god Cupidis own princess,
   And comen are ye to loose me out of band?
   Or are ye very Nature the goddess,
   That have depainted with your heavenly hand
   This garden full of flowers as they stand?'

Or where, picturing his mistress, he cries--

  'And above all this there was, well I wot,
   Beauty enough to make a world to dote.'

Or where, describing a ruby on her bosom, he says--

  'That as a spark of low[1] so wantonly
   Seemed burning upon her white throat.'

[1] 'Low:' fire.

Besides this precious little poem, King James is believed by some to
have written several poems on Scottish subjects, such as 'Christis Kirk
on the Green,' 'Peblis to the Play,' &c., but his claim to these is
uncertain. The first describes the mingled merrymaking and contest
common in the old rude marriages of Scotland, and, whether by James or
not, is full of burly, picturesque force.

Take the Miller--

  'The Miller was of manly make,
     To meet him was no mowes.[1]
   There durst not tensome there him take,
     So cowed he their powes.[2]
   The bushment whole about him brake,
     And bicker'd him with bows.
   Then traitorously behind his back
     They hack'd him on the boughs
         Behind that day.'

Or look at the following ill-paired pair--

  'Of all these maidens mild as mead,
     Was none so jimp as Gillie.
   As any rose her rude[3] was red--
     Her lire[4] like any lillie.
   But yellow, yellow was her head,
     And she of love so silly;
   Though all her kin had sworn her dead,
     She would have none but Willie,
         Alone that day.

  'She scorn'd Jock, and scripped at him,
     And murgeon'd him with mocks--
   He would have loved her--she would not let him,
     For all his yellow locks.
   He cherisht her--she bade go chat him--
     She counted him not two clocks.
   So shamefully his short jack[5] set him,
     His legs were like two rocks,
         Or rungs that day.'

[1] 'Mowes:' joke.
[2] 'Powes:' heads.
[3] 'Rude:' complexion.
[4] 'Lire:' flesh, skill.
[5] 'Jack:' jacket.

Our readers will perceive the resemblance, both in spirit and in form of
verse, between this old poem and the 'Holy Fair,' and other productions
of Burns.

James, cut off in the prime of life, may almost be called the abortive
Alfred of Scotland. Had he lived, he might have made important
contributions to her literature as well as laws, and given her a
standing among the nations of Europe, which it took long ages, and even
an incorporation with England, to secure. As it is, he stands high on
the list of royal authors, and of those kings who, whether authors or
not, have felt that nations cannot live on bread alone, and who have
sought their intellectual culture as an object not inferior to their
physical comfort. It is not, perhaps, too much to say, that no man or
woman of genius has sate either on the Scotch or English throne since,
except Cromwell, to whom, however, the term 'genius,' in its common
sense, seems ludicrously inadequate. James V. had some of the erratic
qualities of the poetic tribe, but his claim to the songs--such as the
'Gaberlunzie Man'--which go under his name, is exceedingly doubtful.
James VI. was a pedant, without being a scholar--a rhymester, not a
poet. Of the rest we need not speak. Seldom has the sceptre become an
Aaron's rod, and flourished with the buds and blossoms of song. In our
annals there has been one, and but one 'Royal Poet.'


THE KING THUS DESCRIBES THE APPEARANCE OF HIS MISTRESS,
WHEN HE FIRST SAW HER FROM A WINDOW OF HIS PRISON
AT WINDSOR.

X.

The longë dayës and the nightës eke,
I would bewail my fortune in this wise,
For which, against distress comfórt to seek,
My custom was, on mornës, for to rise
Early as day: O happy exercise!
By thee came I to joy out of tormènt;
But now to purpose of my first intent.

XI.

Bewailing in my chamber, thus alone,
Despaired of all joy and remedy,
For-tired of my thought, and woe begone;
And to the window 'gan I walk in hye,[1]
To see the world and folk that went forby;
As for the time (though I of mirthis food
Might have no more) to look it did me good.

XII.

