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 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES 
 
 THE AGE OF TRANSITION 
 VOL. I
 
 HANDBOOKS OP ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES. 
 
 Crown 8vo, 4s. Qd. net each. 
 
 THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M. A. 
 
 THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, 
 M.A. With an Introduction by Professor HALES. 3rd 
 Edition, revised. 
 
 THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. 
 SNELL, M.A. 2vols. Vol. I. The Poets. Vol. II. The 
 Dramatists and Prose Writers. With an Introduction 
 by Professor HALES. 2nd Edition. 
 
 THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS 
 SECCOMBE and J. W. ALLEN With an Introduction 
 by Professor HALES. 2 vols. Vol. I. Poetry and 
 Prose. Vol. II. The Drama. 7th Edition, revised. 
 
 THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the Rev. Canon 
 J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A. With Introduction, etc., 
 by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. 8th Edition. 
 
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By R. GAR- 
 NETT, C. B. , LL. D. 1th Edition. 
 
 THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1748). By JOHN DENNIS. 
 10th Edition. 
 
 THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1748-1798). By THOMAS 
 SECCOMBE. 1th Edition, revised. 
 
 THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832). By Pro- 
 fessor C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D. 12th Edition. 
 
 THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By Professor 
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 THE 
 
 AGE OF TRANSITION 
 
 1400 1580 
 
 BY 
 
 F. J. SNELL, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' THE AGE OF CHAUCKR,' ETC. 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 THE TOETS 
 
 LONDON 
 
 G. HELL AND SONS, LTD. 
 1920
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE object of the present work is to present a lucid and 
 succinct account of English and Scottish literature during 
 the period that intervenes between Chaucer and Spenser; 
 and in order that the reader may derive distinct and 
 tangible impressions, considerable care has been bestowed 
 on the grouping of the various matters. It is the misfor- 
 tune of some otherwise excellent books that in them this 
 vital question of arrangement is either utterly neglected 
 or regarded as purely secondary, so that the process of 
 absorbing and digesting their contents is truly formid- 
 able. 
 
 The author has been at pains to consult previous his- 
 tories (unfortunately, the second volume of M. Jusserand's 
 work appeared too late for the purpose), but happily there 
 have been available for the study of the writings embraced 
 in this sketch many publications, including the editions of 
 the E. E. T. S. and Professor's Arber's reprints. As a 
 general introduction to the literature of the age Dr. Skeat's 
 specimens will be found invaluable. Mr. A. W. Pollard's 
 Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse, though of genuine 
 utility, is hardly representative enough; the collection, in- 
 deed, is a little capricious. Omissions, however, are easy, 
 and the author of the present volumes much regrets not 
 having included a notice of that deserving writer, Thomas 
 Wilson, although he has twice mentioned him in the text.
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 In another edition this oversight will assuredly not be re- 
 peated. 
 
 Grateful acknowledgments are due to Professor Hales 
 for his kind aid and encouragement. Both editor and 
 author have accomplished the work under circumstances 
 of some difficulty; now that it is complete it is hoped that 
 it may prove a serviceable guide to the poetry and prose 
 of an era of which little is generally known. 
 
 F. J. SNELL. 
 
 TIVKBTON, 
 
 March 23rd, 11)05.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREPACK ......*.. v 
 THE POETS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. CHAUCER'S ENGLISH DISCIPLES . , , , , 1 
 
 II. OCCLEVE AND LYDGATE ...... 17 
 
 ill. SCOTTISH MAKERS 48 
 
 IV. THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCOTTISH POESY ... 81 
 
 V. THE SPENSERIAN VANGUARD . . . , .112 
 
 VI. POETS OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE , . .148 
 
 VII. BALLADS AND SONGS .... , . 197 
 
 Cii ROXOLOGICAL TABLE . .,,,.. 215 
 INDEX .... , 21 u

 
 TEIE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 THE POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHAUCER'S ENGLISH DISCIPLES. 
 
 THE title of this chapter may perhaps suggest that 
 Chaucer's eminence as a poet won for him a 
 following on the Continent, but our object in 
 selecting it was very different. A moment's 
 reflection will show that his significance was bound to be 
 entirely insular. The language in which he wrote may be 
 described as a chaos of discordant elements, which, mainly 
 through his own compositions and those of his contem- 
 poraries, Gower and Langland, was just acquiring some 
 measure of fixity. English, in those days, would have been 
 by no means easy to learn, and substantial inducements to 
 master a tongue, which in origin and character differed so 
 greatly from French the golden speech of the Middle 
 Age were wanting. Whether in letters or affairs, an 
 Englishman could not dispense with a knowledge of 
 French; to a Frenchman, on the other hand, English was 
 not indispensable, or, save in the case of invasion, of much 
 use. 
 
 Scotland, however, was still a foreign country, and the 
 i. B
 
 2 THE AOE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Scottish language of course, we allude to Lowland Scots 
 could claim a dignity and independence not inferior to 
 that of England. The elevation of the East Midland dia- 
 lect to the position of the classic or literary form of Eng- 
 lish, practically to the exclusion of other dialects, tended 
 to emphasize the distinctions between the languages spoken 
 at the two capitals, Edinburgh and London, but the 
 writings of the Southrons wore perfectly intelligible beyond 
 the Tweed; and despite the mutual antipathy which grew 
 rather than diminished, there is abundant evidence that 
 Chaucer's poetry found many admirers in the northern 
 kingdom, where indeed his special excellences were copied 
 more happily than in England. 
 
 In referring, then, to Chaucer's English disciples, we em- 
 ploy the phrase in contradistinction to the poet's Scottish 
 imitators mainly, but with a further limitation confining 
 it to his immediate associates and successors. The glory 
 of Chaucer, like the lingering hues of a sunset, covers 
 the whole of the fifteenth, and r, goodly portion of the 
 sixteenth century, but in England, at any rate, the un- 
 critical appreciation of certain versifiers we are thinking 
 especially of Stephen Hawes led them to see in Lyd- 
 gate a very respectable rival of Chaucer, one to whom 
 they might, without undue disparagement of their own 
 merits, pay homage and acknowledge obligations, as to a 
 master. 
 
 The renown of a great writer conduces to varying re- 
 sults according to the talents and temperaments of those 
 upon whom it acts. Men of original genius may be im- 
 pelled thereby to generous emulation and feats of literary 
 adventure, of which they would not otherwise have dreamed. 
 This, as we shall see, was the effect in Scotland, which did 
 not, it is true, produce another Chaucer, yet teemed with 
 bards who imbibed much valuable inspiration from the
 
 THE POETS. 3 
 
 English maker, without too great a sacrifice of their native 
 quality. The massive build and towering stature of Apollo's 
 elect may, however, exercise a daunting and depressing in- 
 fluence. Adoration may assume a slavish attitude and 
 flatter with abject imitation, as was the case with Chaucer's 
 English disciples, each of whom his ' elvish ' spirit rode as 
 an incubus, while the study of his writings was for them 
 a fatal discipline, a ruinous fascination. So dazzled by his 
 brilliancy were they as to be dissuaded from experiments 
 which had not, so to speak, his sanction; and, whilst con- 
 ceiving that perfection lay in acquiring the graces of their 
 model, they did not even penetrate the secrets of his tech- 
 nique, and were always far from fathoming the deep inner 
 or spiritual efficacy, apart from which the highest technical 
 skill is cold, and dead, and unimpressive. 
 
 Some there were, however, who deemed the club of Her- 
 cules too unwieldy, who, conscious of dis- 
 John Shirley, parity, strove not to bend the bow of mighty 
 Ulysses. Of such was John Shirley. Instead 
 of embarking on a hopeless and impossible labour, he 
 ministered to his favourite poet's fame in the voluntary 
 capacity of literary executor and editor. This was anything 
 but a superfluous mission, since, to take only one example, 
 despite Shirley's care and in the teeth of his express de- 
 claration to the contrary, Lydgate's Black Knight was long 
 attributed to Chaucer, who, like every other great poet, 
 could not escape his pack of apocrypha. English fifteenth- 
 century verse would seem to have had an unhappy gift of 
 becoming misplaced, for whereas the Black Knight was 
 fathered on Chaucer, Lydgate's master, his Temple of 
 Qlasa, was given most unfairly to his scholar, Hawes. 
 These instances by no means exhaust the comedy of errors, 
 and it was in every sense a fortunate choice that induced 
 Shirley to devote his industry and leisure to the oversight
 
 4 TIIK AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 of Chaucer's ' remains.' His critical sagacity, to be sure, 
 was sometimes at fault. It was a colossal blunder, for in- 
 stance, to assign to Chaucer the Chronicle printed in Mr. 
 Furnivall's Odd Texts of the minor poems. Still, Shirley's 
 honesty of purpose cannot be impeached, and seeing that 
 he was so nearly contemporary with Chaucer, his evidence 
 will always be treated with the profoundest respect. Nor 
 must we forget his extraordinary diligence in multiplying 
 and circulating copies of the poet's works a service which, 
 as having been rendered in the days before the printing- 
 press, can hardly be over-estimated. It is unlucky that we 
 do not know more of this laborious man. According to 
 Stowe he lived to the great age of ninety, and died 
 October 21st, 1456. 
 
 A colossal blunder! The censure is no whit too strong if 
 Shirley intended to assign (and many are apt to think 
 that he did) the trivial and worthless Chronicle to Chaucer. 
 On that point there is happily some room for doubt, and, 
 according to all judicial precedent, Shirley should be given 
 the benefit of it, although, if error has arisen, he has cer- 
 tainly done his part in producing it by the obscurity of his 
 reference. He entitles the nine poor stanzas The Chronicle 
 made by Chaucer, which is fairly explicit, and to a mediaeval 
 reader the term ' made ' would have suggested rather more 
 than it does to us, for in those days it was technical, 
 artistic, and spoke of poet's handiwork. If the title em- 
 boldens us to assume, not perhaps Chaucer's authorship, 
 but Shirley's belief, the rubric ' Here follow the names of 
 the nine worshipfullest ladies found ... by Chaucer,' 
 though not irreconcilable with the first impression, is 
 evidently compatible with another conception of the pur- 
 port and origin of the poem. Such an advertisement might 
 well lead us to expect a bare prose catalogue, but in lieu 
 of that we have these stanzas giving an epitome in sorry
 
 THE POETS. 5 
 
 rhymes, and not over-accurate sense, of the Legend of Good 
 Women. Professor Skeat sees in this performance merely a 
 poetical exercise of Shirley himself, who, though less for- 
 tunate than his seventeenth-century namesake, can be 
 convicted of dabbling in rhyme. Failing this explanation, 
 there is nothing for it but to suppose that Shirley con- 
 ceived of the stanzas as a rough draft of Chaucer's own 
 inditing, which is to tax his editor with a colossal blunder. 
 The fact that many blunders fully as bad have been com- 
 mitted in connection with the same poet, is no argument 
 either one way or the other, but Shirley, we think, should 
 be blamed for his sad editing rather than for moral or 
 critical obliquity. It is a strange and dishonest trade 
 that of a literary ' ghost,' and in the fifteenth century there 
 was not much scope for it; but, as we have seen, it was a 
 golden age of misallotments, with some of which we shall 
 now proceed to deal. 
 
 At one time or another no fewer than seventy pieces, 
 
 now recognized as spurious, have been fathered 
 The Pack of -,, , ,-. V . , . , 
 
 on Chaucer, and that in spite of clear internal 
 Apocrypha. ' . . ^ 
 
 testimony disclaiming the paternity. We may 
 take, for example, a very charming allegorical poem, The 
 Flower and the Leaf, which, though Chaucerian in style, is 
 avowedly the composition of a lady the same, perchance, 
 that rhymed the Assembly of Ladies, another product of 
 the period which has come down to us in association with 
 Chaucer's works. Now it must be owned that Chaucer, in 
 a roguish fit, may have elected to personate one of the 
 opposite sex, but, as the theory is neither necessary nor 
 probable, it is better to admit the existence of an unknown 
 poetess, and hold that those responsible for the attribution 
 either overlooked, or did not connect with the question of 
 origin, the scene wherein the writer, seeking to the Queen 
 of the Leaf, is accosted as ' daughter.'
 
 6 THE AOE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 The Cuckoo and the Nightingale has been conjecturallj 
 
 assigned to Occleve, and the grounds for tak- 
 The Cuckoo .-> i ., , x 
 
 , ., ing this course seem plausible enough. In 
 
 Nightingale. * ne ^ rst pl ac e it is conceded that Occleve suc- 
 ceeded in observing more nearly than any of 
 his contemporaries Chaucer's metrical rules, with the result 
 that his writings, in certain respects, possess a technical 
 finish not discoverable in other productions of the age. 
 This alone provides good reason for doubting the sug- 
 gestion of ouo manuscript, which attributes the poem to 
 ' Clanvowe.' The person intended is thought to have been 
 Sir Thomas Clanvowe, a man of some eminence at the time, 
 albeit he has left no reputation for literary accomplishment. 
 The occurrence of the name ' Clanvowe ' in this connection 
 has an unmistakable significance, for a legal document 
 which mentions Occleve mentions also Sir John Clanvowe, a 
 famous soldier and man of affairs, who was perhaps the 
 father of Sir Thomas, and, in any case, his senior by many 
 years. In the Bodley copy the poem is entitled not the 
 Cuckoo and the Nightingale, but ' the boke of Cupid god of 
 Loue,' whilst the Letter of Cupid, which is by Occleve or 
 nobody, is styled, ' the lettre of Cupid god of loue.' The 
 parallelism is very striking, and we should gather from it 
 either that the author of the two poems was one and the 
 same in other words, Occleve; or that Occleve imitated 
 an older poem. Now Sir John Clanvowe, whose claim Mr. 
 G. L. Kittredge espouses in opposition to that of his name- 
 sake Sir Thomas, Professor Skeat's candidate, died in 1391 
 or thereabouts. There is just one piece of evidence for re- 
 jecting so early a date for the poem and assigning it either 
 to Occleve or Sir Thomas Clauvowe. The metre, of a very 
 rare and singular type, appears to have been borrowed from 
 Chaucer's wholly dissimilar Complaint to his Purse, which 
 was written in 1399. Now the Letter of Cupid was composed
 
 THE POETS. 7 
 
 about 1402, so that, as far as can be judged, the poems 
 roughly synchronize. It is to be noticed that the first two 
 lines are a quotation from Chaucer's Knight's Tale; and 
 the notion of a parliament of birds under the presidency of 
 the eagle was inspired, there can be little doubt, by the 
 well-known allegory. Whether the Cuckoo and the Night- 
 ingale covers any personal or political relationships, is not 
 certain. Outwardly, at all events, it resolves itself into an 
 expression of love and loathing, of love for the melodious 
 nightingale, and loathing for the lewd cuckoo. 
 
 The ballade and envoy, which in Bell's Chaucer im- 
 mediately succeed this poem, though possessing no neces- 
 sary connection with it, form an address to a lady whose 
 Christian name may be considered ascertained. The two 
 stanzas exhibit a discrepancy in the number of lines, and 
 Professor Skeat, in calling attention to the circumstance, 
 points out the reason namely, that the initial letters of 
 the envoy compose an anagram on the name 'Alison,' 
 which, by the way, was a very common name in mediaeval 
 times. The little poem is not Chaucer's it is not nearly 
 good enough for Chaucer. But it is a genuine fifteenth- 
 century product ; of that the manuscript authority leaves 
 no manner of doubt. 
 
 It is remarkable that Tyrwhitt, whilst rejecting with a 
 good heart the majority of the compositions 
 The Virelai. masquerading as Chaucer's, interposed a plea 
 on behalf of the Court of Love. With similar in- 
 consistency he was anxious to spare the Virelai, which the 
 language shows to be late, and the rhymes to be none of 
 Chaucer's. Let us speak first of the Virelai. Its false at- 
 tribution is perhaps not wholly a subject for regret, for the 
 error must have tended to conserve it, and such rare and 
 interesting bric-a-brac was worth saving, more than some 
 of our early literature. Possibly it was a vague feeling of
 
 8 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 its preciousness that prevailed with Tyrwhitt to ascribe the 
 enamel to the great poet, for whom, with our rigid modern 
 principles of criticism, it can no longer be claimed. As it 
 will hardly fall within the compass of the present volume to 
 discuss anew the highly artificial forms of verse in which the 
 old French poets and their English imitators embalmed 
 their sentiments as in vases of alabaster, it is permissible 
 to allude to another specimen which belongs to our period, 
 and, owing to circumstances, has a special interest of its 
 own. We refer to the ' balet ' of the ill-fated Lord Kivers. 
 It is called a 'balet' by the contemporary historian Rouse, 
 to whom we owe its preservation, but it agrees in all the 
 details of form with the Virelai, which Tyrwhitt and others 
 assign to Chaucer. Rivers' little poem was composed in 
 Pomfret, or Pontefract, Castle, not long before his execu- 
 tion in 1483, when, apparently, he had abandoned all hope 
 of reprieve; and the mere choice of the metre, which seems 
 unmeet for all but ' laborious trifles,' is confirmatory of his 
 declared peace of mind: 
 
 Willing to die, methinks, truly 
 
 Bounden am I, and that greatly to be content. 
 
 The essence of the Virelai, as will be recognized on a com- 
 parison of these examples, lies in the recurrence of the same 
 rhymes, not only at the end of the lines, but in the middle. 
 The paucity of rhymes in English dissuades from such at- 
 tempts, which, as things are, involve sacrifice either in the 
 expression or in the rhyming. Neither of these poems is 
 rhymed as it should be; and, as one has probably been 
 copied from the other, and both are late, it is a nice question 
 which served to keep the other in countenance. Anyhow, 
 we may not say with Percy that ' the little piece is written 
 in imitation of a poem of Chaucer's.'
 
 THE POETS. 9 
 
 Now let us turn to the Court of Love, of which Tyrwhitt 
 too rashly observes, ' I am induced by the in- 
 f , ternal evidence to consider it as one of Chaucer's 
 
 genuine productions.' By ' internal evidence ' 
 he seems to mean merely a vague subjective impression, 
 but to those who in more recent times have subjected the 
 work to fresh scrutiny the words imply something entirely 
 different. Professor Skeat finds that the poem contains 
 simply no cases of the final e possessing syllabic value, and 
 the fact, in his eyes, suffices to destroy all possibility of 
 Chaucerian authorship. This test is at once simple and 
 decisive, but the language is so obtrusively modern, the 
 verse so bare of all the boulders which jut up and impede 
 the flow of fifteenth-century poetry, especially when recited 
 by the novice, that these characteristics might well have 
 provoked scepticism. The poem bears on its face the im- 
 print of its age. It is too late for Occleve, too late for 
 Hawes. Frankly, it is an aerolite of the sixteenth century, 
 which has been drawn within the orbit and embedded in 
 the crust of the fourteenth-century luminary. 
 
 What was it then that led Tyrwhitt to adopt the opposite 
 view? What internal evidence is there which may be 
 thought to support it? Let us consider the matter of the 
 poem. It deals, though not explicitly or by way of historical 
 allusion, with a remarkable institution of Provence, which 
 in Chaucer's day was extinct, though by no means forgotten 
 or devoid of influence. In the age of Sackville and Spenser 
 it was an anachrouism, which had lost its savour and power 
 of appeal. While it would be absurd, as a general principle, 
 to determine the date of compositions by their subject- 
 matter, instances occur, as here, in which this factor may 
 have a bearing on questions of origin. A poem which by its 
 title and ingredients e.g., the ' statutes' recalls an actual 
 social custom, may be suspected of arising not too long
 
 10 Til li AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 after its surcease. The name Rosiall, too, was it not sug- 
 gested by the Romance of the Rose, which in the early fif- 
 teenth century was still much in request? It seems to us 
 not improbable that the work is a sort of refacimento, the 
 more so as, despite the absence of final c's with virtue in 
 them, there are many examples of the old plural, es, form- 
 ing an additional syllable a grammatical incident not to 
 bo traced in the poems of Surrey and his contemporaries. 
 Still we should hesitate to ascribe the original to Chaucer. 
 The ' Galf rid ' mentioned in the proem can surely be none 
 other than the great English poet who, soon after his death, 
 acquired in the estimation of his disciples equal authority 
 with Virgil and Cicero. The mention of these writers as 
 models of style reminds us of Occleve's lament for Chaucer 
 in which they are similarly and, in one sense, illogically 
 associated. We find it hard, we must confess, to avoid the 
 suspicion that Occleve had a hand in the Court of Love, 
 the subject of which would have been congenial to his 
 somewhat formal taste, while the character and remarks of 
 Avaunter make us think of the Letter of Cupid, especially 
 the lines: 
 
 Is this a fair avaunt ? Is this honour? 
 
 A man himself accuse thus, and defame, etc. 
 
 One curious feature in the Court of Love must not be 
 omitted namely, the conclusion, in which the birds are re- 
 presented as going through a complete service after the 
 Roman model, Latin incipito's being inserted from time to 
 time as landmarks, and to heighten the verisimilitude. 
 Already, in the Book of the Duchess, something of the kind 
 had been adumbrated, and the author of this poem, who- 
 ever he may have been, appears to have expanded the hint. 
 The cuckoo, always the mauvais enfant among birds, plays 
 his part in a thoroughly Chaucerian style, first feigning
 
 THE POETS. 11 
 
 solemnity and acquiescence, and then bursting into a laugh 
 that bewrays his true sentiments: 
 
 I thank it God that I should end the song 
 And all the service that hath been so long. 
 
 Some of the shorter poems assigned to Chaucer, though 
 not authentic or only partly so, are not to be 
 Sayings. scorned, for, even when of slight intrinsic value, 
 the desire to account for them conducts us into 
 fields of pleasant inquiry. In King Lear we encounter a 
 set of rhymes which Professor Skeat regards as a quotation 
 from some popular rigmarole, but which seems to us rather 
 a Shakespearean parody on such effusions. The ' fool ' that 
 utters it dubs the vaticination ' Merlin's Prophecy.' Now 
 in Chaucer's time this victim of Vivien received the credit 
 of many a peep into futurity. Just as Virgil was the mage 
 of mediaeval Italy, so was Merlin the recognized oracle of 
 Plantagenet England. How far this was the case may be 
 ascertained by turning to an easily accessible work, Mr. 
 Hall's excellent edition of Laurence Minot. We shall there 
 find not only Minot's allusions to Merlin as a spiritual 
 treasure hid in dark places, but an appendix containing a 
 Middle English poem entitled the Prophecies of Merlin. 
 Now amongst the minor poems in Bell's comprehensive 
 edition of Chaucer, which is to students a sort of Authorized 
 Version, we meet with a little rhyme of precisely the same 
 character. The history of this rhyme is, to some extent, 
 known. It can be traced to Caxton's edition of Chaucer's 
 Anelida and Purse, in which it served with two other say- 
 ings, 1 to adorn a blank leaf. If, however, we compare Bell's 
 Chi nicer with Caxton's, we shall find that in the latter the 
 poem has an altered look. The alteration is probably not 
 due to Caxton for the reason that ho came before Speght, by 
 
 1 To be found iu Bell's ' Chaucer,' iv. p. 426.
 
 12 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 whom the Bell version was supplied, the variant being not 
 necessarily an ' improvement.' So far as Caxton is concerned 
 it is fairly certain that he did not intend these ' sayings ' 
 to be regarded as Chaucer's, since he marks the conclusion 
 of the Chaucerian portion with an explicit, which may be 
 interpreted as a bar sinister to what follows. 
 
 A similar period is badly needed in Chaucer's Proverbs, 
 the first eight lines of which are believed to 
 Poems k g enu ^ ne while Shirley attributes the two 
 
 succeeding stanzas to one ' Halsham esquire.' 
 They may, however, be Lydgate's. La Belle Dame sans 
 Merci is a translation of a French poem by Alain Chartier 
 'Maister Alleyn.' It cannot be Chaucer's handiwork, 
 because in 1400, the date of the English poet's death, 
 Chartier was only fourteen years of age. Moreover, in one 
 of the manuscripts it is expressly assigned to a Sir Richard 
 Eos. Leaulte vault Bichesse, seemingly a fragment of a 
 longer poem, has been transmitted in Scottish dress, which 
 circumstance may or may not be due to the scribe. This 
 particular scribe, at all events, wiser than some of his 
 brethren, is sufficiently well-advised not to attribute the 
 poem to Chaucer, and so the question presents itself 
 Whose is it? Professor Skeat would fain give it to King 
 James I, but, as he confesses, there is not a particle of 
 evidence connecting it with the poet-monarch, or with any 
 writer of eminence. The Ballade in Commendation of Our 
 Lady is thought to be Lydgate's, and the Goodly Ballade 
 of Chaucer may have been composed by Occleve, who makes 
 much of St. Margaret in his Letter of Cupid. 
 
 This is perhaps all that we need say regarding the pseudo- 
 Chaucerian poems. Concerning the prose 
 Prose Pieces, candidates, Jack Upland is an anticlerical 
 treatise, and why should Chaucer desire to 
 assail the friars save in his own way, with his own safe and
 
 THE POETS. 13 
 
 inimitable raillery? The Testament of Love is rendered in- 
 eligible by a panegyrical passage relating to Chaucer, who, 
 though sometimes pleasantly egoistical, was not wont to 
 indulge in immoderate self-praise, or to blow his trumpet 
 in this style: 
 
 Quoth Love, I shall tell thee this lesson to learn mine own 
 true servant, the noble philosophical poet in English, which 
 evermore him basic th, and travailleth right sore, my name to 
 increase, wherefore all that willen me good, owe to do him wor- 
 ship and reverence both; truly his better nor his peer, in school 
 of my rales, could I never find : He, quoth she, in a treatise 
 that he made of my servant Troilus hath this matter touched, 
 and at the full this question assoiled. Certainly, his noble 
 sayings can I not amend; in goodness of gentlemanlike speech, 
 without any manner of nicety of storier's imagination, in wit and 
 in good reason of sentence, he passeth all other makers : ' 
 
 There are strange things in literature, but Chaucer was 
 not of such beggarly reputation that he needed to blazon 
 himself after this fashion, and we cannot believe that he 
 did. The fact is that, with all his great and unchallenge- 
 able merits, he was rather over-estimated than otherwise, 
 because for a long period there was no one to measure him 
 by. As Ascham says, men made this ' worthy wit ' their 
 God in verse, so that they were unable to discern any f axilts ; 
 he was the Shakespeare of our early poets. This was in 
 several ways a misfortune for them. One way was that, 
 unless he took ample security, no man could call his goods 
 his own. It was, and continued to be, a question, whether 
 anything meritorious could proceed from anyone but 
 Chaucer. Its very merit hall-marked it, so to speak, as his; 
 
 1 Thanks to the joint efforts of Professor Skeat and Mr. Bradley, 
 the name of the real author of the Testament of Love has been dis- 
 covered. He was Thomas Usk*
 
 14 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 and, even to this day, the chief use of such writers as 
 Lydgate and Occleve would seein to be that of dust-bins, 
 to receive whatever poetical rubbish may be deemed un- 
 worthy of their master, whilst the surest proof of an 
 esoteric appreciation of Chaucer is to scoff at his lackeys. 
 This pitiless contempt is a little exaggerated ; but, no matter 
 what opinion we may entertain of Chaucer's successors, it 
 is fortunate that the fear of being dwarfed, of appearing 
 mediocre and foolish, did not weigh with our fifteenth- 
 century versifiers, who, if they could not be Chaucers or 
 Shakespeares, had a duty to perform as Xafjnratityopoi. The 
 torch that Chaucer had lighted that is the love of poetry 
 and poetic composition required to be constantly relumed 
 in a country so lately reclaimed from barbarism, whose 
 language, composed of diverse elements, needed at once 
 fixing and enriching. Warton, one of the most candid of 
 our literary historians, freely recognizes this service of the 
 despised bards. Though he calls Occleve a ' feeble writer,' 
 he admits that ' his compositions continued to propagate 
 and establish those improvements in our language which 
 were now beginning to take place. 1 Again, speaking of 
 Lydgate, he observes : ' On the whole, I am of opinion that 
 Lydgate made considerable additions to those amplifications 
 of our language, in which Chaucer, Gower, and Occleve led 
 the way; and that he is the first of our writers whose style 
 is clothed with that perspicuity in which the English 
 phraseology appears at this day, to an English reader.' 
 Measured by this standard Lydgate and Occleve, journey- 
 men poets, did good work and served, not only their day 
 and generation, but posterity as well. 
 
 In proceeding to consider Chaucer's best known and 
 most important disciples, we can hardly confine ourselves 
 to the Castor and Pollux whose names alone are familiar 
 in that capacity. But the cursory student of Chaucer will
 
 THE POETS. 15 
 
 remember Scogau Henry Scogan. It was to him that 
 the poet addressed the envoy revealing his 
 Henry Scogan. own lack of pence and bespeaking his 
 good offices with his friends at court and 
 thus immortalized him. Chaucer does not clap his corre- 
 spondent on the shoulder with a Byronib ' Bob Southey, 
 thou'rt a poet '; he even insinuates an apology for continu- 
 ing a pursuit scarce worthy of his years. But there is yet 
 a tone of comradeship, a twinkle of intelligence, implying 
 that Scogan was not an utter stranger to the Muse. With 
 unconscious humour this dweller in high places describes 
 himself as ' father ' to the four sons of Henry IV, meaning, 
 of course, that he was their tutor; and his principal literary 
 achievement was a moral ballade to Prince Hal and his 
 brothers, consisting of twenty-one stanzas of eight lines 
 each. It is startling to find where this moral ballade was 
 hatched. The author professes to have made it at a supper 
 of four merchants in the Vintry, and to be exact, in the 
 house of Lewis John. His devotion to Chaucer, whom he 
 regularly calls his master, is very marked. He praises him 
 as a noble poet ' curious ' in his language, and cites one 
 of his compositions, Gentilesse, bodily. This was a good 
 thought of worthy Master Scogan, for otherwise we should 
 assuredly have lost it. For the rest, he offers nothing new, 
 whether in the way of matter or of manner. He laments 
 an ill-spent youth, and is not over-well pleased with old 
 age. Taught by experience, he is now all for a virtuous 
 course of living, and thereto he exhorts his young charges 
 with a zest not easy to couple with the joys of the table 
 and the atmosphere of a quarter like the Vintry. 
 
 If literature languished after the death of Chaucer, it 
 was not because the princes of the land were illiterate or 
 failed in their duty. Henry V was not only famous in 
 arms, but, for one like him, uncommonly well read, and a
 
 10 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 willing patron of poetry. His reading he owed to his 
 intellectual father, but his taste for belles lettres was an heir- 
 loom from his father and grandfather after the flesh. The 
 names of John of Gaunt and his consort Blanche are inse- 
 parable from one'of Chaucer's most beautiful compositions; 
 and Henry IV, his protector in old age, though beset with 
 political difficulties, invited to his court the celebrated 
 French poetess, Christine de Pisan, whose writings, though 
 in a less degree than Chaucer's, served as a school for 
 aspirants. The victor of Agincount, then, possessed an 
 hereditary interest in poets and poetry, but, with so many 
 distracting influences, it might never have shown itself 
 strong and active but for the nurture and admonition of the 
 outwardly rather insignificant Henry Scogan.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OCCLEVB AND LYDOATE. 
 
 TUB court-tutor yielded to a common temptation in trying 
 his hand at verse, but we doubt whether Scogan took him- 
 self too seriously. Other writers, on the contrary, though 
 now, in the popular estimation, they stand confest as arrant 
 pretenders, posed as being in the apostolic succession, and 
 the world accepted them at their own valuation. Occleve's 
 ' feebleness ' has led some literary historians to postpone 
 mention of him till they have disposed of the 
 bulkier figure of his companion. Of the two, 
 however, he appears to have been, by a few 
 years, the elder, and, in that sense, nearer to Chaucer. We 
 do not know the exact date of his birth, but we may set it 
 down approximately as 1370. Like Chaucer, he was a 
 native of London, and, Warton alleges, was ' educated in 
 the municipal law.' If he was destined for that profession 
 he does not appear to have exercised it, for at the age of 
 eighteen we find him a clerk in the office of the Privy Seal. 
 This post was not all to his taste, and he protests against 
 the idea that writing is a game, counselling any who may 
 cherish the delusion to persevere in the pursuit, when they 
 will make the discovery 
 
 It is well greater labour than it scometh. 
 
 One result of this occupation was to make Occleve a con- 
 firmed valetudinarian and fit subject for a fifteenth-century 
 i. c
 
 18 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 My Health, if only a Buruaud bad been born to pepper 
 him with deserved satire. For Occleve to some extent his 
 own Burnand gives us to understand that he did not 
 suffer the infirmities of the flesh to defraud him of the 
 pleasures thereof, and these contributed not a little to his 
 corporeal ills, so that affairs ran in a vicious circle. Amongst 
 his troubles Occleve counts round shoulders and weak 
 sight, both attributable to his work at the desk; and, con- 
 cerning these misfortunes, he might have commanded the 
 sympathy of a great, if somewhat erratic, student of social 
 questions, who, replying to a ' clerk -friend,' summed up the 
 plight of his correspondent as follows: 'Only a day and a 
 half in the week 011 which one can get a walk in the 
 country (and how few have as much or anything like it!), 
 just bread enough earned to keep one alive on those terms 
 one's daily work asking not so much as a lucifer match's 
 worth of human intelligence; unwholesome besides one's 
 chest, shoulders, and stomach getting hourly more useless. 
 Smoke above for sky; mud beneath for water; and the 
 pleasant consciousness of spending one's weary life in the 
 pure service of the devil ! ' 
 
 The conclusion is particularly apt, since Occleve does not 
 affect to conceal the fact that he was a wine-bibber, a glut- 
 ton, and indifferent in his choice of company. 
 
 Where was a greater master eke than I, 
 Or bet(fer) acquainted at Westminster Gate, 
 Among the tavernere namely (especially) 
 And cooks? 
 
 La Male Regie, from which these lines are quoted, is a 
 vivacious poem abounding in human touches 
 
 About Town, and suggestions of London life. The key- 
 note of the whole is the expression ' master,' 
 
 since, with all his bodily shortcomings, he was filled with
 
 THE POETS. 19 
 
 juvenile self-importance, and records the complacency with 
 which he received the salutations of the boatmen, who com- 
 peted for his patronage 'Master!' 'Master!' The signi- 
 ficance of ' master ' as a title of courtesy should not be lost, 
 and may be illustrated by a passage from Sir Edward Coke. 
 In his contemptuous and impatient definition of the term 
 ' gentleman,' he uses the words : ' whosoever can live idly and 
 without manual labour, and will bear the charge, port and 
 countenance of a gentleman shall be called master, for that 
 is the title which men give to esquires and other gentle- 
 men, and shall be taken for a gentleman.' Occleve liked to 
 pose as a well-bred man of the world, elevated far above 
 the ruck of humanity; and the greetings of his casual 
 acquaintances induced him to go further in the direction of 
 display than he had at first intended. 
 
 All this is so extremely natural that we can hardly be 
 wrong in accepting it as a correct and candid setting forth 
 of the poet's own salad days. Mr. Gregory Smith indeed, 
 in his brilliant volume The Transition Period, would have 
 us believe that such confessions stand for nothing more 
 than a literary exercise, all the bards being ready to figure 
 as reformed characters whether in youth they had been re- 
 probates or not. It seems to us, on the other hand, that 
 each case should be considered on its merits, due regard 
 being had to probabilities. Fashion, in literature as in 
 other spheres, is a potent force, and it may well be that the 
 example of one bard stimulated another to publish and 
 proclaim guilty reminiscences, but this is perfectly compat- 
 ible with a large measure of independence, originality, and 
 truth. For ourselves, we admit Occleve's evidence against 
 himself and shake our heads at him as a sad specimen of 
 youthful depravity and extravagance. 
 
 If the boatmen called Occleve master, Occleve. in a higher 
 sense, applied the sauie toriu to Chaucer. His intense
 
 20 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 devotion to the older poet is beyond question, and his 
 humble admissions of inferiority are sufficient 
 
 to disarm criticism founded on the assumption 
 >V oreliip. 
 
 that he came forward as a rival of the man 
 
 rather than 'as a perpetuator of his craft. How keenly 
 Occleve lamented his death is shown by his graceful and 
 touching threnody, which contains echoes of Chaucer's lines 
 on Petrarch, but thrills with a strong personal note of real 
 emotion : 
 
 Death, thou didst not harme singular 
 
 In slaughter of him, but all this world it smartct h, 
 But natheless yet hast thou no power 
 His name to slay, his high virtue astarteth 
 Unslain fro thee, which aye us lively hurteth 
 With bookes of his ornate inditing, 
 That is to all this laud enlmnining. 
 
 She might have tarried her vengeance awhile 
 
 Till that some man had equal to thee be(en). 
 Nay, let that be ! She knew well that this isle 
 May never man forthbringe like to thee, 
 And her office needes do mote she. 
 
 God bade her so, I trust as for the best. 
 O master, master, God thy soulc rest ! 
 
 This passionate farewell is easily explained, since Occleve 
 was not only under general literary obligations to his 
 model, but appears to have been more or less intimate with 
 him, and to have submitted poetical attempts to his perusal. 
 It is not altogether to Occleve' s credit that in after days he 
 sheltered himself behind Chaucer's indulgent criticism, 
 and exposed his beloved master to the censure of such as 
 hold that the world is seldom the better for indifferent 
 art.
 
 THE POETS. 21 
 
 For he that was ground of well-saying, 
 
 In all his life hind'red no making, 
 
 My Master Chaucer that found full many spot 
 
 Him list not pinch nor grutch at every blot. . . . 
 
 Suffering goodly of his gentleness 
 
 Full many a thing embraced with rudeness ; 
 
 And if I shall shortly him descrive, 
 
 Was never none to this day alive, 
 
 To reckon both of young and old, 
 
 That worthy was his inkhorn for to hold. 
 
 It is to Occleve that we owe the only authentic portrait 
 of Chaucer, whose lineaments are as familiar to 
 most people as those of Edward III possibly 
 more so. The portrait, preserved in a Harley 
 manuscript, was painted, says Occleve, after the poet's 
 death, from memory. Standing out against a background 
 of green tapestry, the half-length figure is that of an intel- 
 ligent old man, whose eyes have lost their fire. His hair 
 and beard are gray, and the latter is forked. He is habited 
 in sad-coloured dress, and with his left hand holds a string 
 of beads. His right is stretched out. Hanging from his 
 vest is a black case, the use of which is uncertain. Prob- 
 ably, it contained a knife or a ' penner ' (pencase). Of this 
 picture Occleve observes: 
 
 Although his life be quenched, the resemblance 
 
 Of him hath [in] me so much liveliness, 
 That to put other men in remembrance 
 Of his person I have here his likeness 
 Do make (cause io le made), to this end in soothfaslnoFB 
 That they that have of him least thought and mind 
 By this painture may again him find. 
 
 The metre, which is a favourite with Occleve, is borrowed 
 from Chaucer's Troilu*.
 
 22 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 This leads us to the subject of Occleve's artistic relations 
 
 with Chaucer. It is the fashion to treat his 
 Methods of i . .,-, , . , 
 
 Versification ^ aims Wlt ' 1 scant ceremony, and in no depart- 
 ment has he experienced less courtesy than 
 in prosody. Dr. Furnivall says of him, ' as long as he can 
 count ten syllables by his fingers he is content.' Now it 
 must be conceded that Chaucer's successor is by no means 
 his equal as a master of verse, and it would seem reason- 
 able to attribute the difference, in the main, to Chaucer's 
 superior niceness of ear. While allowing this, however, 
 there are one or two points that ought not to escape our 
 notice, since they explain, if they do not excuse, the younger 
 poet's want of success. Consciously or unconsciously, 
 Chaucer imparted to his verse that quality of ordered free- 
 dom which is seen in our public institutions and may be 
 regarded as peculiarly English. Resting on a basis of 
 the division of the lines into so many feet distinguishable 
 by the accents, his metres do not follow the Continental 
 rule in assigning to each line the same number of syllables, 
 but, while essentially iambic in character, admit of the 
 occasional use of anapaests. The accents suffice to main- 
 tain the structure of the verse, and, resulting from 
 unimportant infringements of metrical regularity, comes 
 a great gain in rhythmical variety and melodic expres- 
 sion. Here we can scarcely fail to trace the influence of 
 the old tumbling verse and the irresponsible ballads, both 
 of which had a strong hold on the English public, and, in 
 the absence of native examples of artistic poetry, must 
 have affected Chaucer in his own despite. As, however, his 
 composition is distinguished from popular verse by its 
 greater regularity, we can hardly wonder that his successor 
 went one step further and banished superfluous syllables 
 altogether. In many places he appears to have accom- 
 plished this exclusion by the sacrifice of just accent; but
 
 THE POETS. 23 
 
 we cannot be certain that his verse was as wooden and 
 mechanical as we are at first disposed to think. Either 
 accents were less sharply defined, or, in the case of whole 
 classes of words, they were liable to be shifted from one 
 syllable to another. Tyrwhitt's illuminating essay on the 
 versification of Chaucer, prefixed to Bell's edition of that 
 poet, shows clearly the chaotic pronunciation of English 
 that prevailed during Occleve's youth. Changes were still 
 going on, since the final e tended more and more to become 
 otiose; although, in our opinion, too much stress has been 
 laid on this circumstance, and not enough on tempera- 
 mental, as distinct from intellectual, causes. Chaucer was 
 bold and sanguine, apt for experiments; his successors 
 were timid and prudent men, who feared licence and, so 
 far as their age permitted, anticipated the methods of 
 Pope and his school. 
 
 It may be well to emphasize the fact that exception has 
 been taken to a characteristic of this later verse which is 
 equally, perhaps more, common in Chaucer namely, the 
 commencement of a line with a foot of one syllable. This 
 was evidently not considered a fault then whatever it may 
 be deemed now but in Lydgate it is associated with lines 
 of five feet containing only eight syllables, the legitimacy 
 of which, even according to the standard of the time, is 
 more doubtful. It is a symptom, apparently, of the revolt 
 against overcrowded verse, especially as exemplified in late 
 alliterative poetry. 
 
 The most notable difference between Chaucer's technique 
 and that of his disciples relates to the position of the 
 caesural pause. In Occleve and Lydgate this occurs only 
 after the second foot or the succeeding syllable, whereas 
 Chaucer indulges in several variations, which German 
 prosodists denominate by pretty names, such as the ' ring- 
 ing lyrical ' and ' epic ' caesuras, while those which coincide
 
 24 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 with the accent are dismissed as 'blunt.' A 'lyrical* 
 caesura is one consisting of a trochee, and an ' epic ' caesura 
 is in its nature dactylic. Herr Karl Luick adduces instances 
 of all three kinds in different positions, so that Chaucer 
 may be said to have exhausted the possibilities of caesural 
 change. Of this rich variety there is nothing in Occleve 
 and Lydgate, so that their entrance into the field of metrical 
 composition marks an era of retrogression rather than of 
 progress. In Hawes and Barclay verse recovers some 
 measure of its elasticity, but it is in some of the Scottish 
 poets, in James I, in Henry son, in Douglas, and, above all, 
 in Dunbar, that we find the nearest approach to Chaucer's 
 artistic skill and facility. The later Lyndsay, on the other 
 hand, too frequently violates propriety by ignoring the 
 natural connection between sense and sound. There would 
 seem to be a kind of ebb and flow in this matter of 
 versification, for Bishop Percy has well observed that, 
 while almost all the poetry composed during the early part 
 of Elizabeth's reign is remarkable for its ease and musical 
 quality, the writings of Donne, Jonson, and many of their 
 contemporaries are, for the most part, abnormally harsh 
 and discordant. 
 