Now was there made fast by the toweris wall
A garden fair; and in the corners set
An herbere[2] green; with wandis long and small
Railed about, and so with treës set
Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,
That life was none [a] walking there forby
That might within scarce any wight espy.

       *       *       *       *       *

XIV.

And on the smallë greenë twistis [3] sat
The little sweetë nightingale, and sung,
So loud and clear the hymnis consecrate
Of lovë's use, now soft, now loud among,[4]
That all the gardens and the wallis rung
Right of their song; and on the couple next
Of their sweet harmony, and lo the text.

XV.

Worship, O ye that lovers be, this May!
For of your bliss the calends are begun;
And sing with us, 'Away! winter, away!
Come, summer, come, the sweet seasòn and sun;
Awake for shame that have your heavens won;
And amorously lift up your headës all,
Thank love that list you to his mercy call.

       *       *       *       *       *

XXI.

And therewith cast I down mine eye again,
Where as I saw walking under the tower,
Full secretly new comen to her pleyne,[5]
The fairest and the freshest youngë flower
That e'er I saw (methought) before that hour
For which sudden abate [6] anon astert [7]
The blood of all my body to my heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

XXVII.

Of her array the form if I shall write,
Toward her golden hair, and rich attire,
In fret-wise couched with pearlis white,
And greatë balas[8] lemyng[9] as the fire;
With many an emerald and fair sapphìre,
And on her head a chaplet fresh of hue,
Of plumës parted red, and white, and blue.

       *       *       *       *       *

XXIX.

About her neck, white as the fair amaille,[10]
A goodly chain of small orfeverie,[11]
Whereby there hang a ruby without fail
Like to a heart yshapen verily,
That as a spark of lowe[12] so wantonly
Seemed burning upon her whitë throat;
Now if there was good, perdie God it wrote.

XXX.

And for to walk that freshë Mayë's morrow,
A hook she had upon her tissue white,
That goodlier had not been seen toforrow,[13]
As I suppose, and girt she, was a lite[14]
Thus halfling[15] loose for haste; to such delight
It was to see her youth in goodlihead,
That for rudeness to speak thereof I dread.

XXXI.

In her was youth, beauty with humble port,
Bounty, richess, and womanly featúre:
(God better wot than my pen can report)
Wisdom, largèss, estate, and cunning[16] sure,

       *       *       *       *       *

In word, in deed, in shape and countenance,
That nature might no more her child advance.

[1] 'Hye:' haste.
[2] 'Herbere:' herbary, or garden of simples.
[3] 'Twistis:' twigs.
[4] 'Among:' promiscuously.
[5] 'Pleyne:' sport.
[6] 'Sudden abate:' unexpected accident.
[7] 'Astert:' started back.
[8] 'Balas:' rubies.
[9] 'Lemyng:' burning.
[10] 'Amaille:' enamel.
[11] 'Orfeverie:' goldsmith's work.
[12] 'Lowe:' fire.
[13] 'Toforrow:' heretofore.
[14] 'Lite:' a little.
[15] 'Halfling:' half.
[16] 'Cunning:' knowledge.




JOHN THE CHAPLAIN--THOMAS OCCLEVE.


The first of these is the only versifier that can be assigned to England
in the reign of Henry IV. His name was John Walton, though he was
generally known as _Johannes Capellanus_ or 'John the Chaplain.' He was
canon of Oseney, and died sub-dean of York. He, in the year 1410,
translated Boethius' famous treatise, 'De Consolatione Philosophiae,'
into English verse. He is not known to have written anything original.
--Thomas Occleve appeared in the reign of Henry V., about 1420. Like
Chaucer and Gower, he was a student of municipal law, having attended
Chester's Inn, which stood on the site of the present Somerset House;
but although he trod in the footsteps of his celebrated predecessors, it
was with far feebler powers. His original pieces are contemptible, both
in subject and in execution. His best production is a translation of
'Egidius De Regimine Principum.' Warton, alluding to the period at which
these writers appeared, has the following oft-quoted observations:
--'I consider Chaucer as a genial day in an English spring. A brilliant
sun enlivens the face of nature with an unusual lustre; the sudden
appearance of cloudless skies, and the unexpected warmth of a tepid
atmosphere, after the gloom and the inclemencies of a tedious winter,
fill our hearts with the visionary prospect of a speedy summer, and we
fondly anticipate a long continuance of gentle gales and vernal serenity.
But winter returns with redoubled horrors; the clouds condense more
formidably than before, and those tender buds and early blossoms which
were called forth by the transient gleam of a temporary sunshine, are
nipped by frosts and torn by tempests.' These sentences are, after all,
rather pompous, and express, in the most verbose style of the _Rambler_,
the simple fact, that after Chaucer's death the ground lay fallow, and
that for a while in England (in Scotland it was otherwise) there were
few poets, and little poetry.