 To come back to Occleve. No good critic would now pass 
 
 upon his compositions the unqualified censure 
 
 so freely and bluntly bestowed by the literary 
 
 judges of the eighteenth century. The plain 
 
 fact is that at his best Occleve is little, if at all, inferior to 
 
 his master. The difference between them is that, whereas 
 
 Chaucer is frequently, or uniformly, happy in his attempts, 
 
 Occleve is extremely unequal, and his bad is very bad 
 
 indeed. His ballades, from any point of view, are wretched 
 
 stuff, but that he could rise on occasion to noble conception 
 
 and adequate execution, is conclusively established by his 
 
 Orison to the Holy Virgin, which editors have striven to
 
 THE POETS. 25 
 
 take from him. Dr. Furnivall once said concerning it, ' No 
 one can suppose that poor Occleve had the power of writing 
 his master's Mother of God.' But he did write it the 
 manuscript evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the 
 belief that the poem is Chaucer's only in the sense that it 
 has been given to him, the true author being the despised 
 and vilified Occleve. It is proper to add that Dr. Furnivall 
 has handsomely withdrawn an opinion, which he recognizes 
 to be indefensible. In the Middle Ages an invocation of 
 Mary was as ambitious a task as poet could undertake, for 
 the Blessed Virgin was nearer to the minds of men than 
 her Divine Son was loved, reverenced, and, in a sense, 
 understood. This address is steeped in devotion, and the 
 language, sober in its very ecstasy, shows us, more plainly 
 than any prose, how large a place it was that Mary occupied 
 in the affections of a sinful soul. The merit of originality 
 Occleve must needs forego, since the poem is a translation, 
 but he has a right to all the praise that may be claimed 
 for his performance for having mirrored in sovereign 
 English verse sentiments that have long vanished from 
 our public worship and private religious consciousness. 
 The Letter of Cupid, to which allusion has been made, is 
 not so divergent from the Mother of God as the 
 
 fC C ' I *^ e mav seem ^ i m pty' Here again we have 
 laud of Our Lady laud which comes oddly 
 from the God of Love, though, from forgetfulncss of the 
 classics, the incongruity was then less marked than it 
 would be now, and Occleve was in some degree justified by 
 Chaucer's precedent in the Legend of Good Women, where 
 the God of Love is nothing sensual. Then, his immediate 
 theme being constancy, he commits a palpable absurdity 
 by commending St. Margaret, and it must be allowed, 
 with no little adroitness and humour wriggles out of his 
 position by making his divinity emphatic as to the
 
 26 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 object and limit of his approval. He likes, not Margaret's 
 chastity, but her truth. The poem is a chivalrous defence 
 of women, whom it depicts as trusting creatures easily 
 ensnared by the craft and subtlety of man; and the almost 
 feminine tone of the reproaches is at once explained by the 
 circumstances that Occleve's work is an imitation of 
 Christine de Pisan's Epistre au Dieu d' Amours. Of course, 
 Jean de Meun, whom Christine loathed as the arch- 
 calumniator, comes in for a passing castigation, but Jean is 
 not the only miscreant, and accordingly the poem deals at 
 large with the quarrel between the woman and the clerk. 
 
 The Letter of Cupid does not impress one as very happily 
 inspired. Moralizing has its uses and may be tolerated in 
 small doses as a sotto voce accompaniment of a, perhaps, too 
 lively narrative, or, more copiously, as a final application 
 of the underlying doctrine. But when trite generalities 
 form both warp and woof of a poem drawn out into near 
 seventy stanzas, unrelieved by a patch of story, the effect 
 is undeniably tedious. Occleve is awkward at starting, but, 
 once under weigh, sails his appointed course with sufficient 
 briskness, for his utterance is pat, his sentences clear-cut, 
 and if his poem is overrun with half -rhymes, these are by 
 no means as common as the process of modernization (in 
 Mr. Pollard's unwilling metamorphosis) would lead one 
 to suppose. Sometimes Occleve is on the verge of breaking 
 into passages of real eloquence and power, but starts back 
 affrighted, to resume his sorry occupation of chopping 
 logic. The latter part of the Letter, warmed as it is with a 
 real seriousness, is unquestionably the better. 
 
 For the title and most of the matter of his magnum 
 
 opus, which is the Governail of Princes, 
 The Governail ^ 1 , j u , A T 
 
 , D . Occleve stands debtor to one Aegidius, a 
 
 of 2 WftCS 
 
 native of Rome, who had indited for the edi- 
 fication of Philippe leBel a moral treatise in Latin identically
 
 THE POETS. 27 
 
 named De Reyimine Principum. What had been good for 
 a French prince in the thirteenth century, Occleve be- 
 lieved might be not less good in his own day for the 
 promising boys of Henry IV. And so he made a long poem 
 of the treatise, whose bounds he enlarged by taking in 
 excerpts from a dissertation of Jacques de Cessoles, there- 
 after Caxton's Book of Chess, and from that armoury of 
 wisdom Secretum Secretorum, reputed to be of Aristotle, 
 not to mention more original contributions, of which 
 shortly. One of the sons of Henry IV was, of course, the 
 famous Prince Hal, whose Shakespearean appearances render 
 us forgetful of the fact that he was not only a jolly com- 
 panion and triumphant at Agincourt, but ranks among the 
 best educated, if not the most learned, of royal personages. 
 ' Educated ' is perhaps the better term, since the monarch's 
 studies in Vegetius were turned to admirable account in 
 his campaigns. Occleve's assumption, therefore, that his 
 pupil and patron was already conversant with the Latin 
 sources of the poem may have been no mere empty compli- 
 ment, no polite and pleasant fiction, but honest knowledge 
 put into words. 
 
 If Occleve did not enliven his Letter of Cupid with tales, 
 the nature of his larger work must convince us that the 
 abstinence was not due to any lack of tales to tell, nor 
 again to want of skill, and even relish, in telling them. 
 Some of the stories wherewith he points his morals are 
 quite modern instances, and we recognize the courtly sense 
 which sets forward the Plantagenet heroes Edward III, 
 John of Gaunt, and others as models for their successors. 
 With these are mingled stock examples, both biblical and 
 classical, whose function is to affirm and re-affirm the 
 prudence of ensuing virtue in her varied shapes and 
 manifestations. 
 
 In all this banquet of morality nothing is more remark-
 
 28 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 able than Occlove's championship of Peace, whose claims 
 he advocates in noble and beautiful verse worthy of the 
 first Noel and his own Mother of God. Addressed as it was 
 to high-spirited boys, whose dreams at this time were 
 probably all of combats and chevauchees iu the land of 
 France, one is not surprised that the hymning of such 
 sentiments made a conscious demand on his moral courage: 
 
 little book, who gave thee hardiness 
 Tho(se) worded to pronounce in the preseno* 
 
 Of Hinges imps and princes' worthiness, 
 Sin(ce) thou all naked art of eloquence? 
 
 That this language was sincere and not just poetical affecta- 
 tion, becomes highly probable, nay certain, when we con- 
 sider the sort of peril to which Occleve rendered himself 
 liable. His head no doubt was perfectly secure, but by 
 over-boldness he was endangering perhaps the success of 
 the object for which, in part, the work had been under- 
 taken. Occleve was not entirely unselfish. Patriotism, 
 moral enthusiasm he possessed them both, but his posi- 
 tion was such that personal interest could not be excluded, 
 or, indeed, very well kept in the background; and to this 
 uncomfortable necessity of placing his case squarely before 
 the court we owe those portions of the poem which must 
 be pronounced the most masterly and significant. The 
 rest, in this point of view, is so much luxurious padding. 
 It may be observed in passing that Occleve requires no 
 special apology for subjecting his muse to this menial em- 
 ployment since Master Chaucer and Dan Lydgate used 
 precisely the same method of forcing upon the authorities 
 the question of their own ways and means. 
 
 An attentive and impartial study of the prologue will, 
 we think, raise Occleve in the estimation of good judges. 
 In the first place the psychological cognition must strike
 
 THE POETS. 29 
 
 those who have kept watch over their fellows as extremely 
 accurate and acute. The old man who, with a heart full 
 of kindliness, strives to win the confidence of the morose 
 and distracted clerk, is no Peter the Plowman, no Adam 
 of At Ton Like It, but an aged rake, and according to the 
 maxims so frequently heard from the pulpit, ought to be 
 destitute of human sympathy ethically, derelict. This he 
 is not in the Governail of Princes, nor, very often, in life. 
 With undying gratitude do we remember the good offices 
 of an octogenarian, whose manner of life had been far 
 from correct, and whose philosophy was that of Diderot; 
 and our limited experience could furnish other examples 
 of a naturally generous temperament unspoilt by evil 
 courses. There is something admirable also in the realism 
 of the narrative the old man's tentative approaches, his 
 unsuccessful conjectures, the perseverance with which, 
 strong in the privilege of age, he finally wears down the 
 stranger's peevishness and reserve. All this is surely ex- 
 cellent, and though the scene cannot be completely dis- 
 associated from a like episode in the Boole of the Duchess, 
 by which it was probably inspii'ed, yet the motive is so 
 independent and there are such trenchant differences in 
 detail that the imitation is removed from servility and 
 may be termed rather emulation. After repeated pressure 
 the secret trouble is disclosed, and the unlucky man is ad- 
 vised to apply for relief in the highest quarters, using for 
 that purpose such talents as he had at command. The 
 pair now become fast friends, and Occleve invites the old 
 man to dine with him. This civility he declines, but his 
 counsel is not forgotten, and on the morrow the poet clerk 
 takes heart of grace to draw up his humble, but elaborate 
 petition. 
 
 In the passage already quoted, in which he deplores the 
 loss of ' the honour of the English tongue,' Occleve goes on
 
 80 THE AGfe OF TRANSITION. 
 
 to mention Gowor, and it is more than likely that his 
 vigorous criticisms of contemporary society were suggested 
 by the precedents set in the Vox Glamantis. Occleve is es- 
 sentially in accord with Gower in his attitude towards 
 rampant Lollardry a topic which seems scarcely to have 
 interested the more mundane Chaucer, by whom it is 
 genially ignored. This tolerance, if we may so take it, was 
 not a virtue in Occleve's eyes, vice, whether bodily or in- 
 tellectual, being, as he judged, a subject for contrition or 
 condign punishment. He was not revengeful, and did not 
 desire, either for himself or for any deluded Wicliffite, that 
 justice should be retrospective, so as to take cognizance of 
 ignorance and folly finally put aside and repented of; he 
 would give the most obstinate heretic a chance, but in the 
 last resort he would not scruple to purge the body politic 
 by cautery, searing and burning out the morbid member, 
 as a very necessary and godly remedy. 
 
 So clear is he on the point that in this same prologue he 
 presents us with a picture of the reigning monarch assisting 
 in his younger days at the calcination of a tradesman named 
 John Badby, and employs this as an illustration at once 
 of his royal master's clemency and attachment to the 
 Catholic faith. Again and again does the worthy king, 
 melted by the culprit's cries, adjure him to make his peace 
 with the Church, and order the consuming embers to be 
 removed, but once he recognizes that the wretch is pur- 
 posed to die rather than recant his errors, the indignant 
 prince no longer suffers the natural feelings of his heart 
 to stay the execution of the sentence, the fuel is again 
 gathered to the stake, and John Badby is devoted to death 
 as an obdurate felon. 
 
 The vagaries of men like Badby small fry excite in 
 Occleve no more than the surprise and resentment with 
 which ordinarily prudent persons, not devoid of pity, re-
 
 THE POETS. 31 
 
 gard the conduct of those who, in defiance of reason and 
 the entreaties of the good and wise, elect to rush upon de- 
 struction. When, however, the criminal is a gallant knight 
 like Sir John Oldcastle, the case necessarily attracts more 
 interest, and Occleve, obviously perplexed by its strange- 
 ness, is disposed to give to it very serious thought and 
 consideration. Sir John, he is constrained to admit, was 
 
 A manly knight, 
 
 And shone fall clear in famous worthiness, 
 Standing in the favour of every wight. 
 
 The place of such an one was evidently at the side of his 
 brave young king, when in August, 1415, he sailed from 
 Southampton on his glorious enterprise against the French. 
 Instead of that, he was skulking in Herefordshire, having 
 four years previously escaped from the Tower, in which he 
 had been confined on account of his inexplicable connection 
 with those dogs of heretics. Such an unnatural desertion 
 of knightly feelings and traditions filled the sensitive court- 
 poet with profound horror and genuine compassion, and, 
 not content to vent his lamentation in general terms, he sat 
 down and penned for the special behoof and reproof of the 
 misguided warrior a poetical remonstrance in which he 
 argued the question point by point, showed that the Bible 
 contained the acts of martialists, and contended that the 
 study of such narratives, and even of Sir Lancelot of the 
 Lake, was fitter occupation for a gentleman than probing 
 into the mysteries of belief, with which he had no proper 
 concern. Occleve's repertory of verse includes at least one 
 other example of orthodox zeal, and on the subject of 
 Catholic duty in the suppression of noxious and nauseous 
 opinions it is evident that he has made up his mind and is 
 willing that we should see it. 
 
 It may be worth while to advert briefly to the epilogue
 
 82 TIIE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 of the Govemail of Princes, which is dexterously introduced 
 by the tale of John of Canace (Canossa?). The question 
 which of Occleve's examples best illustrates his tact in 
 narrative, is doubtless fair game for controversy, and one 
 of his detractors not maliciously has selected the story 
 of Jonathas as first in merit. But we are not so certain. 
 The adventures of Mr. Money-bags, whom circumstance, 
 not character, ranges with the majesty of Lear, are told 
 with a happy ease that makes us think of La Fontaine; 
 and they form an apt transition to the personal plea of the 
 vain official, who knows from experience the rottenness of 
 the ' fool's largess ' as a security for future needs. On this 
 ground he recapitulates the substance of the prologue in 
 a final appeal to the honour of his gracious prince, re- 
 questing the payment of his just debt. 
 
 The precise date of Occleve's death, like that of his 
 birth, is unknown. Probably he lived to a great old age, 
 for we have a ballade by him in which allusion is made to 
 Prince Edward, born in 1441, and to Prince Edward's 
 tutor, Master Picard. So that at the time of his decease 
 the poet may have been almost, or quite, eighty. 
 
 The spelling of the name ' Occleve ' deserves a passing 
 note. The point is not perhaps of much im- 
 portance; still, it is a fact that the orthography 
 has fluctuated between ' Occleve ' and ' Hoc- 
 cleve.' There seems to be no question that the name is 
 territorial in character, but an attempt to determine the 
 particular village is fraught with the peril of an inter- 
 necine war, Hockliffe in Bedfordshire and Ockley in Surrey 
 being the local competitors. In the MS. of the Governail 
 of Princes written by his own hand the poet adopts the 
 form ' Occleve ' ; and, could we be sure that this was his 
 invariable practice, the evidence would be decisive. But 
 there can be no absolute, or even tolerable, certainty.
 
 THE POETS. 33 
 
 The name of Occleve's chief rival, Lydgate, is also terri- 
 torial, to the extent indeed of being derived from his 
 actual birthplace. This we learn from the bard's modest 
 apology : 
 
 Have me excused, I was bora in Lydegate; 
 Of Tullius garden I entered not the gate. 
 
 Lydgate is a village in Suffolk, about seven miles from 
 Newmarket; and this in a sense is all we need know of the 
 matter. Lest, however, the reader should fall into the un- 
 happy mistake of confusing 'Lydgate' with 'lychgate,' 
 and the mistake has been made ere now it is well to state 
 that lydgates were gates set up at the extremity of a village 
 and elsewhere to prevent cattle from straying upon ploughed 
 lands. In Sussex barricades to the passages into the forests 
 were called indifferently 'gates/ 'hatches,' and 'lyds,' so 
 that the term ' lydgate ' is pleonastic, one element reinforc- 
 ing the other, as that other became technical or obscure. 
 
 Of the parentage of this writer we are totally ignorant, 
 
 and the date of his birth is inferential merely. 
 
 L!r te Ordained sub-deacon in 1389, deacon in 1393, 
 
 and priest in 1397, he, in the prologue of the 
 
 Story of Thebes, describes himself as a Monk of Bury (i.e. 
 
 of the Benedictine Abbey at Bury St. Edmonds) and adds 
 
 that he is fifty years of age. Now there are good reasons 
 
 for assigning this poem to the period 1421-1423, and the 
 
 tendency of this evidence taken collectively is to fix his 
 
 nativity somewhere about the year 1372. 
 
 Like Occleve, Lydgate passes severe reflections on his 
 early days; and, although Mr. Gregory Smith, Professor 
 Skeat, and others discern in his penitential outpourings 
 nothing more than morbid exaggeration or wholly imagina- 
 tive compliance with literary use and wont thus excusing 
 hi youth at the expense of his age the remarks we 
 
 I. D
 
 34 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 deemed it, proper to make in a former place seem at_ r ;mi 
 applicable, and l)efore we dismiss the account as false mi'l 
 forged, let us examine, candidly and dispassionately, its 
 claims to probability. It is in his Testament addressed to 
 Abbot Garteys that we learn most about the morals and 
 manners of the young Lydgate; and as this is a most 
 serious poem, introspective and retrospective, and of singu- 
 lar spiritual interest and beauty, its very gravity should be 
 permitted to vouch for its substantial truth. 
 
 On the cloister wall at Bury hung a crucifix, beside 
 which ran the inscription ' Behold my meekness, child, and 
 leave thy pride.' The words remind him of far other days 
 when they conveyed little meaning to him, but now that 
 he is old, Lydgate comprehends the saying, and, so in- 
 spired, takes his pen and writes a little ditty on the love 
 of Christ. After all, Lydgate has not succeeded in painting 
 any terrible picture of himself. His faults are simply 
 those of a typical boy or of a young man immured in 
 religious seclusion before he was ripe for a complete 
 renunciation of things earthly. It is safe to believe that, 
 as a puling infant, he had his unreasonable moods, that he 
 loved play, and that his best incentive to attend school was 
 the fear of being scourged if he did not. So, too, if he 
 sometimes told untruths and appropriated other people's 
 apples, sparing neither wall nor hedge in his eagerness to 
 accomplish the theft, his conduct was sad, but, we fear, 
 not in the least incredible. When, later, he became the 
 rebellious inmate of a monastery and the doctrine of blessed 
 Peter was attempted to be grafted on his mind by sober 
 and religious elders, students of human nature will not 
 
 parry the admission that his black habit 
 Sins of Youth, corresponded little with the habit of his 
 
 unregenerate mind, and that in his monk's 
 progress he too much resembled Lot's wife, often looking
 
 THE POETS. 35 
 
 back. That at length he was reconciled to his fate in 
 sincere conversion, and after many conflicts, attained the 
 climax of an ecstasy, is consonant with what is known 
 of religious life at all epochs, and especially in the Middle 
 Ages. Nor need we suspect the recluse of petty lies about 
 his youth because in his last days he hears in poetic or 
 spiritual trance a heartening voice from the Cross: 
 
 Tarry no longer; toward thy heritage 
 Haste on thy way, and be of right good cheer. 
 
 Go each day onward on thy pilgrimage, 
 Think how short time thou slialt abide here. 
 
 Lydgate's Continental travel, on the other hand, is, as 
 Herr Koeppel has shown, improbable; and we shall accord- 
 ingly turn from the facts of his outer life seemingly as 
 quiet as the proverbial nun's to consider his poetical 
 achievements. Shall we be frank and say that we view 
 with a distinct access of impatience the pretensions of a 
 person of Lydgate's contracted experience and austere 
 discipline to occupy the vacant throne of glorious Chaucer? 
 Even Occleve, we think, with his worldly knowledge, might 
 wiselier aspire to the succession, but to argue 
 thus is to omit the major premiss Nature's 
 part. In reality we are face to face with an 
 apparent paradox. Occleve, on the score of his personal 
 vicissitudes, might have been expected to display a constant, 
 emotional sympathy with the tribulations of his kind, and, 
 by reason of his official duties, defective technique, while 
 Lydgate, one might have supposed, having abundant leisure 
 and few cares, would produce verse of formal excellence, un- 
 watered with pathos. The very opposite is the truth. Words- 
 worth speaks of 
 
 Men endowed with highest gifts, 
 The vision and the faculty divine, 
 Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse;
 
 36 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 and this applies to Lydgate in the sense that his apprecia- 
 tion of poetry in things and books is, in the main, divorced 
 from conscientious striving after the debonair in style and 
 rhythm. To a great extent he let these arts go and con- 
 tented himself with the position of a rough carpenter in 
 verse or mere journeyman poet. Gifted with an amazing 
 facility of composition, he carried through his league-long 
 tasks in his own way, which, if the opinion of Horace is 
 worth anything, was a thoroughly bad way. When we 
 consider the prodigious range of his writings running into 
 tens of thousands of lines, and ponder also the variety of 
 the subjects that engaged his pen, we are forced to con- 
 clude that he allowed himself little or no time for revision. 
 His one thought seems to have been to get on with the 
 particular work he had in hand; and when he had com- 
 pleted what to some men would have been no more than a 
 first sketch, he turned to other themes, satisfied that his 
 performance, if not supremely good, was at any rate good 
 enough. If in theory he did not set up a quantitative 
 standard of merit and esteem mere bulk a virtue, in prac- 
 tice this ceaseless production appears to have lulled him 
 into a harmful complacency by affording an unrighteous 
 satisfaction to his genius for industry. 
 
 Both Occleve and Lydgate imitated Chaucer where he 
 was best imitable, in his choice of metres, in his classical 
 allusions, in the mechanism of his poems, in his classes of 
 subjects. Chaucerian precedent was a sanction without 
 which Lydgate scarcely ventured to enter on poetical 
 endeavour. One of Chaucer's more conspicuous failings is 
 his apparent incapacity for sustained effort. He designs 
 vast plans, but the structures seldom assume visible shape, 
 never their full and perfect embodiment. Even the Canter- 
 bury series is by no means complete; and not only is the 
 work unfinished, but its multiform ingredients consist, in
 
 THE POETS. 37 
 
 a large measure, of the wrecks of earlier ambitious projects, 
 which the intrusion of business or downright instability of 
 purpose had caused to founder. 
 
 The tales which the older writer had left untold, his 
 abandoned schemes, were eagerly appropriated 
 
 ie roj- ky j^ydgate, who did not want perseverance, 
 and who, in one instance at least, showed 
 extraordinarily good judgement. Owing to the prevalent 
 ignorance of Greek, due perhaps in the first instance to 
 religious differences, the Iliad was a sealed book to Western 
 Europe. But it did not follow that its theme had no 
 charm for Occidental nations. On the contrary, the various 
 Latin versions of the famous siege were regular favourites 
 with the learned, and vernacular Continental literatures 
 had already been enriched with romances drawn from 
 these unauthentic sources. England, however, still lacked 
 her Troy-book. Chaucer had indeed gone some way in 
 supplying the defect in his Troihis, and thejre are likewise 
 those mysterious fragments assigned to Barbour, about 
 which scholars continue to be perplexed. Anyhow, there 
 remained ample room for a poet minded to rehearse the 
 whole story from end to end. This rare opportunity was 
 embraced by Lydgate; and to this circumstance he owes 
 the greatest part of his fame. 
 
 Externally, the success of the attempt is undoubted; 
 and it is not too much to say that in the eyes of his own, 
 and of several succeeding generations, the poem was far 
 the most striking production of its not very striking 
 century. How well this popularity held out is proved by a 
 remarkable instance of misapplied ingenuity. Nearly two 
 hundred years after its inception, the whole long epic of 
 twenty-eight thousand verses was recast by an admirer, 
 who modernized the language, altered almost every rhyme, 
 and substituted for the original a six-lined stanza all this
 
 38 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 that the public in the reign of Jaines I (and VI) might be 
 able to revel in the feast of Lydgate's providing. Another 
 amendment affected the title, which was changed to the 
 Life and Death of Hector ; and both this and the whole 
 procedure remind us of Cesarotti's more portentous failure 
 in seeking to adapt the Iliad to romantic and Napoleonic 
 Italy. 
 
 The recovery of Homer has made us independent of such 
 poetry as the fifteenth century can offer; and we have at 
 the same time acquired truer perceptions of the good and 
 evil in literature. Hence we are tempted to be severe on 
 Lydgate, because he fails to satisfy our exacting require- 
 ments. This is not quite fair, although there are points on 
 which even our ancestors, however grateful and tolerant, 
 might properly have exercised their right of censure. The 
 way Lydgate flouts probability and defies the plainest dic- 
 tates of common sense is at times so astounding, that in 
 any other age than that of miracle plays and romances they 
 must have elicited protest. The fact admits of no dispute 
 that in choosing such a subject as the siege of Troy, Lydgate 
 essayed a task for which he was not too well fitted. He was 
 a monk, and, as such, he was supposed to have no acquaint- 
 ance with either love or war the chief levers of the story. 
 It is a bad inspiration that leads a man to discourse on 
 topics of which he is profoundly ignorant; with all the 
 caution imaginable, he will find it difficult not to perpetrate 
 absurdities. 
 
 There is no indication that Lydgate had any misgivings 
 as to his competence; and he probably thought that he had 
 sufficiently assured himself against accident, when he had 
 armed himself with the works of his predecessors. A poet, 
 however, cannot describe (for instance) a matrimonial 
 situation without taking the part either of the injured 
 spouse or the infatuated lovers. In such cases morality
 
 THE POETS. 3D 
 
 enjoins that our sympathy shall be given to the lawful 
 wife or husband, but our feelings cannot always be con- 
 formed to the requirements of duty. Only Dante could 
 have condemned Francesca to a doom so absolute; and 
 even Dante wept. Such condonation may be wrong, but it 
 is at least intelligible and accordant with the harmonies of 
 human nature. Lydgate nowhere shows himself more inept 
 than in the passage where he treats of the adulterous in- 
 trigue between Mars and Venus. In Homer's account of 
 the escapade in the Odyssey, both points of view are repre- 
 sented. The guilty pair are condemned, but the immortal 
 gods exhibit an unseemly jocularity, and, notwithstanding 
 his humiliating exposure, profess to envy the handsome 
 Ares his good fortune. Not one of them, however, is so 
 besotted as to suggest that Hephaestus had not the best 
 reason for complaint. It was reserved for Lydgate 
 awkwardly adapting himself to what he supposed to be 
 the whim of the world to depict the poor divinity not 
 merely as contemptible he calls him a ' smotry smith '- 
 but as culpably jealous and resentful. He harps on his 
 ' high malice ' and ' cruel false envy,' blames him for spread- 
 ing the slander, and adds: 
 
 And God forbid that any man accuse 
 For so little any woman ever I 
 
 In the Blade Knight, on the other hand, which critics 
 
 grudgingly allow to be his, and in which the 
 fte Black . . , ,. , T , . f 
 
 K . ,. grand passion is idealized, Lydgate is tar 
 
 more successful. We do not agree with Ellis 
 that the monk's personal exigencies affected his handling 
 of the Venus incident; but on the evidence of his romantic 
 complaint, we certainly think that he might have been a 
 lover.
 
 40 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Just as he exceeds the limits of sobriety and even sanity, 
 
 in relation to love, so also does he trifle with 
 
 Defects. language in his description of fighting. Take 
 
 for example his duel between Ulysses and 
 
 Troilus. Having stated that the Trojan hero smote his 
 
 Greek opponent through the visor, he proceeds: 
 
 But Ulysses tho (tlwn}, like a manly man, 
 Of that stroke astoned not at all, 
 But on his steed, stiff as any wall, 
 With his sword so mightily gan race 
 Through the umber into Troilus' face, 
 That he to him gave a large mortal wound. 
 
 According to this Troilus should have speedily rendered 
 up the ghost, but the wound is only nominally mortal. 
 
 A bad quality of Lydgate is his intolerable diffuseness. 
 We may pardon his anachronisms in his pictures of Thebes 
 and of Troy, we may even value them as helping us to 
 realize the aspect of mediaeval fortified towns, but such a 
 multiplicity of details and some of them such details! 
 is entirely out of place in a poetical work. Lydgate's object, 
 indeed, seems to be rather to impress his readers with his 
 knowledge of architecture and engineering than to gratify 
 them with the pleasures of poetry proper. Expressions 
 might be cited showing that, far from suspecting the 
 tediousness of his analyses, he deludes himself with the 
 belief that he makes considerable omissions of excellent 
 matter; and he goes out of his way to explain that this 
 occasional sacrifice, which in no sense abates the constant 
 feeling of superfluity, is not due to want of ability to 
 rhyme uncouth technical terms. Well, we may grant him 
 that. 
 
 Another defect in Lydgate, own brother to the last, is 
 his arrant ungainliness. His draggle-tailed sentences stand
 
 THE POETS. 41 
 
 quite apart from the artistic fullness of the classic period, 
 of which all the members are grouped according to their 
 logical relations and form an organic whole, the delicacy 
 and beauty of which atone for its possible complexity. 
 Lydgate, on the contrary, merely carries on the sense from 
 line to line, and from paragraph to paragraph, in the 
 manner of a babbler who does not know where to stop, and 
 he is worst in the rhymed couplet. The stanza makes a 
 natural frame or fold, which checks by palpable shock in- 
 discreet extravagancy, but when one has once learnt the 
 trick of enjambement, the couplet easily acquires the char- 
 acteristics of blank verse, with the added temptation that 
 arises from the necessity of completing a rhyme, which 
 may require or suggest a further extension of the sense in 
 order to the concealment of the motive. Probably, how- 
 ever, in Lydgate' s case the simple explanation of his long- 
 windedness lies in the circumstance that one thought 
 begets another, and it never occurs to him that judicious 
 pauses and the studied interaction of clauses are of the 
 essence of good writing. 
 
 These remarks are specially pertinent to the Story of 
 Thebes, which he proposed as a continuation of 
 
 'yy ^ : - the Canterbury Tales, and in which the versifica- 
 tion is far more faulty than in the Troy-book. 
 To be sure the text is corrupt, so that we cannot say that 
 in all cases where the censure lights on Lydgate, the crime 
 was certainly committed by him. The Story of Thebes is 
 ultimately traceable to Statius, but Lydgate appears to 
 have based his poem on more recent productions Ten 
 Brink supposes on one of several French romances. Al- 
 though Boccaccio is named, his Tescide was, it would seem, 
 not called into requisition for the reason that Lydgate 
 did not know Italian. More remarkable than the body of 
 the poem is the prologue which shows in the plainest way
 
 42 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 that it was intended to be a pendant to Chaucer's 
 Tale. Lydgate in his own person thrusts himself into the 
 company of the Canterbury pilgrims, and enacts for his 
 special benefit a resurrection of the characters. Bailey 
 accosts him, and, having been made free of the party, Dan 
 John has to pay his scot by telling a story, which he does 
 bon gre. 
 
 The Story of Thebes is represented as the first narrative 
 to enliven the return journey from Canterbury; and it is 
 possible that Lydgate may have meant to complete the 
 series. Wiser counsels, however, prevailed. The truth is, 
 he could scarcely have chosen a more fatal method of re- 
 vealing his own insufficiency, for Chaucer's prologues, un- 
 like some of his poems, are thoroughly typical of the 
 master. In these graceful and witty interludes his person- 
 ality stands out clear and distinct, and he shakes off those 
 trammels of poetical etiquette with which the demands of 
 a nascent court literature had fettered his free spirit. 
 Accordingly he is here least liable to emulation, and 
 Lydgate's awkward attempts to rival the native charms of 
 his discourse tremble on the verge of caricature. As might 
 be expected, there are not a few verbal reminiscences of 
 Chaucer, some of which must be conscious and deliberate, 
 perhaps all. 
 
 The Falls of Princes is, in a material sense, the realiza- 
 tion of a plan of Chaucer's, of which dispersed 
 
 T^llll J?ftJ1 9 ftf 
 
 p . J fragments, as of a shattered world, are left to 
 
 us in the Monk's Tale. This poem was begun 
 in the winter of 1424-5, or two years after the completion 
 of the Story of Thebes, whose limits it was greatly to ecxeed. 
 It is in some ways Lydgate's principal work, on which 
 he expended vast pains, and in the execution of which were 
 consumed quite ten years of his declining life. He was 
 over sixty when it was finished. For the matter, though
 
 THE POETS. 43 
 
 not for the form, of this poem he was indebted to Boccaccio, 
 whose cyclopaedia, De Casibus Virorum IHustrium, was a 
 perfect mine of examples, showing how men had fallen 
 from high estate. Although aLatinist, and therefore capable 
 of following Boccaccio in the original, Lydgate preferred 
 using a French version by Laurent de Premierfait, contain- 
 ing sundry additions; but, in point of fact, he was far 
 from swearing strict allegiance to either Boccaccio or 
 Premierfait, for we find him enriching what had now be- 
 come a poem in stanzas of seven and occasionally eight 
 lines, by drawing upon such discrepant sources as the 
 Bible and Ovid. For a court-audience the theme may seem 
 a singular choice, but the author began the work already 
 assured of the countenance of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, 
 a lover of learning, of whom it is averred, 
 
 His courage it never doth appall 
 To study in bookes of antiquity. 
 
 In the Falls of Princes Lydgate was more in his element 
 than in the Story of Thebes, for with the growth of years 
 he had grown in sympathy with his sacred calling. More- 
 over, as we have seen, the stanza form was better adapted 
 to his powers of versification than the couplet, so that 
 technically, and as regards its content, the poem is a 
 manifest improvement. Lydgate's gifts lay in picturesque 
 description (often, it is true, overdone), and in pathos; for 
 both qualities these sombre narratives provided rich oppor- 
 tunity. The Prologue, by the way, contains a panegyric of 
 Chaucer, and a lament for his death, which, though it had 
 occurred so many years before, is still so fresh in his 
 disciple's memory as to be keenly felt 
 
 Lydgate cannot be denied the merit of versatility. ' His 
 muse,' says Warton, 'was of universal access; and he wag 
 not only the poet of his monastery, but of the world in
 
 44 TIIK AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 general. If a disguising was intended by the company of 
 goldsmiths, a masque before his majesty at 
 Eltham, a may-game for the sheriffs and aider- 
 excels. men f London, a mumming before the lord 
 mayor, a procession of pageants from the Crea- 
 tion for the festival of Corpus Christi, or a carol for the 
 Coronation, Lydgate was consulted and gave the poetry.' 
 His shorter efforts are, many of them, decidedly attractive. 
 Some are fables which look backward to ' pamphlets in 
 French ' and forward to Gay and Kowe. Of such are the 
 Churl and the Bird, which Caxton printed, and the Horse, 
 the Sheep, and the Goose, which was printed by Wynkyn de 
 Worde. Another is a humorous begging-letter to the Duke 
 of Gloucester, imploring leech-craft for his empty stomach. 
 Jack Hare, portraying a young rake, recalls Occleve; while 
 others are brief and homely exhortations that treat of in- 
 nocent play, of backbiting, of contentment, of gratitude to 
 the Almighty, and like simple themes. Not even in his 
 minor poems has Lydgate quite abstracted himself from 
 the spell of Chaucer. In his ditty on doting December, for 
 instance, he himself points us to 'old January, which 
 Master Chaucer full seriously describeth'; and who can 
 doubt that the germ of his Bycorne and Chichevache is to be 
 found in the Clerk's Tale, even if more material help was 
 gathered from French sources? 
 
 The power of Mammon has been the theme of Pagan 
 and Christian satire for centuries. Horace writes : 
 
 Scilicet uxorern cum dote fidemque et amicos 
 Et genus et formam regiua pecunia donat. 
 
 Curiously enough, there have been preserved at least four 
 poems of about Lydgate's date, which deal with this sub- 
 ject. One of them, which is introduced rather grandly with 
 the Latiu rubric Incipit narratio de Domino Denario, but
 
 THE POETS. 45 
 
 may be entitled for our purpose Sir Penny, illustrates with 
 a great variety of instances what money can do; and the 
 popularity of the 'little round knave' is depicted with 
 cynical humour, which reaches its culminating point in 
 the line 
 
 He may bay both heaven and hell. 
 
 This poem, of which Warton thought very highly, has 
 been transcribed from a Cottonian MS.: others of the 
 same character may be found in Lord Hailes' collection 
 and in Bitsoii's Ancient Songs. 
 
 A poem, attributed to Lydgate and entitled London 
 Lickpenny, is in a way the converse of Sir Penny, since it 
 shows not what money can do, but what he cannot do who 
 has it not. Naturally the hero is a rustic, and therefore 
 the poem may be considered the first of many compositions 
 in prose and verse setting forth the bewilderments of a 
 countryman in town of which the East Anglian Giles 1 8 Trip 
 to London is a specimen. 
 
 Lydgate's reputation for wit depends to a very consider- 
 able extent on this poem, which has as its re- 
 frain ' for lack of money I might not speed ' 
 Lickpenny. . J & ^ 
 
 (with variations). It is no wonder, therefore, 
 
 that an emendation of the title has been proposed The 
 London Lackpenny; but Lickpenny is probably right, ex- 
 pressing, as it does, what so many have experienced, that 
 town life, with its numberless expenses, speedily ' licks up' 
 or absorbs a poor man's cash. The victim, moreover, is not 
 a Londoner, but a man of Kent, to which county he is fain 
 to return after making trial of the all too mercenary 
 capital. 
 
 The poem is sprightly and picturesque, and it seems 
 hard on Lydgate that the critics should desire to rob him 
 of it. From the inscription the text appears to have under*
 
 46 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 gone corrections at the hands of a copyist ; but these altera- 
 tions were not perhaps so extensive as to destroy the original 
 character of the poem. Assuming that it represents, on 
 the whole, the style and the spirit of the fifteenth-century 
 satire, the success of the effort confirms the opinion that 
 the literary conventions of the day Chaucerian precedents 
 pressed heavily on Lydgate, and that in a freer atmo- 
 sphere he might have produced much more that would 
 have deserved to live. Mr. A. W. Pollard draws a happy 
 and necessary distinction between the verse which Lydgate 
 and his fellows wrote to please their customers, and that 
 which they wrote to please themselves. ' I hold no brief,' 
 he says, ' for what we must call the court poetry of the 
 fifteenth century, that is to say, the compositions by which 
 poets from Lydgate to Skelton sought to ingratiate them- 
 selves with noble patrons and to prove their title to immor- 
 tality. When they were off their guard they wrote much 
 better.' Mr. Pollard cites London Lickpenny as an example, 
 but with the proviso ' if Lydgate's it be.' 
 
 We may, in conclusion, allude to Lydgate's practice as an 
 'occasional' poet. Amongst his contemporaries 
 
 he stood almost alone as an exponent of the 
 order. . 
 
 divine art; and so, when people were in want 
 
 of verse, they turned to him as to a genius of never-failing 
 resource. During the reign of Henry VI there was painted 
 on the cloister on the north side of St. Paul's, through the 
 munificence of John Carpenter, late Town Clerk of London, 
 a Dance of Death, commonly known as the Dance of 
 Paul's; and Lydgate, working after a French model, 
 furnished the accompanying stanzas. In the same reign 
 Abbot Curteis of Bury, wishing to attract the young 
 monarch to this foundation, devised a Life of St. Edmund, 
 which should be written in English and illuminated with 
 splendid miniatures, as a present to the sovereign. Lyd-
 
 THE POETS. 47 
 
 gate, as the most famous and accomplished of the con- 
 ventual flock, was commissioned to supply the ' letterpress,' 
 which he did with the utmost satisfaction, supplementing 
 the life of the martyr-king Edmund with one of his nephew 
 and avenger Fremund. The glory of the abbey at Bury 
 was much enhanced by this achievement; and the Abbot 
 of St. Albans, generous John Whethamstede, approached 
 Lydgate with the request that he would confer a similar 
 favour on the monastery of which he was president. It 
 was now the year 1439, but the poet, with his taste for 
 laborious days, did not shrink from the new task; and in 
 due course Albon and Amphabele, in three books, was 
 brought to completion. If this poem is somewhat inferior 
 to its predecessor in clearness and simplicity of style, the fact 
 must be attributed to bodily infirmity rather than to lack 
 of interest. 
 
 The date of Lyd gate's death is uncertain. We can trace 
 the footprints of his muse no further than 
 1446, but it does not follow, as some have 
 argued, that, owing to his inveterate love of 
 writing, this is an infallible clue to the time of his decease. 
 It is a striking coincidence, however, that his great patron 
 Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, died under mysterious cir- 
 cumstances at Bury St. Edmund's in February, 1447, and 
 it may well be that the poet at his advanced age did not 
 survive the blow. Lydgate's face and figure are not entirely 
 lost to us, since in the splendid Harleian manuscript of the 
 Bury legend is a portrait of Dan John kneeling at the 
 shrine of St. Edmund.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SCOTTISH MAKERS. 
 
 ON the whole the history of Scottish literature during the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is a record 
 
 and proof of the fructifying influence of 
 chromcon ~, , 
 
 a mine. Chaucer; but to this rule there are exceptions, 
 
 of which the most important is the carrying 
 on of the Barbour tradition, coupled with the yet more 
 mediaeval tradition of inditing in Latin. These schools are 
 at first not separable in point of time; they mutually over- 
 lap, and thus we meet with the rather singular result that 
 James I, the earliest of Chaucer's disciples north of the 
 Tweed, is lauded in great style by an ' old master,' one of 
 the joint authors of the Scotichronicon. It is well to re- 
 mark also the discrepancy between our list of survivors and 
 Dunbar's roll-call of fame. Of Dunbar himself we shall 
 have much to say presently ; meanwhile it may be observed 
 that this excellent bard, amongst his other works, composed 
 a fine occasional poem, entitled A Lament for the Makers, 
 in which he refers by name to a number of rhymers, whose 
 writings have perished. Of the authors some are remem- 
 bered, but not as poets ; others are remembered not at all. 
 Could Dunbar have foreseen this ravage of time, it may 
 well be that his sick refrain ' Timor Mortis conturbat me ' 
 would have expressed yet keener anguish in well-grounded 
 apprehension for the fate of his cherished verse.
 
 THE POETS. 40 
 
 The odd thing is that, while oblivion has descended, like 
 a thick cloud, on certain of his elect, a ray of posthumous 
 glory still gilds the names of one or two honest scribes 
 whom quite naturally, as he is speaking of poets he has 
 banned into silence. James, as a Scottish monarch, hardly 
 comes into the question, since he was many things besides 
 a poet; but John de Fordoun and his continuator were 
 essentially clerks, who hoped to attain celebrity by the 
 avenue of letters. Fordoun was a contemporary of Bar- 
 bour, and, like him, connected with the cathedral of 
 Aberdeen. 
 
 Scottish legends comprise bitter memories of Edward I, 
 and some absurd libels; and amongst the stories handed 
 down to us is the tale that the old priest, when the brutal 
 invader had destroyed all official traces of Scottish history, 
 wandered over the country in his patriotic zeal, seeking to 
 repair the loss. Fordoun does not appear to have been a 
 person of much worldly account; it is thought he was a 
 chantry priest. In an academic sense, too, he was outside 
 the pale, for his continuator, Walter Bower, who was under 
 the clearest obligation to speak well of him, assures us that 
 he was a simple man, graduate of no university. Still, he 
 was capable of making anagrams in Latin verse (unless in- 
 deed they were made for him), and he possessed, however 
 he may have obtained it, a large acquaintance with the re- 
 mote annals of his country, which he enterprised to set 
 forth in Latin prose. Having battled through the worst of 
 this deep research, he then turned aside to depict, in his 
 Qesta Annalia, the more recent phases of the northern 
 monarchy. His hand was stayed at the year 1385, which, 
 it is thought, he did not much outlive; whereupon Abbot 
 Bower, of Inchcolm, stepped in and conducted the un- 
 finished Scotichronicon, as Fordoun'a heir and assign, from 
 the death of the fir.-;t David to the assassination of the n>t 
 
 I. E
 
 50 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Jaines. Having thus served his generation, Abbot Bower 
 departed this life in 1449. 
 
 Now the labours of these pioneers were undoubtedly of 
 immense utility to their successors and contemporaries, 
 who, forsaking the learned tongue for English, and prose 
 for the couplet of the Bruce, opened to their countrymen 
 the treasures of the national past. The fact that metre was 
 employed must not be taken as a guarantee of poetical 
 merit or even of poetical endeavour, for rhyming chronicles 
 had long been in vogue on the Continent, and 
 Wyntoun Wyntoun, although honoured by the mention 
 Q.- i of Dunbar, showed pretty plainly in what light 
 Chronicle. ^ ie regarded himself by calling his work The 
 Original Chronicle. He was merely a Fordouu 
 in the vernacular, and, we may say with truth, no poet, 
 save in the vernacular sense of the term. With regard to 
 the qualification ' original,' this does not point to independ- 
 ent inquiry, nor does it intimate a claim to genius; it means 
 simply that, according to the author's intention, the work 
 goes back to the ' origins ' or well-springs of history. It is 
 not all Scottish history. Wyntoun, a Prior of St. Serf's on 
 the Inch of Lochleven and very erudite, discourses at leisure 
 on the angels and curiously juxtaposes the incidents of 
 Jewish, Egyptian, Assyrian, and Graeco-Roman antiquity, 
 with which the most venerable traditions of Scotland are 
 shown to be interlaced. The very name of Scotland is de- 
 rived, as Wyntouu asserts, from a daughter of Pharaoh 
 called Scota, who was wedded in her youth to a son of Sir 
 Newell, which gallant knight migrated from Scythia to 
 Greece, became a great lord, and had this boy, the ancestor 
 of the Gaels. 
 
 The value of Wyntoun's erudition is now manifest, but 
 he does not confine himself, any more than Fordoun, to 
 essays in the primitive and universal. On the contrary,
 
 THE POETS. 51 
 
 with more persistence than his predecessor, he records 
 the vicissitudes of his country, step by step, to the year 
 1406, lightening his task somewhat by boldly appropriating 
 a few hundred lines of the Bruce, but, in general, relying 
 on his own capacity to rhyme, except where he throws in, 
 as any chronicler might do, an old ditty by way of a 
 kindness! 
 