JOHN LYDGATE.


This copious and versatile writer flourished in the reign of Henry VI.
Warton affirms that he reached his highest point of eminence in 1430,
although some of his poems had appeared before. He was a monk of the
Benedictine Abbey at Bury, in Suffolk. He received his education at
Oxford; and when it was finished, he travelled through France and Italy,
mastering the languages and literature of both countries, and studying
their poets, particularly Dante, Boccaccio, and Alain Chartier. When he
returned, he opened a school in his monastery for teaching the sons of
the nobility composition and the art of versification. His acquirements
were, for the age, universal. He was a poet, a rhetorician, an astronomer,
a mathematician, a public disputant, and a theologian. He was born in
1370, ordained sub-deacon in 1389, deacon in 1393, and priest in 1397.
The time of his death is uncertain. His great patron was Humphrey, Duke
of Gloucester, to whom he complains sometimes of necessitous circumstances,
which were, perhaps, produced by indulgence, since he confesses himself to
be 'a lover of wine.'

The great merit of Lydgate is his versatility. This Warton has happily
expressed in a few sentences, which we shall quote:--

'He moves with equal ease in every form of composition. His hymns and
his ballads have the same degree of merit; and whether his subject be
the life of a hermit or a hero, of Saint Austin or Guy, Earl of Warwick,
ludicrous or legendary, religious or romantic, a history or an allegory,
he writes with facility. His transitions were rapid, from works of the
most serious and laborious kind, to sallies of levity and pieces of
popular entertainment. His muse was of universal access; and he was not
only the poet of his monastery, but of the world in general. If a
disguising was intended by the Company of Goldsmiths, a mask before His
Majesty at Eltham, a May game for the sheriffs and aldermen of London,
a mumming before the Lord Mayor, a procession of pageants, from the
"Creation," for the Festival of Corpus Christi, or a carol for the
coronation, Lydgate was consulted, and gave the poetry.'

Lydgate is, so far as we know, the first British bard who wrote for
hire. At the request of Whethamstede, the Abbot of St Alban's, he
translated a 'Life of St Alban' from Latin into English rhymes, and
received for the whole work one hundred shillings. His principal poems,
all founded on the works of other authors, are the 'Fall of Princes,'
the 'Siege of Thebes,' and the 'Destruction of Troy.' They are written
in a diffuse and verbose style, but are generally clear in sense, and
often very luxuriant in description. 'The London Lyckpenny' is a
fugitive poem, in which the author describes himself coming up to town
in search of legal redress for a wrong, and gives some curious
particulars of the condition of that city in the early part of the
fifteenth century.


CANACE, CONDEMNED TO DEATH BY HER FATHER AEOLUS, SENDS
TO HER GUILTY BROTHER MACAREUS THE LAST TESTIMONY OF
HER UNHAPPY PASSION.