 By far the most notable passages in the Original Chronicle 
 are those relating to the tragic adventures of 
 
 Macbeth. The account here given differs in 
 Macbeth. & . 
 
 material points from the narrative followed by 
 Shakespeare, who was indebted for his plot to Holinshed. 
 Holinshed's version is an abridgment of Bellenden, and 
 Bellenden's work is a translation from the Latin of Boyce. 
 Wyntoun's recital makes Macbeth the son of the Devil, 
 who appeared to his mother in the woods in the likeness 
 of a fair, well-proportioned man, and got her with child. 
 He gave her a ring in sign of the future greatness of her 
 offspring, and of the certainty that 
 
 No man should be born of wife 
 Of power to reave him his life. 
 
 We shall see directly how this prophecy was fulfilled. 
 
 One discrepancy between the poem and the play is that 
 in the former Macbeth does not actually encounter the 
 witches; he only dreams of them: 
 
 A* night he thought in his dreaming, 
 That sittand he was beside the King 
 At a seat in hunting : BO 
 1 11 til his leash had greyhounds two : 
 He thought while he was BO sittand 
 He saw three women by gangand; 
 And they women then thought he 
 Three weird sibters most like to be.
 
 52 THE A<;K OF TRANSITION. 
 
 The first he heard say, gangand by, 
 
 4 Lo! yonder the thane of Crumbaucklyl* 
 
 The 'tot her woman said again, 
 
 1 Of Murray yonder I see the thane.' 
 
 The third then said, ' I see the King.' 
 
 All this he heard in his dreaming. 
 
 Soon after that in his yonthhead 
 
 Of thir (those) thanedoms he thane was made; 
 
 Syne next he thought to be King, 
 
 Fra Duncan's days had ta'en ending. 
 
 The fantasy thus of his dream 
 
 Moved him most to slay his erne (uncle), 
 
 As he did all forth indeed, 
 
 As before ye heard me rede ; 
 
 And Dame Gruok, his erne's wife 
 
 Took and led with her his life. 
 
 The quarrel between Macbeth and Macduff, as described 
 iu the Original Chronicle, is independent of this criminal 
 behaviour, having arisen on a private account. The usurper, 
 it appears, desired to fortify the hill at Dunsinuan, and 
 with that object requisitioned all the teams in the neigh- 
 bourhood. Some oxen belonging to Macduff failed in their 
 work, and Macbeth, observing this, threatened despiteously 
 to put their master's own neck into the yoke. Neither, in 
 the end, does vengeance proceed from Macduff, but from a 
 mysterious knight, who, having entered the world through 
 the awful expedient of a Caesarian operation, is able to slay 
 the tyrant without violation of the prophecy. 
 
 The flittand wood they called aye 
 That long time after-hand that day. 
 Of this when he had seen the sight 
 He was right wo, and took to night: 
 And o'er the Mount they chased him than 
 Till the wood of Lunfanan. 
 This Macduff was there most fell, 
 And on that cuacc than most cruel.
 
 THE POETS. 53 
 
 But a Knight that in that chace 
 Till this Macbeth than nearest was, 
 Macbeth turned him again, 
 And said, 'Lurdane, thou pricks in vain: 
 For thou may not be he, I trow, 
 That to dead shall slay me now. 
 That man is not born of wife 
 Of power to reave me my life.' 
 The Knight said, ' I was never born, 
 But of my mother's womb was shorn. 
 Now shall thy treason here take end 
 For to thy father I shall thee send.' 
 
 The allusion in the last line is evident enough. This is not 
 the only context in the Chronicle in which the Devil appears. 
 In his fifth book Wyntoun treats us to a circumstantial 
 account of a theological contest betwixt that unscrupulous 
 quoter of Scripture and good St. Serf, when the latter lay 
 in bed ; and it rejoices us to learn that the Evil One had 
 so much the worst of the encounter that he had never the 
 heart to pay a second visit to the monastery, where St. 
 Serf had already established a reputation as a miracle- 
 worker by causing a dead ram to bleat in the belly of a 
 rogue who had stolen it from him, cut it up, and eaten it, 
 and then temerariously disowned the theft. 
 
 Wyntoun, previously canon of St. Andrews, was appointed 
 Prior of St. Serf's in 1395, while the Original Chronicle 
 was finished between the death of the Duke of Albany in 
 September, 1420, and King James's repatriation in April, 
 1424. These are apparently the sole dates from which his 
 age can be inferred. 
 
 We have stated that Wyntoun's is the role rather of an 
 historian than of a poet, and, despite the legendary air of 
 certain portions of his narrative, this is certainly the truth. 
 Indeed, his work has in this sense a positive value which 
 causes his testimony, in some instances, to be received as
 
 54 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 authoritative. Take, for example, the case of Huchown, 
 where one's chief regret is not as to the veracity but as to 
 the clearness of the reference. As has been shown in the 
 preceding volume, Barbour is likewise estimable as an his- 
 torian, though his poetical address is in less doubt than 
 
 that of the rhyming abbot. In Blind Harry, 
 Blind Harry, or Henry the Minstrel, these conditions are 
 
 to a great extent reversed. As regards Wyn- 
 toun the reversal is absolute, for Harry, though not always 
 at variance with fact, succeeded to a considerable body of 
 traditions, which, in passing from mouth to mouth during 
 five or six generations, had become distorted and exagger- 
 ated into patriotic myths, to which the sober truth is only 
 casually related. There is naturally more affinity between 
 the biographer of Bruce and the biographer of Wallace ; 
 each was possessed with a fine sympathy for his subject. 
 But, with the lapse of a century, the prismatic hues of 
 romance have gained in intensity and area; the rainbow 
 distaining at its base the green sod has been followed by 
 the orange and purple and flush of the sunset; all is now 
 gathered up from the steadfast earth into cloud-land. 
 
 Before saying more of his work, it is worth while to ad- 
 vance some remarks about the writer, whose name at once 
 challenges attention. There seems to be no sort of doubt 
 that Blind Harry lived and sang towards the close of the 
 fifteenth century, and that he recited his own long poem 
 of twelve thousand lines, principally, perhaps, in the halls 
 of the nobles. He has a place in Dunbar's Lament, and the 
 accounts of King's Treasurer contain entries showing that 
 various sums had been paid to ' Blin Harye.' The last of 
 these entries is dated January, 1492, and it seems not im- 
 probable that his death occurred soon after. He was cer- 
 tainly dead by 1508, the year of the Lament. The existence 
 of Blind Harry is attested also by John Mair, or Major,
 
 THE POETS. 55 
 
 one of the teachers of John Knox, who asserts in the course 
 of his history of Great Britain that in the time of his youth 
 the deeds of Wallace had been put into the verse of his 
 country by Henry the Minstrel. 
 
 That is, roughly, all we know of Blind Harry. Regarding 
 his epic, there is believed to be only one manuscript of it 
 bound up with a copy of The Bruce. The poem itself was 
 published by the first Scottish printer, Walter Chepman, 
 and this is strong presumptive evidence of its popularity. 
 Of that, however, there can be no possible question. 
 
 Coming now to the sources of the composition, Blind 
 Harry affirms that it was founded on a Latin history by 
 John Blair, a monk of Dunfermline, who was Wallace's 
 chaplain in 1327. ' Sir ' Thomas Gray, parson of Libertoun, 
 is credited also with supplying material. Unfortunately, 
 the poet has to confess that he did not invariably abide by 
 these sure witnesses, having been in one point seriously led 
 astray by a couple of knights, Wallace of Craigie and Lid- 
 dale, who ' gart ' him make wrong record. This is sad, but, 
 as Wyntoun tells us that ' great gestes ' of Wallace's good 
 deeds and manhood had been composed before his time, 
 and there may have been a conflict of evidence, we cherish 
 the hope that the expression, ' righteous lord,' applied to 
 Craigie, is not ironical. Meanwhile it is only 
 The Wallace, fair to state that no trace has ever been dis- 
 covered of Blair's history. In an edition of 
 Blind Harry's Wallace, published in 1758, there were given 
 in an appendix sundry Relationes Arnoldi Blair, purporting 
 to represent John Blair's memoir. These proved on in- 
 spection to be merely selections from the Scotichronicon, 
 which, so far as written authority is concerned, may have 
 been the original, while the assertions respecting Blair and 
 Gray are possibly no more than pleasantries of the sort 
 wherewith romancers have in all ages beguiled their easy
 
 56 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 patrons. Almost certainly the bulk of Blind Harry's in- 
 formation was oral. This is probable on account of his 
 physical infirmity, which scarcely admitted of a close ac- 
 quaintance with books, while the untrustworthy nature of 
 the work is all in favour of the assumption that 'mine 
 author* was anybody rather than a contemporary of the 
 hero. Major, it may be observed, confesses his want of 
 faith in the tissue of wild legends. 
 
 However, to a loyal Scot, and indeed to any reader of 
 taste and understanding, the ' Book of William Wallace,' 
 as Major calls it, will appear a rich banquet of entertaining 
 romance. Some will find it all the more inviting in that 
 the blind author was debarred from elaborate description 
 of natural scenery, and threw his whole heart into vivid 
 narration of martial adventures. Nor is the chivalrous note 
 altogether wanting, since Wallace approves himself a true 
 gentleman in his conduct towards the Queen of England, 
 and, similarly, his generous forbearance on receiving from 
 his false leman the admission of her deadly treason must 
 excite warm admiration; still, such episodes are not frequent 
 enough to affect our general estimate of the poem, which 
 in variety of interest and refinement of sentiment is, no 
 doubt, far inferior to The Bruce. On the other hand, it is 
 both harsh and absurd to condemn it as a ' disgusting picture 
 of revenge, hatred and blood.' The truth is, the iron has 
 entered into the soul of the traditional Wallace, and no- 
 thing seems to him of consequence save the one great 
 national aim of extirpating English dominion from his 
 country's soil In achieving this result he is hampered by 
 no moral scruples, has no compunctious visitings, the pale 
 cast of thought never o'erspreads his native hue of resolu- 
 tion. His mind is clear as to the justice of his quarrel, and 
 his actions are subordinated to the attainment of his lofty 
 and arduous ambition. He is, if we may express it so, a
 
 THE POETS. 57 
 
 patriot pure and simple. It need not surprise us, therefore, 
 that he assumes a part as abhorrent to the knights of old 
 as to ourselves stalking as a common assassin, when 
 naught else avails, but prepared to take any risks, to fight 
 against any odds, as on the memorable day when, a defence- 
 less fisherman, he encountered five of Percy's armed re- 
 tainers, who demanded toll of his finny spoil by the water 
 of Irvine. The English are naturally exasperated at the 
 loss of their comrades, and in the case of young Selbie, son 
 of the Constable of Dundee, when foiled in their efforts to 
 secure the culprit, threaten to repay the deed with interest : 
 
 The Englishmen, all thus in barrat (confusion) bonD(eZ), 
 Bade burn all Scots that were into that town. 
 
 The whole of this incident is related with extraordinary 
 skill, and not without a spice of grim humour. When 
 Wallace fled, a good wife of the place harboured him in 
 her cottage, and, having disguised him as one of her own 
 sex, gave him a distaff, and set him down to spin. His foes 
 entered and searched the house, 
 
 But he sat still and span full cunningly 
 
 As of his time, but he not leryt (learnt) long. 
 
 Blind Harry does not depict his hero as faultless, even 
 in his treatment of his own countrymen. He tells us how 
 that once upon a time he slew a follower named Fawdoun 
 and had to expiate his crime in the lurid tragedy of Gusk 
 Hall, from whose flaming ruin he indeed escaped, but only 
 with the forfeiture of his men, and after a gruesome game 
 of bandy with a supernatural visitant. The manner in 
 which the horror is inaugurated with rude blasts of the 
 horn and yet ruder blasts of the approaching storm, and 
 Wallace, reduced to solitude and shocked out of his
 
 58 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 habitual stoicism, is forced to retreat from a position 
 which has become in every sense too hot for him, is dra- 
 matic in the extreme, and suggests that the passage should 
 be cited as a specimen of the minstrel's art as a story- 
 teller. 
 
 In the Gask Hall their lodging have they ta'en; 
 
 Fire got they soon, but meat then had they nane. 
 
 Twa sheep they took beside them of the fold ; 
 
 Ordained to sup into that seemly hold, 
 
 Graithed (prepared) in haste some food for them to dight; 
 
 So heard they blow rude homes upon height. 
 
 Twa sent he forth to look what it might be; 
 
 They bode right long, and no tidings heard he, 
 
 But bousteous noise so brimly (fiercely) blow and fast; 
 
 So other twa into the wood forth past. 
 
 None came again; but bousteously gan blow; 
 
 Into great ire he sent them forth on row. 
 
 When that alone Wallace was leaved there, 
 
 The awful blast abounded mickle mair. 
 
 Then trowed he well they (i.e. the enemy) had his lodging seen. 
 
 His sword he drew of noble metal keen, 
 
 Syn forth he went where that he heard the horn. 
 
 Without the door Fawdoun was him beforn, 
 
 (As till his sight) his own head in his hand. 
 
 A cross he made, when he saw him so stand. 
 
 At Wallace in the head he swaked gare (threw quickly), 
 
 And he in haste soon hynt (caught) it by the hair, 
 
 Syn out at him again he couth it cast, 
 
 Intill his heart he was greatly aghast. 
 
 Bight well he trowed that was no sprite of man; 
 
 It was some devil that such malice began; 
 
 He wist not well there longer to abide. 
 
 Up through the hall thus wight (valiant) Wallace gan glide 
 
 To a close stair the boardis raiff (were riven) in twiun. 
 
 Fifteen foot large he leapt out of that inn. 
 
 Up the water suddenly he couth fare; 
 
 Again he blented (looked) what 'penrance he saw there.
 
 THE POETS. 59 
 
 He thought ho saw Fawdoun, that ugly sire, 
 
 That whole hall he had set in a fire. 
 
 A great rafter he had in till his hand, 
 
 Wallace as then no longer would he stand. 
 
 Of his good men full great mervail had he, 
 
 How they were tynt (lost) through his feyle (fatal ?) fantasy. 
 
 The fictitious character of this narrative is impressed on 
 its very face; so improbable an occurrence is scarcely likely 
 to have been recorded by either of Henry's sponsors as an 
 event that had happened, as it were, in the light of their 
 own day, and even had this been the case, its intrinsic 
 nature would proclaim it such stuff as dreams are made 
 of. Although the internal evidence is not always so con- 
 vincingly obvious, the historical vagueness of the poem 
 may be illustrated by other tests. Blind Harry contradicts 
 himself more than once on the subject of Wallace's age. 
 He is eighteen when first introduced to our notice, but 
 after a nine years' contest, supposed to commence at that 
 time and terminated by his execution in 1305, he has 
 somehow attained the age of forty-five. Moreover, if there 
 be any foundation for the fishing affray, which is among 
 the opening incidents of the poem, it must be postponed, 
 as Mr. Moir has shown, to a later period when he was no 
 longer a callow youth. 
 
 The slaying of Heselrig, the English sheriff of Lanark, 
 in revenge for the murder of Wallace's child, is counten- 
 anced in some measure by historical documents, for when 
 it was the wild chieftain's turn to die, there was a count 
 in the indictment against him to the effect that he had 
 killed and cut to pieces that very official. This, however, 
 is poor compensation for the astounding and wholly un- 
 justifiable freedom with which the large facts of history 
 ore travestied beyond recognition. Blind Harry may have 
 proceeded in all good faith the victim of his own ignor-
 
 f>0 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 ance and that uncritical spirit which manifests itself in BO 
 many of his rhapsodies, but the less excitable and better 
 instructed student of more modern times cannot easily 
 accommodate himself to a version of events which brings 
 Wallace to St. Albans, as the captain of a victorious host, 
 there to impose conditions on the discomfited southrons. 
 The prosaic muse of history knows of no siege of York, 
 knows of no suppliant mission of good Queen Eleanor, 
 knows of no Edward the First cowering in panic fear in 
 the Tower of London. Edward, there is not the shadow 
 of a doubt, was one of the bravest, as well as wisest and 
 most moderate, of the princes of his age, and this makes 
 it the more provoking that he should have consented to 
 sign the death-warrant of so gallant an enemy as Wallace, 
 half-savage as the latter had so often shown himself to be. 
 But it is a fantastic and futile kind of revenge that dis- 
 torts truth and belittles the real greatness of the conqueror 
 instead of concentrating scorn on the one act by which a 
 splendid career is so palpably marred. 1 These departures 
 from history not only disqualify Henry as a guide to the 
 heroic developments of which he treats, but reflect, in 
 almost equal measure, on his personal estimation, for pride 
 of race, when carried to such ridiculous excess, is apt to 
 appear petty and unreasonable, unworthy of a fine intel- 
 lect. But, after all, Blind Harry was only a gifted peasant. 
 The writer to whom attention must now be drawn differs 
 from the last in so many particulars as to 
 King James I. be almost his antithesis. Except that both 
 were Scots and proud of their nationality, 
 they have scarcely a point in common. Although prior to 
 
 1 The case for Edward I is argued in a very able book The 
 Greatest of the Plantagcnets, which, though published anony- 
 mously, is known to have been written by the father of Sir John 
 Seeley.
 
 THE POETS. 61 
 
 the minstrel by several decades, King James actually re- 
 presents newer methods and a more modern spirit. He is 
 at once the first and most conspicuous of Chaucer's dis- 
 ciples in that northern realm, which in the political sphere 
 was so bitterly estranged from England, but, nevertheless, 
 evinced a growing willingness to acknowledge a partnership 
 in letters. The incidents of James's youth disclose to us 
 the utter contempt of principle which prevailed in Scotland 
 itself and corrupted the relations between the neighbouring 
 peoples, whilst, at the same time, they render intelligible 
 the germination of the gracious seed of concord in the 
 garden of culture. 
 
 James the First of Scotland was the second son of 
 Robert HI, a feeble monarch, who had, ere his death, to 
 surrender all real power into the hands of his more capable 
 brother, the Duke of Albany. 1 James's elder brother David 
 turned out a profligate, and being adjudged unfit for the 
 duties of his station, was confined in the Palace of Falk- 
 land, where he died in 1401, it was suspected of official 
 starvation. The younger brother, who was born in 1395 
 (or, possibly, in the preceding year), was reserved for a 
 kindlier lot at all events, in appearance and, when ten 
 years of age, was sent for education to the court of Scot- 
 land's ally, in charge of the Earl of Orkney. Off Flam- 
 borough Head the ship in which he was sailing had the 
 misfortune to encounter the English fleet, and although a 
 week had still to elapse before the expiration of the truce, 
 the southern commander, aware of her precious freight, 
 made no ado about stopping her and forwarding the prince 
 and his companions, as prisoners of war, to London. This 
 flagrant breach of international obligations met with no 
 stern reproof, no indignant repudiation from high quarters, 
 
 1 Bee The Fair Maid of Perth, chapter xxxv.
 
 62 I III-: AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 aud, not improbably, the kidnapping of the young traveller 
 was a preconcerted arrangement between the astute and 
 ambitious Albany and the English leaders. 
 
 Apart from the initial treachery by which his route was 
 changed, it cannot truthfully be alleged that the boy fared 
 much worse in England than he would have done had he 
 succeeded in gaining the French coast. It had been already 
 determined that he should pass his youth in exile, and, as 
 a child subject to wholesome restraint of his elders, he 
 would not be sensitive, in a special sense, to the rigours 
 of state imprisonment. Whether in the Tower of London, 
 at Nottingham Castle, or at Windsor, he lost none of the 
 privileges of his rank, and, thanks to his governor, Sir 
 John Pelham, received what it is fair to describe as a 
 superb education. Proficient in grammar and oratory, in 
 Latin and English poetry, in music, jurisprudence and 
 philosophy, he became no less expert in manly exercises 
 tilts and tournaments, wrestling, archery, and field sports. 
 As a political ruse to prevent the Scots from lending the 
 French assistance, Henry V made him his comrade in the 
 campaign of 1520-21, thus affording him an opportunity 
 of showing his mettle in action. James came well out of 
 the ordeal, but he was not permitted to return to his crown 
 and kingdom until circumstances had arisen with which 
 it will be our immediate duty to deal. 
 
 During fifteen years' captivity in England his subjects 
 appear to have taken little interest in his fate, and it was 
 no consolation for such neglect that his talents were every- 
 where commended by strangers. An event, however, oc- 
 curred, which had the effect of raising him from the dull 
 despair in which he was gradually sinking, and gave him 
 a new hope and a new impulse. Whilst living in seclusion 
 at Windsor, he fell in love with Lady Jane Beaufort, 
 daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and granddaughter of
 
 THE POETS. 63 
 
 John of Gaunt through his marriage with Katherine Swyn- 
 f ord. The passion was reciprocated, and on February 2nd, 
 1424, in the twentieth year of James's exile, the couple 
 were wedded in the church of St. Mary Overies, where 
 Gower lay gloriously entombed. No doubt the alliance 
 was forwarded by the English court on political grounds, 
 but with unexampled meanness a great part of the bride's 
 dower was swallowed up in payment of the cost of her 
 husband's maintenance during his long and involuntary 
 stay in England. This auspicious union opened the way 
 for James's restoration to his native land, as also to his 
 kingly honours, and he was solemnly crowned in Scone 
 Abbey, on the 21st of May, 1424. 
 
 King James's chief poem the only poem that is certainly 
 
 his, though this has been doubted was in- 
 Q ie . ' spired by this romantic attachment, and is 
 
 thoroughly Chaucerian in character. Natur- 
 ally the Chaucer whom James followed is not so much 
 the Chaucer of the Canterbury Tales, although there are 
 evident signs of his having studied them, as the author 
 of Troilus and Cressida and the more juvenile poems dedi- 
 cated to the same tender theme. For our present purpose 
 the Knight's Tale, which is of an amorous tendency and 
 retains much of his earlier seriousness, may be included 
 in the number. Before proceeding further it may be well 
 to refer to the title The King's Quair which at first 
 strikes one as quaint and, perhaps, cabalistic. Recollecting 
 the common Scots substitution of ' qu ' for ' w ' (for ex- 
 ample, ' quhilk ' for ' which '), we may jump to the con- 
 clusion that the key of the mystery is the dialect, but such 
 is not the case. As regards its origin the term is rather 
 French than Scots, being merely a modification of the com- 
 mon word cahier, which is used not only of a single sheet 
 of paper, but, as here, of a bundle of sheets, or a book. It
 
 64 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 in thus employed by Lydgate in his poem, The Churl and 
 the Bird: 
 
 Go, little ' quayer,' and rocommende me. 
 