Out of her swoonë when she did abraid,[1]
Knowing no mean but death in her distrèss,
To her brothèr full piteously she said,
'Cause of my sorrow, root of my heaviness,
That whilom were the source of my gladness,
When both our joys by will were so disposed,
Under one key our hearts to be enclosed.--

       *       *       *       *       *

This is mine end, I may it not astart;[2]
O brother mine, there is no more to say;
Lowly beseeching with mine wholë heart
For to remember specially, I pray,
If it befall my little son to dey[3]
That thou mayst after some mind on us have,
Suffer us both be buried in one grave.
I hold him strictly 'tween my armës twain,
Thou and Natùrë laid on me this charge;
He, guiltless, mustë with me suffer pain,
And, since thou art at freedom and at large,
Let kindness ourë love not so discharge,
But have a mind, wherever that thou be,
Once on a day upon my child and me.
On thee and me dependeth the trespàce
Touching our guilt and our great offence,
But, welaway! most àngelic of face
Our childë, young in his pure innocence,
Shall against right suffer death's violence,
Tender of limbs, God wot, full guiltëless
The goodly fair, that lieth here speechlèss.

A mouth he has, but wordës hath he none;
Cannot complain, alas! for none outràge:
Nor grutcheth[4] not, but lies here all alone
Still as a lamb, most meek of his visàge.
What heart of steel could do to him damàge,
Or suffer him die, beholding the mannère
And look benign of his twain even clear.'--

       *       *       *       *       *

Writing her letter, awhapped[5] all in drede,
In her right hand her pen began to quake,
And a sharp sword to make her heartë bleed,
In her left hand her father hath her take,
And most her sorrow was for her childë's sake,
Upon whose facë in her barme[6] sleepíng
Full many a tear she wept in complainíng.
After all this so as she stood and quoke,
Her child beholding mid of her paines' smart,
Without abode the sharpë sword she took,
And rove herselfë even to the heart;
Her child fell down, which mightë not astart,
Having no help to succour him nor save,
But in her blood theself began to bathe.

[1] 'Abraid:' awake.
[2] 'Astart:' escape.
[3] 'Dey:' die.
[4] 'Grutcheth:' murmureth.
[5] 'Awhapped:' confounded.
[6] 'Barme:' lap.


THE LONDON LYCKPENNY.

Within the hall, neither rich nor yet poor
  Would do for me ought, although I should die:
Which seeing, I gat me out of the door,
  Where Flemings began on me for to cry,
  'Master, what will you copen[1] or buy?
Fine felt hats? or spectacles to read?
Lay down your silver, and here you may speed.

Then to Westminster gate I presently went,
  When the sun was at high prime:
Cooks to me they took good intent,[2]
  And proffered me bread, with ale and wine,
  Ribs of beef, both fat and full fine;
A fair cloth they 'gan for to spread,
But, wanting money, I might not be sped.

Then unto London I did me hie,
  Of all the land it beareth the price;
'Hot peascods!' one began to cry,
  'Strawberry ripe, and cherries in the rise!'[3]
  One bade me come near and buy some spice;
Pepper, and saffron they 'gan me beed;[4]
But, for lack of money, I might not speed.

Then to the Cheap I 'gan me drawn,
  Where much people I saw for to stand;
One offered me velvet, silk, and lawn,
  Another he taketh me by the hand,
  'Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land!'
I never was used to such things, indeed;
And, wanting money, I might not speed.

Then went I forth by London Stone,
  Throughout all Canwick Street:
Drapers much cloth me offered anon;
  Then comes me one cried 'Hot sheep's feet;'
  One cried mackerel, rushes green, another 'gan greet,[5]
One bade me buy a hood to cover my head;
But, for want of money, I might not be sped.

Then I hied me unto East-Cheap,
  One cries ribs of beef, and many a pie;
Pewter pots they clattered on a heap;
  There was harp, pipe, and minstrelsy;
  Yea by cock! nay by cock! some began cry;
Some sung of Jenkin and Julian for their meed;
But, for lack of money, I might not speed.

Then into Cornhill anon I yode,[6]
  Where was much stolen gear among;
I saw where hung mine ownë hood,
  That I had lost among the throng;
  To buy my own hood I thought it wrong:
I knew it well, as I did my creed;
But, for lack of money, I could not speed.