 In its modern form, 'quire* (of paper) the expression has 
 lost all semblance of poetry; hence the difficulty of per- 
 ceiving its identity. 
 
 The metre is the seven-line stanza, which had been a 
 favourite with Chaucer and adopted by his English dis- 
 ciples, so that it can in no sense be claimed as the property 
 or invention of King James. Even the description of the 
 metre, ' rhyme royal,' which used to be traced to his patron- 
 age, is now known to have been in vogue before his time. 
 There is no question, however, that he manipulates this by 
 no means easy verse with a good deal of success, although 
 he does not quite attain his master's dexterity, and in the 
 matter of rhyming is notably inferior. 
 
 A striking feature in Chaucer's literary personality is 
 his admiration for Boethius, whose De Consolatione Philo- 
 sopliiae was part of his intellectual stock-in-trade. Accord- 
 ingly, one is not surprised that at the outset of The King's 
 Quair James is discovered solacing himself with the famous 
 treatise at the cost of his eyes. But while recognizing this 
 as mainly the effect of precedent, we cannot ignore the 
 special propriety of the captive prince poring over the 
 pages of one whose circumstances were so analogous to his 
 own, and that he consulted them to some purpose is de- 
 monstrated by later references in the Quair. That, how- 
 ever, is only one mark of his dependence on Chaucer; there 
 are many more. Indeed, the conduct of the poem is 
 throughout influenced by the methods which Chaucer had 
 introduced, and, in that way, made his own. One may in- 
 stance the artifice of visions as the atmosphere in which 
 the fanciful actions are carried on, the allegorical and
 
 THE POETS. 65 
 
 mythological figures, the supernatural machinery, the rap- 
 ture of spring, and the mystical fellowship of the birds; 
 all these elements belong to the very essence of Chaucer's 
 original manner. The diction also is remarkably English; 
 the Scottish dialectal forms, while reminding us that the 
 writer is a Northerner, are a superficial trait which cannot 
 disguise from us how entirely King James had assimilated 
 the language and style of his predecessor. 
 
 Without entering on a complete analysis of the Qiiair, 
 the contents of which are, in a large measure, conventional, 
 we may advert to certain portions of the poem based on 
 the prince's intimate experiences, and so nearly auto- 
 biographical. At the close of the first canto of Tytler's 
 edition the MS., by the way, is whole and undivided 
 we meet with the striking image of a ship with empty sail 
 among the black rocks, which, though interpreted as a 
 symbol of literary embarrassment, is perhaps a covert allu- 
 sion to his own circumstances as a prisoner. However that 
 may be, we are not kept long in doubt as to the source of 
 the figure, for in the next canto he relates the story of his 
 boyhood's misfortune, how, when he was but three years 
 past the age of innocence (in other words, when he was 
 ten), he was taken by the enemy, whilst on a voyage to 
 France, conveyed to their country, and kept in ' strait ward 
 and strong prison.' From this deadly monotony he ob- 
 tained relief by gazing out of the window of his tower at 
 the green arbours and shady alleys, where the happier 
 birds, hopping from bough to bough, made garden and wall 
 ring with their minstrelsy. This was their ' text': 
 
 Worshippe ye that ben this May, 
 
 For of your bliss the Kalends are begun, 
 
 And sing with us, 'Away, Winter, away; 
 Come, Summer, come, the sweet season and sunt 
 Awake, for shame! that have your heavens won, 
 
 I. F
 
 66 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 And amorously lift up your headed all : 
 Thank love that list you to his merey call/ 
 
 To a man in James's case this might seem cruel mockery 
 what had a prisoner to do with May and Love? but events 
 belie this supposition: 
 
 And therewith cast I down my eye again, 
 
 Whereas I saw, walking under the tower, 
 Full secretly new comen here to plain, 
 The fairest or the freshest younge flower 
 That ever I saw, methought, before that hour ; 
 For which sudden abate anon astart 
 The blood of all my body to my heart. 
 
 However, the poet soon recovers from his perturbation so 
 as to take particular notice of her person and attire. On 
 her youthful charms he does not indeed presume to dis- 
 course at length: 
 
 For rudeness to speak thereof I dread. 
 
 As a sort of atonement for this omission he catalogues with 
 feminine scrupulosity the details of her dress and adorn- 
 ment. For her golden hair the beauteous lady was in- 
 debted, no doubt, to Dame Nature, but her worldly estate 
 has enabled her to set off this good gift with an ample 
 display of gems and precious stones, all of which are noted 
 by the captive prince with much approbation. Not an 
 emerald, nor a sapphire, nor a ruby escapes his admiring 
 eye the ruby least of all, since, like a spark of fire, it 
 ' seemed burning on her white throat.' 
 
 This redundancy of terms expressing mere outward show 
 and material splendour, is worthy of some remark. It may 
 be attributed, in part, to James's high rank, and be held 
 to reflect the elegance of his surroundings, but the ex- 
 planation may be more general. Certain it is that the love
 
 THE POETS. 67 
 
 of what Occleve calls ' aureate terms ' is a salient character- 
 istic of the Scottish school of poetry founded by King 
 James, who may thus be regarded as originating, or only 
 as the first to illustrate, the tendency. In any case, the 
 symptom cannot be pronounced healthy, since the natural 
 result is to sterilize thought and feeling, and to render 
 language artificial and stereotyped. Decadence is nigh at 
 hand, or rather present, when the pomp and pageantry of 
 verse are supported by the regular use of epithets like 
 ' crystalline,' ' golden,' ' purple,' etc., when showers are 
 always ' silver,' drops are always ' pearly,' and the ' crystal ' 
 air is as inevitable as the ' sapphire' firmament; when, also, 
 none will suffice as leading characters but the gods and 
 goddesses of Olympus, and dignity is sought by citations 
 from classic authors, such as Cicero and Virgil. Chaucer, 
 it must be confessed, is not altogether exempt from these 
 weaknesses, but he is moderation itself compared with his 
 exuberant followers. 
 
 Returning to our immediate subject The King's Quair 
 there is not much that we need add. As is so often the 
 case with ecstatic love-stories, the real incidents, those at 
 any rate that purport to be real, are extremely slight. 
 With strained and eager interest the poet-prince marks the 
 antics of the little dog on the ground beside its mistress, 
 whilst his ear catches the sound of its tinkling bells, and, 
 of course, he is envious. When she sings, he is prompt to 
 adapt to her music a stanza of his own composing. But 
 the brief spell of happiness is rapidly approaching its 
 term. After walking a little under the green boughs, she 
 turns her snowy face and goes her way, leaving her un- 
 known lover disconsolate. Certain visions succeed, which 
 bring comfort, and the poet is able to thank his prison- 
 walls for the boon they have afforded him. At the close 
 of the epilogue there occurs a statement suggesting that,
 
 68 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 along with his other accomplishments, King James pos- 
 sessed the peculiarly Scotch faculty of second sight. 
 Speaking of ' this flower,' destined for some dozen years to 
 be his wedded wife, he declares mysteriously that she 
 
 So heartily has unto my help attended, 
 
 That from the death she has her man defended. 
 
 This singular saying, which originated perhaps from the 
 suspicion that the baneful influence of Albany, or his 
 English enemies, had aimed at terminating his captivity 
 by the short method that freed Mary Stuart, transports us 
 to a sanguinary scene at Perth in February, 1436, when 
 the King was surprised by Graham at the head of three 
 hundred Highlanders, who broke into the monastery where 
 he was staying, at night, and forced the chamber-door, into 
 the staples of which a gallant lady, Catherine Douglas, 
 vainly thrust her arm in lieu of a bolt. The King offered 
 a desperate but fruitless resistance, and fell with fourteen 
 wounds in his breast alone. Now were fulfilled the half- 
 prophetic lines written so many years before, since Haw- 
 thornden tells us that the queen sought to save her husband 
 by interposing her person, and was with difliculty dragged 
 from him. We are further informed that in the awful 
 struggle the devoted wife was twice wounded. 1 
 
 As has been intimated, The King's Quair is the only 
 poem of which we can say that it was certainly, or almost 
 certainly, the composition of James I of Scotland. There 
 have, however, been ascribed to him three or four others, 
 
 1 It is worthy of remark that the account of this murder, trans- 
 lated from the Latin, and printed in Pinkerton's History of Scotland 
 (1797), vol. i, p. 462, and again in Stevenson's Life and Death of 
 King James I, was the work of John Shirley, Chaucer's editor. In 
 this connection the reader may also be reminded of Rossetti's fine 
 poem, The King's Tragedy*
 
 THE POETS. 69 
 
 regarding the authenticity of which differences of opinion 
 have disturbed Scottish scholars, partly on other grounds, 
 and partly from the circumstance that a royal namesake, 
 James V, practised the same gentle art. The titles of the 
 poems are: Peebles to the Play, Christ's Kirk on the Green, 
 Falkland on the Green, and Good Counsel. The last, a little 
 piece in the style of Chaucer's Flee from the Press, which 
 was assigned to King James at an early date and has been 
 accepted by Professor Skeat as genuine, is a poetical insist- 
 ence on the duty of doing justice and walking humbly 
 with God, the refrain being 
 
 And for ilk inch He will thee quit a span. 
 
 Peebles to the Play presents a far more complex problem, 
 as it is essentially unlike both the King's Quair 
 the Plan an< ^ Good Counsel, and, if by James I, reveals 
 him to us as a writer of strong popular sym- 
 pathies, possessing a large command of dialect and endued 
 with the saving grace of humour. The transition is then 
 much the same that has been observed in the case of 
 Chaucer, except that the Englishman never exchanged his 
 1 undefiled well ' for the more turbid waters of a provincial 
 brogue. It is significant that Major, who was born thirty 
 years after the death of King James, has no misgivings on 
 the subject. He says plainly that the King, ' a most clever 
 composer in his mother tongue' wrote two songs Tas Sen and 
 At Bdtane, the latter of which can be none other than a 
 Peebles to the Play. The play in question was the Beltane 
 festival, which was, and is, a quaint survival of the old Celtic 
 worship, Beltane being properly Bel tein, or 'Bel's fire,' 
 one of several names for the sun. The existing burlesque 
 contains a full description of the procedure. The gathering 
 of the cowherds in the fields, the dinner of boiled milk and 
 eggs and mystical cakes, the dance, the too probable inter-
 
 70 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 lude of a fight, and a number of other scenes, all are 
 portrayed with rich gust, with many a graphic and familiar 
 touch, and together compose a memorable picture of rural 
 life in mediaeval Scotland. 
 
 Peebles to the Play, however, never acquired the popu- 
 larity of its pendant, Christ's Kirk on the 
 Christ s Kirk ^ i/a v J *. a *. ^.-n 
 
 on the Green Green, which remained a great favourite till 
 
 the eighteenth century, when Pope, in one 
 of his Imitations of Horace, wrote: 
 
 One likes no language but the Faery Queen; 
 A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green. 
 
 The conjunction is a curious betrayal of prejudice. There 
 is a closer and more evident affinity between the F<tt : nj 
 Queen and the King's Quair, but to couple too such excel- 
 lent poems would be to blunt the . edge of the satire. 
 Meanwhile is it possible to admit the authorship of King 
 James with regard to Christ's Kirk on the Green? The 
 Bannatyne MS. no doubt bears his name, but such testi- 
 mony is not necessarily to be received, since it means no 
 more than that a nameless forgotten scribe, a hundred and 
 twenty-eight years after the monarch's decease, set down 
 what he may have honestly believed to be true. One point 
 to be noted is that the existing version of Peebles to the 
 Play is in the northern, while Christ's Kirk is in the 
 southern dialect of the Scottish kingdom, added to which 
 Falkland on the Green, of which no trace has ever been 
 found, is thought by Piukerton to have been written in 
 the Central or Fifeshire dialect. It is obviously unlikely 
 that James I, with all his cleverness, would have attempted 
 versification in three Scottish dialects; it is much if he suc- 
 ceeded in two. Pinkerton.by the way, includes in his Ancient 
 Scottish Poems a Song on Absence, which he is bold enough 
 to identify with the Yas Sen mentioned by Major. Coming
 
 THE POETS. 71 
 
 back to Christ's Kirk on the Green, which is still extant 
 and consists of twenty-three long stanzas, the scene of the 
 poem is apparently to be laid at Leslie in Aberdeenshire, 
 where Christ's Kirk stood actually on a green, as its ruins 
 do to this day, and a fair was held. The poem is in the 
 manner, and may have been a copy, of Peebles to the Play, 
 being what is termed a ' skit ' on country amusements. In 
 conclusion, it is only right to state that considerable doubt 
 is felt whether, after all, we possess authentic versions of 
 any of King James's popular pieces. Peebles to the Play 
 has the best claim to be deemed genuine, but Professor 
 Skeat has decided against the existing poem, holding it to 
 be, at best, an imitation of a vanished original. A theory 
 has been propounded, and may be correct, that some con- 
 fus'on has arisen between James I as poet and James I as 
 musician. It is certain that he took a warm interest in the 
 national airs, and won credit by his efforts to introduce 
 musical reforms. Conceivably, therefore, it is the tunes 
 rather than the words of these songs that should be 
 associated with his versatile genius. However, Major's 
 evidence points cleaily to literary composition in the ver- 
 nacular. May not James have anticipated many a modern 
 artist by providing both words and music, though neither 
 may have survived to our times? 
 
 Although they have not the advantage of real or sup- 
 posed connection with royalty or any great 
 The Battle , . ., .. . ,. 
 
 , .j , social rank and privilege, it is expedient to 
 
 notice here certain other North British com- 
 positions belonging to the period. The Battle of Harlaw is 
 a metrical account of a warlike episode that took place 
 during James's captivity in England. In 1411 the Low- 
 landers, led by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, met and 
 routed in a bloody engagement a body of marauding High- 
 landers under Donald, Lord of the Isles; and the poem,
 
 72 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 which has little merit as such, probably arose soon after. 
 It may be noticed in passing that a tune of the same 
 name was still current iu the seventeenth century and is 
 referred to in macaronic verse by Drummond of Hawthorn- 
 den. 
 
 Another poem in stanza-form, but otherwise quite dis- 
 tinct from the foregoing, is Holland's Howlaf, 
 Howlat w hich, under the guise of allegory, attacks the 
 sin of pride. An owl, dissatisfied with her 
 plumage, implores Dame Nature, with the support of the 
 other birds, for a change of vesture. Accordingly a gayer 
 dress is granted her, but, thus transformed, she becomes 
 so intolerable to her companions that they petition Dame 
 Nature to deprive her of her fine feathers. Their applica- 
 tion is successful, and the owl, no longer resplendent, 
 acquires the virtue of humility. The date of the composi- 
 tion is roughly, 1450, and its author was Richard Holland, 
 a priest; hence the name Holland's Howlat. 
 
 Both Douglas and DuuLav make mention of a poem 
 with the somewhat analogous title of Cockelbie's 
 Sow, which is broadly popular. The hero of 
 the piece is one Cockelbie, who sells his black 
 sow for threepence, and the interest of the narrative hinges 
 on the subsequent adventures, not of the sow, but of the 
 pennies which represent her. One he loses, and this, hav- 
 ing been found by a sorry specimen of womankind, goes 
 to purchase a pig on which her whole circle of disreputable 
 acquaintances the baser sort of clergy, a witch, and so forth 
 is invited to dine. The pig, however, has the good fortune 
 to escape, and having grown into a mighty boar, spreads 
 devastation around. The next penny is sympathetically 
 bestowed on a blind man, with the happy result that 
 Cockelbie's sou wins a fair bride and rises to be Count of 
 Flanders. The third and last penny is employed in buying
 
 THE POETS. 73 
 
 twenty eggs, which Cockelbie designs as a present for his 
 godson. The ungracious youth spurns the humble gift, 
 whereupon the would-be benefactor causes the eggs to be 
 hatched, and fifteen years later assigns to the godson, as 
 the proceeds of the rejected pennyworth, the very respect- 
 able sum of a thousand pounds. Nothing can be plainer 
 or more proper than the moral of this threefold story 
 namely, that small amounts laid out in works of charity or 
 thriftily invested sometimes yield a greatly disproportionate 
 harvest, while money sunk in riotous living is apt to prove 
 a bane rather than a boon. In the Middle Ages such 
 apologues were pleasing enough, but to a modern reader 
 they cannot but appear overdrawn and unconvincing. 
 
 Chivalry is also represented in this blossoming time of 
 Scottish poetry. The Adventure of Gawain, assigned by 
 Dunbar to an obscure 'Clerk of Travent,' is by some 
 identified with Golagrus and Gawain, which has been 
 claimed for ' Huchown,' but Trautmann assigns the poem 
 to a much later period the second half of the fifteenth 
 century. Anyhow, it never appealed to the popular imagin- 
 ation with half the force of a romance entitled 
 " Ralph the Collier (i.e. charcoal-burner) How 
 he harboured King Charles. In his preface to 
 Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott makes some interesting references 
 to this composition, speaking of it as a ' vei*y curious poem,' 
 which, after being long a desideratum in Scottish literature 
 and given up as irrecoverably lost, was brought to light 
 by the researches of Dr. Irvine of the Advocates' Library 
 and reprinted by Mr. David Laing, of Edinburgh. He 
 expresses the opinion that there must have been a Norman 
 original of this charming romance, and that it was itself 
 the original of other poems of the kind. There can be little 
 doubt as to the accuracy of these beliefs; internal evidence 
 clearly points to a foreign source. In content it is not very
 
 74 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 the old ballad King Edward the Fourth and 
 the Tanner of Tamworth. Like the English monarch, 
 Charles the Great, whilst out hunting, falls in with one of 
 his humble lieges who, failing to recognize him, is betrayed 
 into using rough language and committing acts of gross 
 incivility. Ralph does, indeed, afford the sportsman the 
 hospitality of his cot, but, in his boorish ignorance, goes 
 the length of knocking the weather-bound sovereign down. 
 Other payment he refuses, and it is only when he conveys 
 a load of coal to the palace that he learns the actual rank 
 of his late guest. Luckily Charles, like Edward, admires 
 his ch'ance companion, and bestows upon him the honour 
 of knighthood, in which capacity he vanquishes the 
 terrible Saracen Magog and ends by becoming a Marshal 
 of France. 
 
 Another favourite tale referred to by Douglas and 
 Dunbar is John the Reeve. Douglas, in his Palace 
 
 John the / -rr n J.-L. 
 
 jf of Honour, joins all three poems: 
 
 Ralph Collier with his ' thrawin ' brow, 
 Crabbed John the Reeve, and old Cowkelpie : s BOW. 
 
 The plot of John the Reeve bears a close resemblance to 
 that of the foregoing story, the good-natured king being 
 in this instance Edward I of England. 
 
 The Scottish literature of the age was enriched with 
 versions of well-established fables, especially those of 
 jSSsop or such as, in the Middle Ages, passed under his 
 name. The most notable are by a disciple of Chaucer, 
 Robert Henryson; but, before alluding to his writings, it 
 will be advisable to piece together the sparse and, in some 
 instances, very uncertain particulars of his life. We find, 
 then, that in 1462 there was incorporated in the University 
 of Glasgow, which had been founded eleven years before, a 
 4 venerable Master Robert Henryson, licentiate in arts and
 
 THE POETS. 75 
 
 bachelor in degrees,' who, we have excellent reason to 
 believe, was our poet. His alma mater can only 
 be guessed at. St. Andrew's had been founded 
 in 1411, but it would have been nothing extra- 
 ordinary if, according to the practice of the day, he had 
 studied abroad and migrated to Glasgow from Paris or 
 some other university on the Continent. His previous career 
 is shrouded in mystery. His parentage, the year and place 
 of his birth, are alike unknown, and of his name we can say 
 no more then that it is the uncorrupted form of the far 
 commoner patronymic Henderson. In later life it seems 
 clear that he settled at Dunfermline, 1 and, in legal docu- 
 ments was styled a public notary, which argues that he was 
 some sort of ecclesiastic. On the title-page of the first 
 edition of his Fables he is described as a schoolmaster of 
 Dunfermline, an office which was in the gift of the abbot 
 of the local monastery. Probably his decease occurred at 
 the close of the fifteenth century ; at any rate he was dead 
 in 1508, when he was lamented, with the other makers, by 
 Dunbar. 
 
 Sir Francis Kynaston, writing in the reign of Charles I, 
 has preserved some curious traditions respecting his latter 
 end, from which it appears that the immediate cause of his 
 death was a diarrhoea or flux, which carried him off in 
 extreme old age. When he was dying, he was advised by 
 an old woman to repair to a rowan tree at the bottom of 
 his garden and walk round it three times, repeating: 
 
 Whisky tree, whisky tree, 
 Take away this flux from me. 
 
 As it was a time of snow with hard frost out of doors, and 
 he was very faint and weak, Henryson suggested to his 
 
 1 About six miles from Dunfermline there was a gentle family of 
 HMirysons, and it is possible, and indeed probable, that the poet 
 was one of them.
 
 76 mi: AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 kind physician that it would serve the same purpose if he 
 walked round the table exclaiming, ' Oaken board ! oaken 
 board!' Naturally the ancient dame was shocked at his 
 impiety, and soon after the wilfu' man died. 
 Turn we now to the poems, and, first of all to the fables 
 
 which he ' compylit,' probably during the decade 
 Fables. 1470-80, in Chaucerian stanza. The edition of a 
 
 hundred years later speaks of his ' eloquent and 
 ornate Scots metre,' and not unjustly, for it is very certain 
 that Henryson greatly improved on the narrative style of 
 his master, JSsop, of whose nationality and precise metier 
 he had only the vaguest conceptions, although at the same 
 time very positive on the subject. He makes him of gentle 
 birth and affirms that his ' natal land is Rome withouten 
 nay.' He is persuaded also that Jilsop was a poet- 
 laureate, all these notions being as wide of the truth as it 
 was possible for notions to be. However, it is in this purely 
 imaginary character of a poet and a Roman that the 
 fabulist disports himself in a highly Chaucerian prologue, 
 wherein the Scotsman represents himself as straying in a 
 wood on a summer morning, and lying clown to sleep under 
 a hawthorn, what time JEsop appears to him in a dream. 
 Thirteen fables are told, and but little fault can be found 
 with the telling of them, the style being light and pleasant. 
 The Tale of Sir Chanticlere and the Fox, already put into 
 verse by Chaucer, loses nothing of its interest in Henry- 
 son's narrative; and excellent also is The Uplandish Mouse 
 and the Burgess Mouse, although, like some of the others, 
 it is open to the criticism of being somewhat lengthy and 
 diffuse, and it must be allowed that Heuryson's portrait 
 of the mouse is hardly equal to that of ' the wee, sleekit, 
 warin tim'rous beastie' by the unapproachable Burns. 
 Lest there should be any question as to the inner meaning 
 of the parables, each of them concludes with a postscript, a
 
 THE POETS. 77 
 
 ' moralitas.' For example, the Tale of the Dog, the Sheep, 
 and the Wolf is shown to be a satire, and a very effective 
 satire it is, on the ecclesiastical courts. 
 