The taverner took me by the sleeve,
  'Sir,' saith he, 'will you our wine assay?'
I answered, 'That can not much me grieve,
  A penny can do no more than it may;'
  I drank a pint, and for it did pay;
Yet, sore a-hungered from thence I yede,[7]
And, wanting money, I could not speed.

[1] 'Copen:' _koopen_(Flem.) to buy.
[2] 'Took good intent:' took notice; paid attention.
[3] 'In the rise:' on the branch.
[4] 'Beed:' offer.
[5] 'Greet:' cry.
[6] 'Yode:' went.
[7] 'Yede:' went.




HARDING, KAY, &c.


John Harding flourished about the year 1403. He fought at the battle of
Shrewsbury on the Percy side. He is the author of a poem entitled 'The
Chronicle of England unto the Reign of King Edward the Fourth, in
Verse.' It has no poetic merit, and little interest, except to the
antiquary. In the reign of the above king we find the first mention of
a Poet Laureate. John Kay was appointed by Edward, when he returned from
Italy, Poet Laureate to the king, but has, perhaps fortunately for the
world, left behind him no poems. Would that the same had been the case
with some of his successors in the office! There is reason to believe,
that for nearly two centuries ere this date, there had existed in the
court a personage, entitled the King's Versifier, (versificator,) to
whom one hundred shillings a-year was the salary, and that the title
was, by and by, changed to that of Poet Laureate, _i.e._, Laurelled
Poet. It had long been customary in the universities to crown scholars
when they graduated with laurel, and Warton thinks that from these the
first poet laureates were selected, less for their general genius than
for their skill in Latin verse. Certainly the earliest of the Laureate
poems, such as those by Baston and Gulielmus, who acted as royal poets
to Richard I. and Edward II., and wrote, the one on Richard's Crusade,
and the other on Edward's Siege of Stirling Castle, are in Latin. So
too are the productions of Andrew Bernard, who was the Poet Laureate
successively to Henry VII. and Henry VIII. It was not till after the
Reformation had lessened the superstitious veneration for the Latin
tongue that the laureates began to write in English. It is almost a
pity, we are sometimes disposed to think, that, in reference to such
odes as those of Pye, Whitehead, Colley Cibber, and even some of
Southey's, the old practice had not continued; since thus, in the first
place, we might have had a chance of elegant Latinity, in the absence of
poetry and sense; and since, secondly, the deficiencies of the laureate
poems would have been disguised, from the general eye at least, under
the veil of an unknown tongue. It is curious to notice about this period
the uprise of two didactic poets, both writing on alchymy, the chemistry
of that day, and neither displaying a spark of genius. These are John
Norton and George Ripley, both renowned for learning and knowledge of
their beloved occult sciences. Their poems, that by Norton, entitled
'The Ordinal,' and that by Ripley, entitled 'The Compound of Alchemie,'
are dry and rugged treatises, done into indifferent verse. One rather
fine fancy occurs in the first of these. It is that of an alchymist who
projected a bridge of gold over the Thames, near London, crowned with
pinnacles of gold, which, being studded with carbuncles, should diffuse
a blaze of light in the dark! Alchymy has had other and nobler singers
than Ripley and Norton. It has, as Warton remarks, 'enriched the store-
house of Arabian romance with many magnificent imageries.' It is the
inspiration of two of the noblest romances in this or any language
--'St. Leon' and 'Zanoni.' And its idea, transfigured into a transcen-
dental form, gave light and life and fire, and the loftiest poetry, to
the eloquence of the lamented Samuel Brown, whose tongue, as he talked
on his favourite theme, seemed transmuted into gold; nay, whose lips,
like the touch of Midas, seemed to create the effects of alchymy upon
every subject they approached, and upon every heart over which they
wielded their sorcery.