 Another, and, in a literary sense, more perilous venture 
 of Henryson is his continuation of Chaucer's 
 Troilus and Cressida. His Testament of 
 Cressida is a work of considerable merit 
 Sir Walter Scott thought very highly of it but it would 
 excite surprise that the poem should ever have been given 
 to Chaucer as his own, were it not for the many absur- 
 dities of the sort which have been already brought into 
 evidence. This time the poet courts not the inspiration of 
 the woods, but that of his ingle: 
 
 I meud(aZ) the fire, and baked me about, 
 
 Then took a drink my spirits to comfort, 
 And armed me well fra the cold thereout ; 
 To out the winter night and make it short, 
 I took a quire, and left all other sport, 
 Written by worthy Chanoer glorious 
 Of fair Cressid and worthy Troilus. 
 
 In his treatment of the erring Cressida Henryson adopts 
 an entirely different line from his master. Chaucer's sym- 
 pathy for her is, perhaps, the strongest feature of his 
 romance, but this will not do for the more moral Henry- 
 son, who does not scruple to destroy all her beauty with 
 leprosy, and send her forth a beggar and outcast from her 
 kind, with a warning bell. In this piteous guise she meets 
 Troilus, as he returns flushed with victory. Neither at first 
 recognizes the other, but Troilus, discerning in the wreck 
 of her person a trace of his old mistress, flings her a purse 
 of gold and rides on his way, sick at heart. Her com- 
 panions tell Cressida the name of her benefactor, upon 
 which she falls to the ground insensible, and, after bewail-
 
 78 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 ing ln-r faithlessness and pronouncing her last testament, 
 
 expires. 
 
 In his Tale of Orpheus and Euridice, Henryson deals 
 with another classical subject, the manage- 
 ment of which exhibits the same lack of exact 
 
 Euridice. 
 
 information as characterizes his other works. 
 
 Here, however, the anachronisms are uncommonly glaring, 
 for Orpheus, on arriving in the realm of Pluto, encounters 
 not only Julius Caesar and Nero, but, positively, divers 
 popes and cardinals. Henryson must have known better 
 than that, and, after allowing for mediaeval obfuscation, 
 which in some minds was apparently measureless, we are 
 inclined to believe that this confusion of times was de- 
 liberate, and that in Henry son the moralist had got the 
 upper hand of the historian. 
 
 Far more attractive than either of these purely conven- 
 tional pieces is Henryson's pretty pastoral, 
 
 Robin and Makyn, which is also more widely 
 
 Makyn. . J 
 
 known, having been printed in Percy s Reliques 
 
 of A ncient English Poetry. The central idea of the poem is 
 a kind of leap-year proposal. Robin sits on a good green 
 hill, keeping a flock of sheep, when merry Makyn surprises 
 him with a declaration of love. Robin alleges ignorance of 
 the passion. He is certainly very listless and indifferent to 
 her appeal, so 
 
 Makyn went hame withouten fail, 
 
 And wearily could weep; 
 Then Eobin in a fall fair dale 
 
 Assembled all his sheep. 
 
 But the seemingly unimpressionable swain is not to get off 
 without some taste of the pang he has inflicted. He be- 
 comes inoculated with the complaint, and follows her with 
 soft alluring words, only to receive the answer:
 
 THE POETS 79 
 
 Robin tliou bast heard sung and say 
 
 In jests and stories old, 
 The man that will not, when he may, 
 
 Shall not have when he wold. 
 
 The shepherd continues to woo, but without speeding; 
 her reply is final. It is now Makyn's turn to be blithe, to 
 sing and laugh, while the rejected Eobin, ' left in dolour 
 and in care,' keeps his head among the rushes. 
 
 The design and execution of this idyll are in the highest 
 degree felicitous. They reproduce something of Virgiliau 
 grace combined with the succulence of real peasant life. 
 
 Henry son' s Abbey Walk and The Garment of Good Ladies, 
 both short poems, have been justly ad- 
 mired, the former being in the moralizing 
 of Good Ladies. . ' 
 
 rein of one whose due feet never failed to 
 walk the studious cloisters pale, while the latter is an in- 
 genious elaboration of the Pauline injunction concerning 
 female apparel (1 Timothy, ii. 9-11). Neither can be re- 
 garded as strictly original, the Abbey Walk having been 
 anticipated by Lydgate, and the Garment of Good Ladies 
 by Olivier de la Marche in his Triomphe ou Parement des 
 Dames d'Honneur. 
 
 Henryson is always inclined to sombreness, even in 
 romance. The Bloody Serle (or Hem) is a case 
 s e , y in point. The plot, which resembles two dis- 
 tinct stories of the Gesta Romanorum, shows 
 us a princess cast into a dungeon by a giant. Hence she is 
 delivered by a gallant prince, who receives a mortal wound, 
 and, dying, bequeaths to her a blood-stained shirt, whereon 
 she is to look whenever a new lover approaches her. The 
 sadness of this tale is explained at the close, where it is 
 declared to symbolize the tragedy of Eedemption. Besides 
 these Henryson wrote other short pieces, which are all of a 
 religious or ethical tendency. One of the most powerful is
 
 80 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 The Three Dead Powis (Heads), which has been also at- 
 tributed to Patrick Johnstone. Observe how sternly, and 
 yet sweetly, it admonishes the giddy throng of fashionables: 
 
 O wanton youth, as fresh as lusty May, 
 Fairest of flowers renewed white and red ; 
 
 Behold onr heads, lusty gallants gay, 
 Full loathly thus shall lie thy lustyhead I 
 
 And again: 
 
 O ladies, white in clothes coruscant, 
 
 Polisht with pearl and many [a] precious stone, 
 
 With pappes white and halses (necks) elegant, 
 Circled with gold and sapphire many [a] one. 
 
 As we lie thus, so shall ye lie ilk one. 
 
 It is the message of every kirkyard, and of epitaphs upon 
 epitaphs without number, but it is seldom indeed that the 
 solemn text has been handled with such trenchant force 
 and with a deeper sense of melancholy contrast than in 
 this poem of Henry son.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE GOLDEN AGE OP SCOTTISH POESY 
 
 WITH Henry son ends the imitative phase of Scottish litera- 
 ture, and the ensuing period, without cutting 
 ^r 011 itself off from the source of inspiration in 
 
 Chaucer, is distinguished for its more virile 
 and original qualities. It was illuminated by four great 
 lights, Walter Kennedy, William Dunbar, Gawin Douglas, 
 and David Lyndsay, and a goodly number of minor bards, 
 testifying to the diffusion of culture and the interest felt 
 in literary matters. Of the quartette above mentioned 
 Kennedy must be considered, in a great measure, ' lapsed,' 
 and what notice can be given to him will be most con- 
 veniently bestowed in connection with his rival Dunbar. 
 In the meantime there can be no question of his import- 
 ance in his fellow-countrymen's eyes during his own and 
 the succeeding generation. Both Dunbar and Douglas 
 recognize his eminence, and Lyndsay calls him ' the great 
 Kennedy.' 
 
 Dunbar has been in every sense more fortunate. His 
 fame, and the foundations of it, have been per- 
 
 \ \ ' * 1 1 * 
 
 petuated to later ages, and the judgement of his 
 time has been ratified by the approval of pos- 
 terity. ' The excellent poet unrivalled by any which Scot- 
 land ever produced,' is the strong eulogy pronounced by 
 Sir Walter Scott, who, in punning it, can hardly have for- 
 i. G
 
 82 TIIE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 gotten Robert Burns. The contrast between this mighty 
 master of verse and the relatively timid and conventional 
 Henryson is emphasized by their striking difference in their 
 use of the fable. Dunbar's poem, The Fox and the Lamb t 
 though offensively plain, declares by its very freedom the 
 advent of one who purposes to rule rather than serve, and 
 although some of his compositions display respect for 
 Chaucer and reverence for the common standards of religion 
 and morals, there are numerous others in which he acknow- 
 ledges no guide but the humour of the moment, no god 
 but his own wayward genius, no lessons but the observa- 
 tions and reflections of a somewhat chequered experience, 
 which make him independent of writings and writers, 
 bards and books. For the details of his life scanty enough 
 we are dependent, in a great measure, on himself. One 
 curious Little recollection to which he alludes is the lullaby 
 of his old nurse, ' Dandely, bishop, dandely,' which in 
 later life he attempted to convert into a prophecy. But the 
 fates opposed. 
 
 We do not know the precise year of the poet's birth, but 
 in all likelihood it did not occur before 1460. He came of 
 an ancient and distinguished family, whose members had 
 been Earls of Northumberland both before and after the 
 Norman Conquest, and then migrated to Scotland, where 
 they became Earls of Dunbar ami Earls of Moray. Dunbar 
 was educated at the University of St. Andrew's in the lately 
 founded St. Salvator's College. He was Bachelor of Arts 
 in 1477, and Master of Arts in 1479. The next twenty 
 years are practically a blank. The principal light upon 
 them is derived from one of his poems, which shows that 
 he had entered the Order of St. Francis, and travelled 
 as friar in Scotland and England, and even in Picardy. 
 When it came to ' flyting,' Walter Kennedy also remem- 
 bered this episode in his life, and threw in his teeth his
 
 THE POETS. 83 
 
 scallop-shell and staff and dishonest ways. This ridicule 
 seems to have been entirely deserved, for it is difficult to 
 conceive of a character more utterly unlike the saintly 
 founder of the order than William Dunbar, who, in his 
 own poem above mentioned, confesses his hypocrisy with 
 absolute frankness. He had evidently taken a deep disgust 
 with the sort of existence to which St. Francis is repre- 
 sented as inviting him in a vision, and eventually when 
 the supposed saint disappears, he turns out to be a bigger 
 hypocrite even than Dunbar himself, being an emissary 
 from below. 
 
 The freir that did Saint Francis there appear, 
 A fiend he was in likeness of a freir. 
 
 He vanisht away with stink and fiery smoke; 
 
 With him methought all the house end he took, 
 And I awoke as wy (wight) that was in weir (trouble) 
 
 After this Dunbar obtained more congenial employment 
 in the public service, and acted apparently as 
 ? j n secretary to various embassies despatched to 
 
 foreign courts with a view to securing a suitable 
 matrimonial alliance for the gay King James. In this ca- 
 pacity he found himself, at the close of the year 1501, in 
 London; and the 'rhymer of Scotland' composed a mag- 
 nificent panegyric on the English metropolis, for which he 
 was handsomely rewarded by Henry VII. The poem seems 
 to have been recited at a banquet given by the Lord Mayor, 
 and, accordingly, Sir John Shaw, the occupant of the office, 
 is loaded with compliments in the final stanza ' No lord 
 of Paris, Venice, or Florence, in dignity or honour goeth 
 to him nigh.' The description of the Thames, so different 
 nowadays, is worth quoting: 
 
 Above all rivers thy River hath renown, 
 
 Whose beryl streauiys, pleasant and preclare,
 
 84 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Under thy lusty wallys runneth down 
 Where many a swan doth swim with wingys fair; 
 Where many a barge doth sail and row with air (oar), 
 
 Where many a ship doth sail with top-royal. 
 town of towns, patron, and not-compare, 
 
 London, thou art the flower of cities all. 
 
 The last line, repeated through all the stanzas, is the 
 refrain. 
 
 The precise object of the Scottish commissioners was the 
 
 betrothal of the young Princess Margaret to 
 and the^Rose ^ e burly and bearded James IV. She was 
 
 a mere child, only twelve years old, and but 
 for politic considerations, the English Court might have 
 been expected to decline the match on the score of her 
 tender age. Reasons of state, however, prevailed, and in 
 the following year the Princess wended to Edinburgh, and 
 on her arrival at Holyrood was feted by Dunbar with a 
 blithe welcome-song. The wedding was celebrated with 
 becoming pomp ; and, again, the poet-laureate threw a halo 
 of romance round a not too well-assorted union. His epi- 
 thalamium reaches the high-water mark of official verse. 
 He had at least one notable precedent namely, Chaucer's 
 Parliament of Birds, and it is not to his discredit if he 
 made, as he evidently did, the most of this example. On 
 the other hand, the circumstances left him wide scope for 
 original effort, and it must be conceded that he utilized to 
 the full the opportunities the theme afforded. 
 
 The title The Thistle and the Roee is so directly ap- 
 propriate as to merit the adjective ' inevitable,' though it 
 does not follow that it would have suggested itself to any 
 or every rhymer, nor indeed is this the sense in which 
 Goethe, and others after him, have employed the phrase. 
 Not only was the rose the floral emblem of England, as the 
 thistle was of Scotland and the lily of France, but it was
 
 THE POETS. 85 
 
 Margaret's happy lot to typify in her person the reconcilia- 
 tion of the factious which had adopted the red and white 
 roses as party-badges. It was her destiny also to unite 
 through her descendants the divided nations England and 
 Scotland whose political rivalries became softened and 
 modified until they have long since ceased to exist. As was 
 only fitting, Dunbar's poem breathed the purest amity 
 towards Margaret's native country, in speaking of which 
 he displays a power to eulogize not exceeded even by his 
 Praise of London. 
 
 Although not official, the Golden Targe (or Shield) be- 
 longs to essentially the same category that in 
 , e l which the glamour of Chaucer and his school 
 
 may be remarked as potent and paramount. 
 ' The design,' says Warton, ' is to show the gradual and 
 imperceptible influence of love;' and he points out that 
 ' the cast of the poem is tinctured with the morality and 
 imagery of the Bomaunt of the Rose and the Flower and the 
 Leaf [formerly supposed to be] by Chaucer.' To this it 
 may be added that the stanza chosen is that of the Com- 
 plaint of Fair Anelida upon False Arcite, which had been 
 employed a few years earlier by Gawin Douglas in his 
 Palace of Honour, and, for this reason, perhaps, was adopted 
 by his rival. 
 
 The exordium reproduces all the familiar apparatus of a 
 May morning; the chant of the birds and the classic pan- 
 theon; and throughout the 'rude language 'is 'illumin- 
 ated ' and ' overgilt ' with a profusion of epithets which 
 Dun bar evidently imagines to be characteristic of the 
 highest style from Homer downwards. The term ' illumin- 
 ate' in this context exactly suggests the quality of the 
 poetry which is the literary counterpart of miniature- 
 painting as practised in the manuscripts of the period. The 
 growth of this art was contemporary with the evolution, if
 
 86 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 it may be so termed, of Chaucerian verse, the later stages 
 of which are distinguished by love of definition and constant 
 sensibility to colour. 
 
 The action of the Golden Targe is of the slenderest ki ml, 
 and such as only rich poetical talent could render tolerable. 
 The poet, still fancy-free, defends himself against a num- 
 ber of Venus's champions really, personified qualities 
 whom his golden shield enables him to withstand until 
 Presence casts powder in Reason's eyes, and then, with 
 Reason blind, resistance begins to fail. The poet is de- 
 livered to Heaviness. After comes a transformation-scene. 
 The supernatural foes retire to the ships whence they had 
 disembarked, and the gladsome wood becomes a wilderness 
 towards which the vindictive gods direct their artillery. 
 Thrice happy is the poet when he wakes from the terrible 
 dream and returns to the real sunshine, the soft air, and 
 the birds. Towards the close of the poem Dunbar pane- 
 gyrizes Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, the first in strains 
 of passionate and not undeserved admiration, and the two 
 latter, it must be confessed, with overstrained and indis- 
 criminate laudation, which, in the courtly fashion of the 
 author and his age, accumulates such phrases as ' sugared 
 tongues,' ' lips aureate,' and ' angelic mouths most melli- 
 fluate.' To the same class belongs another poem, Beauty 
 and the Prisoner ; and there are several shorter poems of a 
 similar character. 
 
 Speaking of Dunbar's work in general, it naturally 
 
 divides itself into certain groups according 
 
 Classification, to the subjects. This is much the safer 
 
 method of classification, but there is clearly 
 
 another mode of regarding them, which is to consider them 
 
 in their chronological order. For the purpose of the present 
 
 volume such a style of treatment is impracticable, as the 
 
 number and variety of Dunbar's poems, many of them
 
 THE POETS. 87 
 
 quite short, preclude individual discussion. It may be 
 mentioned, however, that Professor Schipper, of Vienna, 
 who has paid much attention to the subject, has devised a 
 triple arrangement: those written before 1503^ those 
 written on or after the king's marriage (1503) and before 
 his death (1513); and those written after the king's death. 
 Without entering into points of detail, it must suffice to 
 observe that there is a disposition to accept this able 
 scholar's conclusions. 
 
 Apart from his allegorical romances Dunbar produced 
 
 many satirical pieces, a species of verse for 
 A 'Fly ting.' which he possessed equal or greater facility, 
 
 and in which he was perhaps most at home. 
 As a satirist, Dunbar admits no scruples; he has an utter 
 contempt for reticence. The confessions of the wife of 
 Bath are completely out-Heroded by the indelicate con- 
 fidences of Dunbar' s Two Married Women and a Widow ; 
 and the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, as a poetical 
 ' mud- slinging ' match would have excited the envy of 
 Dante and his brother-in-law, Forese. Walter Kennedy, a 
 scion of one of the gentlest Scottish families and Laird of 
 Gleutig, was the author of a religious poem on the Passion 
 of Christ, but he was restrained by no sense of inconsist- 
 ency from protracting this duel of abuse, this veritable joe 
 partit, with round after round of Billingsgate. It is some- 
 what hard to understand how such a contest in personalities 
 could have been supported with good-humour, but it is 
 clear that it did not diminish the mutual respect of the 
 parties, for in his Lament for the Makers Dunbar refers to 
 his dying rival as ' good Master Walter Kennedy, 1 and 
 bemoans his approaching dissolution. 
 
 Kennedy in the Flyting calls Dunbar a 'Lollard,' ap- 
 parently on the ground of his antipathy to monks and 
 friars, evidence of which has lx>en already adduced. Tbis
 
 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 antipathy was doubtless due in part, if not altogether, to 
 his personal experience of the degeneracy of 
 th^Abbo" ^ e re ^Si us orders, and in one instance, at 
 of Tnngland. anv ra ^ e there is reason to suspect the poet of 
 a not unreasonable jealousy. John Damian, 
 the Abbot of Tungland, was a foreign adventurer, a quack 
 and an alchemist, who, by his card-playing and similar 
 tactics, obtained such a hold on the king that he received 
 from him substantial preferment, while, with Dunbar, it 
 was largely a case of virtus laudatur et alget. This unequal 
 distribution of rewards excited the poet's wrath; and, 
 when Damian committed himself to a sort of scientific ex- 
 periment, in which he failed ingloriously, Dunbar rejoiced 
 above measure, and completed the Abbot's discomfiture by 
 pouring out upon him the vials of merciless ridicule. It 
 was in the year 1507 that the churchman, as Bishop Les- 
 ley relates, ' took in hand to fly with wings, and to be in 
 France before the said ambassadors. And to that effect he 
 caused make a pair of wings of feathers, which being 
 fastened upon him, he flew off the castle wall of Stirling, 
 but shortly he fell to the ground and brake his thigh bone, 
 but the wit thereof he ascribed to that there was some hen 
 feathers in the wings, which yearned and coveted the 
 midden and not the skies.' This sorry scrape provided an 
 excellent opening for the disgusted Dunbar, who composed 
 two poems entitled, The Birth of Antichrist, and A Ballad 
 of the Feigned Friar of Tungland, in which he trounced 
 the impostor in exemplary fashion. Unfortunately, for 
 modern readers the effect is much weakened by the ob. 
 scurity of the language, which is racy old Scots of a kind 
 which becomes fully intelligible only after careful study 
 and reference to the glossary. When this point has been 
 reached and the reader is in a position to measure the ex- 
 traordinary flights of fancy with which the poet assails, on
 
 THE POETS. 89 
 
 more than equal terms, the literal flights of his rival, the 
 abbot, the exquisite humour and pungent salt of these 
 effusions produce a lasting impression. 
 
 After a time Dunbar grew weary of the court, or, at any 
 
 rate, of his dependent situation therein, and 
 r a not insignificant proportion of his verse 
 
 takes the form of petition or remonstrance 
 directed to his royal patron. Other ecclesiastics, he says, 
 are bishops or pluralists; he cannot obtain so much as one 
 small living. One of the most singular of these poems is 
 entitled, The Petition of the Gray Horse, Auld Dunbar. 
 
 I am an anld horse, as ye knaw, 
 
 That ever in dole does drag and draw; 
 
 Great court horse puts me from the staw (stall), 
 
 To fang the fog (catch the moss) by firth and fald. 
 
 Sir, let it never in town be tald, 
 
 That I should be a Yule's yald. 
 
 The meaning of the refrain is somewhat enigmatic, but, 
 according to a probable explanation, a Yule's yawd is a 
 person who, being a jade or little esteemed, receives no 
 Christmas gift. Dunbar, however, whose views of promotion 
 can have met with no support from his ecclesiastical su- 
 periors, received a solatium in the doubling of his pension. 
 
 While there is no doubt that the poet was perfectly 
 sincere in these reiterated appeals, the lack of worldly and 
 professional success does not appear to have affected his 
 spirits, and his philosophy of life, as expounded in Best to 
 be Blithe and Treasure without Gladness, is of the most 
 cheerful description. 
 
 Be merry, man! and take not far in mind 
 
 The wavering of this wretched world of sorrow. 
 
 To God be humble, and to thy friend be kind, 
 And with thy neighbour gladly lend and borrow; 
 His chance to-night, it may be thine to-morrow.
 