We pass now from this comparatively barren age in the history of English
poetry to a cluster of Scottish bards. The first of these is ROBERT
HENRYSON. He was schoolmaster at Dunfermline, and died some time before
1508. He is supposed by Lord Hailes to have been preceptor of youth in
the Benedictine convent in that place. He is the author of 'Robene and
Makyne,' a pastoral ballad of very considerable merit, and of which
Campbell says, somewhat too warmly, 'It is the first known pastoral,'
(he means in the Scottish language of course,) 'and one of the best, in
a dialect rich with the favours of the pastoral muse.' He wrote also a
sequel to Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cresseide' entitled 'The Testament of
Cresseide,' and thirteen Fables, of which copies, in MS., are preserved
in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. One of these, 'The Town and
Country Mouse,' tells that old story with considerable spirit and
humour. 'The Garment of Good Ladies' is an ingenious and beautiful
strain, written in that quaint style of allegorising which continued
popular as far down as the days of Cowley, and even later.


DINNER GIVEN BY THE TOWN MOUSE TO THE COUNTRY MOUSE.

*     *     *     Their harboury was ta'en
Into a spence,[1] where victual was plenty,
Both cheese and butter on long shelves right high,
With fish and flesh enough, both fresh and salt,
And pockis full of groats, both meal and malt.

After, when they disposed were to dine,
Withouten grace they wuish[2] and went to meat,
On every dish that cookmen can divine,
Mutton and beef stricken out in telyies grit;[3]
A lordë's fare thus can they counterfeit,
Except one thing--they drank the water clear
Instead of wine, but yet they made good cheer.

With blithe upcast and merry countenance,
The elder sister then spier'd[4] at her guest,
If that she thought by reason difference
Betwixt that chamber and her sairy[5] nest.
'Yea, dame,' quoth she, 'but how long will this last?'
'For evermore, I wait,[6] and longer too;'
'If that be true, ye are at ease,' quoth she.

To eke the cheer, in plenty forth they brought
A plate of groatis and a dish of meal,
A threif[7] of cakes, I trow she spared them nought,
Abundantly about her for to deal.
Furmage full fine she brought instead of jeil,
A white candle out of a coffer staw,[8]
Instead of spice, to creish[9] their teeth witha'.

Thus made they merry, till they might nae mair,
And, 'Hail, Yule, hail!' they cryit up on high;
But after joy oftentimes comes care,
And trouble after great prosperity.
Thus as they sat in all their jollity,
The spencer came with keyis in his hand,
Open'd the door, and them at dinner fand.

They tarried not to wash, as I suppose,
But on to go, who might the foremost win:
The burgess had a hole, and in she goes,
Her sister had no place to hide her in;
To see that silly mouse it was great sin,
So desolate and wild of all good rede,[10]
For very fear she fell in swoon, near dead.

Then as God would it fell in happy case,
The spencer had no leisure for to bide,
Neither to force, to seek, nor scare, nor chase,
But on he went and cast the door up-wide.
This burgess mouse his passage well has spied.
Out of her hole she came and cried on high,
'How, fair sister, cry peep, where'er thou be.'

The rural mouse lay flatlings on the ground,
And for the death she was full dreadand,
For to her heart struck many woful stound,
As in a fever trembling foot and hand;
And when her sister in such plight her fand,
For very pity she began to greet,
Syne[11] comfort gave, with words as honey sweet.

'Why lie ye thus? Rise up, my sister dear,
Come to your meat, this peril is o'erpast.'
The other answer'd with a heavy cheer,
'I may nought eat, so sore I am aghast.
Lever[12] I had this forty dayis fast,
With water kail, and green beans and peas,
Than all your feast with this dread and disease.'

With fair 'treaty, yet gart she her arise;
To board they went, and on together sat,
But scantly had they drunken once or twice,
When in came Gib Huntér, our jolly cat,
And bade God speed. The burgess up then gat,
And to her hole she fled as fire of flint;
Bawdrons[13] the other by the back has hent.[14]

From foot to foot he cast her to and frae,
Whiles up, whiles down, as cant[15] as any kid;
Whiles would he let her run under the strae[16]
Whiles would he wink and play with her buik-hid;[17]
Thus to the silly mouse great harm he did;
Till at the last, through fair fortune and hap,
Betwixt the dresser and the wall she crap.[18]

Syne up in haste behind the panelling,
So high she clamb, that Gilbert might not get her,
And by the cluiks[19] craftily can hing,
Till he was gone, her cheer was all the better:
Syne down she lap, when there was none to let her;
Then on the burgess mouse loud could she cry,
'Farewell, sister, here I thy feast defy.

Thy mangery is minget[20] all with care,
Thy guise is good, thy gane-full[21] sour as gall;
The fashion of thy feris is but fair,
So shall thou find hereafterward may fall.
I thank yon curtain, and yon parpane[22] wall,
Of my defence now from yon cruel beast;
Almighty God, keep me from such a feast!

Were I into the place that I came frae,
For weal nor woe I should ne'er come again.'
With that she took her leave, and forth can gae,
Till through the corn, till through the plain.
When she was forth and free she was right fain,
And merrily linkit unto the muir,
I cannot tell how afterward she fure.[23]

But I heard syne she passed to her den,
As warm as wool, suppose it was not grit,
Full beinly[24] stuffed was both butt and ben,
With peas and nuts, and beans, and rye and wheat;
Whene'er she liked, she had enough of meat,
In quiet and ease, withouten [any] dread,
But to her sister's feast no more she gaed.


[FROM THE MORAL.]

Blessed be simple life, withouten dreid;
Blessed be sober feast in quieté;
Who has enough, of no more has he need,
Though it be little into quantity.
Great abundance, and blind prosperity,
Ofttimës make an evil conclusion;
The sweetest life, therefore, in this country,
Is of sickerness,[25] with small possession.

[1] 'Spence:' pantry.
[2] 'Wuish:' washed.
[3] 'Telyies grit:' great pieces.
[4] 'Spier'd;' asked.
[5] 'Sairy:' sorry.
[6] 'Wait:' expect.
[7] 'Threif:' a set of twenty-four.
[8] 'Staw:' stole.
[9] 'Creish:' grease.
[10] 'rede:' counsel.
[11] 'Syne:' then.
[12] 'Lever:' rather.
[13] 'Bawdrons:' the cat.
[14] 'Hent:' seized.
[15] 'Cant:' lively.
[16] 'Strae:' straw.
[17] 'Buik-hid:' body.
[18] 'Crap:' crept.
[19] 'Cluiks:' claws.
[20] 'Minget:' mixed.
[21] 'Gane-full:' mouthful.
[22] 'Parpane:' partition.
[23] 'Fure:' went.
[24] 'Beinly:' snugly.
[25] 'Sickerness:' security.



THE GARMENT OF GOOD LADIES.

Would my good lady love me best,
  And work after my will,
I should a garment goodliest
  Gar[1] make her body till.[2]

Of high honoùr should be her hood,
  Upon her head to wear,
Garnish'd with governance, so good
  No deeming[3] should her deir,[4]

Her sark[5] should be her body next,
  Of chastity so white:
With shame and dread together mixt,
  The same should be perfite.[6]

Her kirtle should be of clean constance,
  Laced with lesum[7] love;
The mailies[8] of continuance,
  For never to remove.

Her gown should be of goodliness,
  Well ribbon'd with renown;
Purfill'd[9] with pleasure in ilk[10] place,
  Furred with fine fashioùn.

Her belt should be of benignity,
  About her middle meet;
Her mantle of humility,
  To thole[11] both wind and weet.[12]

Her hat should be of fair havìng,
  And her tippet of truth;
Her patelet of good pansìng,[13]
  Her hals-ribbon of ruth.[14]

Her sleeves should be of esperance,
  To keep her from despair;
Her glovës of good governance,
  To hide her fingers fair.

Her shoes should be of sickerness,[15]
  In sign that she not slide;
Her hose of honesty, I guess,
  I should for her provide.

Would she put on this garment gay,
  I durst swear by my seill,[16]
That she wore never green nor gray
That set[17] her half so weel.

[1] 'Gar:' cause.
[2] 'Till:' to.
[3] 'Deeming:' opinion.
[4] 'Deir:' injure.
[5] 'Sark:' shift.
[6] 'Perfite:' perfect.
[7] 'Lesum:' lawful.
[8] 'Mailies:' eyelet-holes.
[9] 'Purfill'd:' fringed.
[10] 'Ilk:' each.
[11] 'Thole:' endure.
[12] 'Weet:': wet.
[13] 'Pansing:' thinking.
[14] 'Her hals-ribbon of ruth:' her neck-ribbon of pity.
[15] 'Sickerness:' firmness.
[16] 'Seill:' salvation.
[17] 'Set:' became.




WILLIAM DUNBAR


This was a man of the true and sovereign seed of genius. Sir Walter
Scott calls Dunbar 'a poet unrivalled by any--that Scotland has ever
produced.' We venture to call him the Dante of Scotland; nay, we
question if any English poet has surpassed 'The Dance of the Seven
Deadly Sins through Hell' in its peculiarly Dantesque qualities of
severe and purged grandeur; of deep sincerity, and in that air of moral
disappointment and sorrow, approaching despair, which distinguished the
sad-hearted lover of Beatrice, who might almost have exclaimed, with one
yet mightier than he in his misery and more miserable in his might,

  'Where'er I am is Hell--myself am Hell.'

Foster, in an entry in his journal, (we quote from memory,) says, 'I
have just seen the moon rising, and wish the impression to be eternal.
What a look she casts upon earth, like that of a celestial being who
loves our planet still, but has given up all hope of ever doing her any
good or seeing her become any better--so serene she seems in her settled
and unutterable sadness.' Such, we have often fancied, was the feeling
of the great Florentine toward the world, and which--pained, pitying,
yearning enthusiast that he was!--escaped irresistibly from those deep-
set eyes, that adamantine jaw, and that brow, wearing the laurel, proudly
yet painfully, as if it were a crown of everlasting fire! Dunbar was not
altogether a Dante, either in melancholy or in power, but his 'Dance'
reveals kindred moods, operating at times on a kindred genius.

In Dante humour existed too, but ere it could come up from his deep
nature to the surface, it must freeze and stiffen into monumental scorn
--a laughter that seemed, while mocking at all things else, to mock at
its own mockery most of all. Aird speaks in his 'Demoniac,' of a smile
upon his hero's brow,

                 'Like the lightning of a hope about to DIE
  For ever from the furrow'd brows of Hell's Eternity.'

Dante's smile may rather be compared to the RISING of a false and self-
detected hope upon the lost brows where it is never to come to dawn, and
where, nevertheless, it remains for ever, like a smile carved upon
a sepulchre. Dunbar has a more joyous disposition than his Italian
prototype and master, and he indulges himself to the top of his bent,
but in a style (particularly in his 'Twa Married Women and the Widow,'
and in 'The Friars of Berwick,' which is not, however, quite certainly
his) too coarse and prurient for the taste of this age.

'The Merle and the Nightingale' is one of the finest of Moelibean poems.
Beautiful is the contest between the two sweet singers as to whether the
love of man or the love of God be the nobler, and more beautiful still
their reconciliation, when

  'Then sang they both with voices loud and clear,
   The Merle sang, "Man, love God that has thee wrought."
   The Nightingale sang, "Man, love the Lord most dear,
   That thee and all this world made of nought."
   The Merle said, "Love him that thy love has sought
   From heaven to earth, and here took flesh and bone."
   The Nightingale sang. "And with his death thee bought:
   All love is lost, but upon him alone."

  _'Then flew these birds over the boughis sheen,
   Singing of love among the leaves small.'_

William Dunbar is said to have been born about the year 1465. He
received his education at St Andrews, and took there the degree of M.A.
in 1479. He became then a friar of the Franciscan order, (Grey Friars,)
and in the exercise of his profession seems to have rambled over all
Scotland, England, and France, preaching, begging, and, according to his
own confession, cheating, lying, and cajoling. Yet if this kind of life
was not propitious, in his case, to morality, it must have been to the
development of the poetic faculty. It enabled him to see all var

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/9667