 90 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 This optimism was constitutional, but Dunbar's serene 
 tolerance of a world that used him ill arose, 
 one may believe, in part from consciousness of 
 poetic power and the joy he experienced in the 
 practice of his art. In studying his compositions we every- 
 where realize his entire competence for any task that he 
 may have set himself; and the last charge that can be 
 brought against him is that he confined himself to one 
 string. On the contrary, he touched all the chords of the 
 lyre from the highest to the lowest, and from each the 
 response came strong and true. His technical accomplish- 
 ments were not inferior to Chaucer's ; he revelled in feats 
 of rhyming, and he did not flinch from the less familiar 
 perils of alliterative verse, which Chaucer declined. That 
 is the metre of The Two Married Women and a Widow, in 
 which he seems bent on proving his inexhaustible resource. 
 In this attempt he succeeds, but at the expense of the true 
 principles of alliteration, which had become lost and for- 
 gotten. 
 
 The last years of Dunbar's life are enshrouded in mist. 
 The accounts of the Lord Treasurer show that at Christ- 
 mas, 1511, he received extraordinary gi-ants, but there are 
 no further entries, and the remainder of his career can 
 only be subject of conjecture. His protector, James IV, 
 was slain in the disastrous battle of Flodden Field, 1513, 
 and it has been supposed by some that the poet perished 
 with him. On the other hand Dr. Schipper is of opinion 
 that an address to the Queen Dowager and a whole set of 
 moral and religious poems, steeped in the most pious 
 sentiments, were composed after that calamitous year, and 
 whilst, perhaps, Dunbar was occupied with the 
 Evensong, duties of a quiet cure. In his Table of Con- 
 fession the old courtier recants his former life in 
 many explicit stanzas, of which the following is a specimen:
 
 THE POETS. 91 
 
 I know my vices, Lord, and right culpable 
 
 In oalhys swearing, leasing and blaspheming, 
 
 Of frustrate speaking, in court, in Kirk and table, 
 In wordy s vile, in vanities expreming, 
 Praising myself and evil my neighbours deeming, 
 
 And so in idleness my days have spent; 
 
 Thou that was rent on rood for my redeeming, 
 
 I cry Thee mercy, and leisure to repent. 
 
 Assuming that Dunbar survived Flodden, which is prob- 
 able, it is, in the absence of evidence, impossible to say how 
 long he lived, and where he died. We know from his dis- 
 ciple, Sir David Lyndsay, that in 1530, at any rate, he was 
 no more. 
 
 It was Pinkerton's conviction that Dunbar died, must 
 
 have died, about the year 1525. This convic- 
 The Friars , , . .,, 
 
 f B >/ n expressed in connexion with a poem 
 
 he attributed to that writer, although subse- 
 quent critics have been extremely critical on the subject. 
 Whether the Friars of Berwick be Dunbar's or not, the 
 performance is worthy of him, and the question of author- 
 ship has to be fought out on other grounds than those of 
 merit. Itself suggested by certain of the Canterbury Tales, 
 or possibly by an early French fabliau, it has been imitated 
 in the Famous History of Friar Bacon, a prose romance 
 of 1612 or thereabouts; and again, in Allan Ramsay's The 
 Monk and the Miller's Wife, as to which Laing observes, 
 ' With some disingenuousness he did not choose to ac- 
 knowledge how much or even that he was at all indebted 
 to the older and more spirited composition.' Irving's judge- 
 ment on the original poem is to the following effect: 
 
 This tale, to whatever author it may be referred, undoubtedly 
 exhibits a most admirable specimen of the comic mode of writing. 
 Without suffering by the comparison it may be ranked with the 
 best tales of Chaucer. The story is most skillfully conducted;
 
 02 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 and in its progress the poet displays an extensive and accurate 
 acquaintance with the diversities of human character. His 
 humour seems peculiar and uuderived. His descriptions are at 
 once striking and appropriate. The different characters intro- 
 duced are supported with the utmost propriety and with a power 
 of conception and delineation which has not very frequently 
 solicited our attention. 
 
 Plainly we have to deal with a poet of very exceptional 
 ability, but that poet, according to Dr. Schipper and some 
 others, was probably not Dunbar. His theory is that the 
 satire was provoked by jealousy between rival religious 
 communities, Dominican and Franciscan, and that the 
 spleen of the Black Friars was gratified by the triumph 
 over the Grey Friar, whose exit is decidedly ignominious. 
 This is plausible, but there is at least one passage in the 
 poem which suggests that the Dominicans were no better 
 than they should be, no holier than Friar John. 
 
 Berwick was now, and had been for some time, a pos- 
 session of the English Crown, but the Scottish poet was 
 evidently quite familiar with the locus in quo, and has 
 hashed up a story out of what was in all likelihood a town 
 scandal, although it has certainly received some embellish- 
 ments from the poet, who had literary precedents to guide 
 him. The essence of the recital is a huge joke of pretended 
 magic whereby a couple of friars, lodging by accident at, 
 the house of one Symon, discover to the goodman the 
 hiding-place of another friar who has entered the premises, 
 during his absence, for the purpose of entertaining, and 
 being entertained by, his comely spouse. Such being the 
 substance of the plot, it is only necessary to add that it is 
 developed with a skill which compels us to ask whether a 
 narrative so adroit, and which loses nothing of its interest 
 from the fact that it keeps well within the limits of decency, 
 can have proceeded from one less a master of his art than
 
 THE POETS. 93 
 
 Dunbar himself. At one point only are we tempted to 
 cavil, and that is the injustice of the final scene in which 
 poor Symon comes off with a bleeding head, but it is 
 natural to believe that he would have preferred that kind 
 of hurt to the wounding of his honour the blow prepared 
 by fair Alice. 
 
 The worldly ambition which Dunbar's old nurse had 
 conceived for him, and which he himself deemed 
 
 by no means excessive or indefensible, was at- 
 Douglas. J 
 
 tained by his younger contemporary, Gawm 
 
 Douglas, to whom, however, the episcopal dignity proved 
 anything rather than a bed of roses. The testimony of a 
 later poet is therefore true in a sense apparently not in- 
 tended : 
 
 A bishop by the altar stood, 
 A noble lord of Douglas blood, 
 With mitre sheen and rocquet white. 
 Yet show'd his meek and thoughtful eye 
 But little pride of prelacy : 
 More pleased that, in a barbarous age, 
 He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page, 
 Than that beneath his rule he held 
 The bishopric of fair Dunkeld. 
 
 The prelate's pride and pleasure in his version of the 
 Aeneid were certainly exuberant, but the circumstances of 
 his public career were such as to render the comparison 
 somewhat meaningless and illusory. Douglas can never have 
 said nolo episcopari ; his repeated attempts to gain and re- 
 tain important sees absolutely forbid the supposition. Had 
 he been blest with a bishop's ordinary experience, his 
 satisfaction might have been deemed suitably measured 
 by Sir Walter's pretty compliment. 
 
 Gawin Douglas, who was born about the year 1475, was 
 a member of Scotland's noblest family. He was a son of
 
 94 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Archibald, Earl of Angus (that powerful chief who won 
 the strange nickname of ' Bell the Cat '), was educated, like 
 Dunbar, at St. Andrews, and afterwards studied at the 
 University of Paris, lie entered the church, and for the 
 first few years his career was one of increasing success and 
 steady promotion. To the triads of Monymusk, granted 
 him in 1496, was added, two years later, the parsonage 
 of Glenquhorne, and about the same time the rectory of 
 Hawche, now Prestonkirk, in Lothian. Yet more consider- 
 able preferment fell to his lot in 1501 or 1502, when he 
 received the appointment of Provost of the Collegiate 
 Church of St. Giles, Edinburgh. Here, with his connec- 
 tions, he was necessarily drawn into the vortex of the 
 court; but for a long time his sky was outwardly serene, 
 and he found leisure for the production of allegorical 
 poems, the cast and colour of which indicate plainly the 
 atmosphere in which they were composed. Allegory is the 
 keynote of Chaucer's court-poetry ; it is the air and breath 
 of Dunbar's state verse, and Douglas could not escape the 
 subtle temptation of idealizing and rarefying the material 
 of the life by which he was surrounded. Chaucer and 
 Dunbar lent their genius to some temporary aim, some 
 transient episode. This, to vary the metaphor, was the 
 wax for the honey of their poetry. Douglas, on the other 
 hand, a more dignified and impressive personality, confines 
 himself to the proper use of symbolism, as the handmaid 
 of morals. His principal compositions in this department 
 are King Heart and the Palace of Honour, dedicated to 
 James IV. The latter can be proved to have been written 
 at this period, since in his translation of Virgil, finished in 
 1513, he informs us that the Palace of Honour had been 
 indited twelve years earlier. He does not allude to King 
 Heart, and some critics, drawing an argument from silence, 
 have concluded that it was composed subsequently. Douglas's
 
 THE POETS. 95 
 
 troubled existence, however, affords but little support to 
 this hypothesis, and probability strongly inclines to the 
 view that, like its fellow, King Heart belongs to the time 
 when, a serious young priest, Douglas compared in sooth- 
 fast reverie the fleeting vanities of the world with the stern 
 realities that must be faced by all. 
 
 Of all the forms which poetry can assume the most un- 
 satisfactory for the purpose of analysis is the allegory, the 
 essential flimsiness of which becomes strikingly evident the 
 moment one essays to present it in prose. Still it may be 
 advisable to convey some idea of the contents of these poems 
 as well as of a small satire entitled Conscience. 
 Conscience. The last-named may be dismissed in a few 
 words. It reflects on the decadence of the 
 Church, which was once swayed by Conscience. Then it 
 was Science's turn to rule, and now it is that 
 
 the sillab Ens, 
 
 Which in our language signifies that shrew, 
 Riches and gear, that gart (made) all grace go hence. 
 
 Of the Palace of Honour Ellis remarks, ' The plan of this 
 work was perhaps suggested by the Sejour 
 
 The Palace d > Hmineur of Qctavian de St. Gelais,' and he 
 of Honour. 
 
 supposes that this writer s version of the 
 
 Aeneid, though miserably executed, may have recommended 
 him to Douglas's notice. Modern scholarship (see Anglia, 
 vi, pp. 46 et aeqq.) confirms this conjecture as to the origin 
 of the plan, but in so doing it does not lose sight of the 
 great and all-pervasive influence of Chaucer's poetry, 
 especially the House of Fame and the Prologue of the 
 Legend of Good Women. As might be anticipated, the 
 poem starts to the accompaniment of a May morning, a 
 garden, and a swoon. This is followed by a dream in which 
 the goddesses of the classic mythology appear, and the
 
 96 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 poet climbs, after sundry adventures, by a steep and 
 narrow path to rock-set palace, which is a sort of Walhalla. 
 Although the light is too dazzling for mortal eyes, he is 
 able to bear a momentary glimpse of the innermost chamber 
 with its august and throned divinity and illustrious com- 
 pany, but only to fall back overcome. This is ominous of 
 the tragedy which is to hurl him from the narrow bridge 
 in his descent, and which ultimately brings the poem to so 
 abrupt a conclusion. It is evident that Douglas understands 
 by ' honour ' not mere external distinction, but the perman- 
 ent recompence of real and innate worth. With him ' life is 
 real, life is earnest,' and, so far from sharing the pessimism 
 that informs the House of Fame, he preaches strenuousness 
 and the duty of pressing forward to the mark of one's high 
 calling. At the same time modesty precludes the adventurer 
 from conceiving of himself as one who has already attained. 
 The tragical ending of the poem testifies not only a slight 
 sense of his own merits, but the lively fear that, after all 
 his preachments, he may incur the fate of the idle and 
 pleasure-loving. 
 
 King Heart is, in a way, the converse of the Palace of 
 
 Honour. One is the negative of which the other 
 King Heart, is the positive, or, dropping the figure, one is 
 
 an earlier version of the Pilgrim's Progress as 
 a whole, and the other a blend of the Holy War and that 
 portion of the Pilgrim's Progress which is concerned with 
 Vanity Pair. We learn from King Heart what becomes of 
 a man, who, swerving from the path of honour, resigns 
 himself to the gratification of his own lusts. Heart is pic- 
 tured as a gallant young man who sallies forth from his 
 castle to do battle with Dame Pleasance and her followers, 
 is defeated by her, and afterwards marries her. All goes 
 well till Age approaches, when Dame Pleasance forsakes 
 him, as do also his courtiers, Youthhead, Disport, and
 
 THE POETS. 97 
 
 Fresh Delight. His castle is now assailed by the horrid 
 rout of Decrepitude; and King Heart, foreseeing the end, 
 makes his testament, in which he bequeaths his palfrey, 
 Unsteadfastness, to Queen Pleasance, his belly to Gluttony, 
 his stomach to Rere-supper, and his conscience to Chastity 
 for the purpose of scouring. 
 
 Such performances as these, though they appear to have 
 influenced Dunbar, would not have sufficed to 
 gain Douglas the high position he has long 
 occupied in his native literature. He owes, in 
 fact, much more to his translation of Virgil, which is re- 
 markable as being not only the first direct English transla- 
 tion of this particular author, but the first of any Greek or 
 Latin classic with the exception of the Metro, of Boethius. 
 In the circumstances it was perhaps natural for Douglas to 
 pour contempt on Caxton for his lame effort to supply the 
 deficiency: 
 
 Though William Caxton of English nation, 
 
 In prose he print a book of English gross, 
 
 Clepand (calling) it Virgil in Eneados, 
 
 Which that he says of French he did translate ; 
 
 It has nothing ado therewith, God wate, 
 
 Nor no more like than the Devil and Saint Austin. 
 
 Later he returns to the attack of which this is only the 
 commencement. There is nothing per- 
 
 T he t Tr A an8l * t , ion functory about Douglas' methods of work, 
 of the Aeneitl. * . . 
 
 When he has done with the original 
 
 Aeneid, he girds himself for a new and supererogatory 
 task that of turning into Scottish a thirteenth book 
 written not by the divine Maro, but by one Maphaeus (the 
 Latinized name of Maffeo Vegio, a humanist of Lodi), 
 who had died as recently as 1458. Even this did not suffice. 
 Douglas was not content with the ordinary labours of
 
 98 TrfE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 translation, and so each book is introduced with an elaborate 
 prologue, from the first of which the above quotation has 
 been taken. To the student of poetry these prologues are 
 by far the most interesting and valuable portions of the 
 work. For beauty and power of description those of the 
 seventh and twelfth books, the former dealing with bleak 
 winter, and the hitter with the contrasting joys of summer, 
 may be selected as the most worthy, but there is not one 
 but possesses some element of attraction, and, taken to- 
 gether, they betoken a degree of versatility hardly inferior 
 to that of Dunbar himself. The metre of the translation is 
 the heroic couplet, but the prologues are written in a variety 
 of measures, and one of them, that of the eighth book, is 
 an experiment in alliterative verse. 
 
 It is deserving of note that this performance represents 
 a wider departure from the standard English of this or the 
 preceding period than can be found in any other Scottish 
 writing, and it is on that account of special importance to 
 philologers. For the same reason, many of the passages 
 
 will strike average readers as being so obscure 
 Scottice. as to be practically unintelligible ; and they will 
 
 observe with surprise that Douglas, though 
 nearer in time, is nevertheless much harder than such 
 authors as Henryson, or, going back still further, than 
 Barbour. The truth is, this poet prides himself on writing, 
 not English, but Scottish ; and he has succeeded in differ- 
 encing his language from that of the Southrons partly by 
 Latin importations, which was done also by Dunbar, and 
 partly by making huge drafts on the Scottish vernacular, j ust 
 as Browning, e.g., in his Dramatic Idylls, has thrown together 
 a mass of vocables, collected Heaven knows from what 
 sources. These native terms now for the first time become 
 literary, and many of them are so recondite that even 
 Scotsmen are fain to turn to their Virgil so as to learn
 
 THE POETS. 99 
 
 their exact signification. Douglas has such a command of 
 these, often uncouth, expressions, that he piles up mountains 
 of synonyms and "homonyms in a way which, while creating 
 respect for his affluence, really detracts from the merit of 
 his poetry. No contrast can be greater than exists between 
 the wild luxuriance of his more effusive utterances and the 
 invariable restraint and statuesque severity of the poet he 
 delighted to honour. Another contrast, hardly less notice- 
 able, is presented by the Seasons of Douglas's own country- 
 man, James Thomson, which poems, with all their un- 
 doubted distinction, are formed on the lines of literary 
 convention. 
 
 It is a curious instance of the caprice of Fortune that 
 the typical Scot, the doughty champion of his country's 
 independence in letters and politics, was at last compelled 
 to become a pensioner of England; but, before being 
 plunged in this abysm of humiliation, he had risen to the 
 crest of a somewhat tumultuous prosperity. In September, 
 1513, the freedom of the city of Edinburgh was 
 Evil Days, conferred upon him; three weeks later Flodden 
 Field robbed him not only of his King, but of 
 his two elder brothers. His old father, the Earl, prostrated 
 with grief, withdrew to a monastery in Galloway, where he 
 died the following year; and the successor to the Earldom, 
 Gawin Douglas's young nephew, the Master of Angus, in 
 less than twelve months became the husband of the widowed 
 Hose. As the result of this match the popularity of the 
 family sustained a severe blow. They were suspected of 
 too great a leaning towards the English connexion in 
 short, were held traitors. This unlucky state of affairs 
 seriously retarded the good provost's promotion. If in 
 June, 1514, he was nominated by Queen Margaret Abbot 
 of Arbroath, and in October of the same year Archbishop 
 of St. Andrews, it was only to find that her influence was
 
 100 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 unavailing, for when he would have taken possession, he 
 was prevented by force of arms. Even when the Pope, at 
 the instance of Henry VIII, Margaret's brother, appointed 
 him Bishop of Dunkeld, the Duke of Albany did not scruple 
 to confine him for a whole year in Edinburgh Castle; and 
 after his release he was employed on diplomatic missions 
 in England, so that he was able to see but little of his 
 diocese. 
 
 In 1521 the mad hatred of the Regent for the family of 
 Douglas blazed forth anew, and several of its members, in- 
 cluding the bishop, were obliged to seek refuge in England. 
 Misfortune succeeded misfortune. On the outbreak of war 
 between the two countries in 1522, Douglas was deprived 
 of the revenues of his see; charges were formulated against 
 him at the Curia, and he was cited to Rome in 
 order that he might answer them. Before he 
 could comply he fell sick and died at the house 
 of his friend Lord Dacre, at the comparatively early age of 
 forty-eight. He was buried in September, 1522, in the 
 church of the Savoy. Whilst in London he made the 
 acquaintance of Polydore Vergil, whom he assisted in 
 obtaining correct views of Scottish history. But their in- 
 timacy was soon cut short. ' I did not,' says this writer, 
 ' long enjoy the fruition of this my friend, for in the year 
 of our Lord MDXXII. he died of the plague. \ 
 
 The last of the race of poets that flourished during the 
 period of Scottish independence was Sir David 
 Lyndsay, who has more in common with Dun- 
 bar than with Douglas, and is usually and 
 rightly regarded as the former's most illustrious disciple. 
 Of less importance as a poet, Lyndsay met with a much 
 ampler share of this world's goods than the ever-seeking but 
 seldom-finding Dunbar. Born about 1490, he was the son 
 of a country gentleman, who was the possessor of an estate
 
 THE POETS. 101 
 
 called the Mount, not far from Cupar, the county town of 
 Fife. In this town he was instructed in the rudiments of 
 learning; and there also he must have witnessed the per- 
 formance of mysteries and moralities on a spot called to 
 this day the ' Play-field.' In 1505 he matriculated at St. 
 Andrews, resided four yeai-s in the university, and then 
 entered the service of the Court presumably as a page. 
 Here, we cannot doubt, he became acquainted with Dun- 
 bar; though, in view of the difference in their ages, the 
 relations may not have been close. 
 
 From this point the career of the two poets ran on some- 
 what parallel lines ; for if Dunbar was the crony of James 
 IV, Lyndsay was no less the friend and adviser of his suc- 
 cessor. The connection was formed quite early, since Lynd- 
 say was appointed to an honourable office in the royal 
 nursery; and, in later years, he quaintly reminded the 
 King how he bore his grace on his back, as a chapman 
 bears his pack, and sometimes straddling on his neck, and 
 that 
 
 The first syllables thou did ruute 
 Was ' Pa-Da-Lyn.' 
 
 In 1524 James, though only a boy of thirteen, was 
 ' erected' King; and, four years afterwards, he shook him- 
 self free of guardians, including Angus, whom he had 
 himself selected. Lyndsay, however, remained in close 
 attendance, and in 1530 was designated Lyon King of 
 Arms. In 1533 he married a certain Janet, and between 
 1531 and 1536 was engaged iu diplomatic business abroad, 
 twice in order that James V might be accommodated with 
 a bride. The King died in Io42, but Lyndsay continued to 
 serve his country, partly as an envoy to Holland and Den- 
 mark, and partly as member for Fifeshire in the Scottish 
 parliament of 1542-1546. In the latter year, on the assas-
 
 102 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 sination of Cardinal Beaton, he openly espoused the cause 
 of the Reformation; and in 1547, at St. Andrew's Castle, 
 encouraged Knox to take the lead in a spiritual and politi- 
 cal campaign against Rome. In 1556 Lyndsay presided 
 over a chapter of heralds, who had assembled to decide a 
 difficult point in their science; the proper understanding 
 of which he sought to advance by the composition of 
 technical treatises. He seeins to have spent his last days at 
 the Mount, to which property he had succeeded whilst still 
 a collegian, and to have died there in 1558. 
 
 FromLyndsay's days we pass to his works, which, though 
 not all of the same pattern, bear for the 
 
 T5 4- 
 
 most part the same seal and impress. In his 
 the Scottish l __ , __ . *v_ i 
 
 Reformation Flyting Walter Kennedy had called Dunbar 
 
 a Lollard without, as far as can be seen, any 
 special reason apart from that genial writer's natural 
 antipathy to monks and friars. If Kennedy had lived to 
 address Lyndsay by the abusive nickname, the epithet 
 would have deservedly stuck, since Sir David, in the arena 
 of letters, was a lion-like exponent of reform, so that we 
 are compelled to wonder that in a time when luckless 
 heretics were led to the stake, a man of his prominence, 
 capable of uttering such brave words, escaped without 
 harm or hurt. The powers, on which he pronounced such 
 unqualified censure, were wont to retaliate not with verbal 
 anathemas, but with brute force, yet not a hair of the poet's 
 head was ever touched. 
 
 This was an age of transition, and, as might be expected, 
 Lyndsay did not arrive at the revolutionary stage at a 
 bound. Still it will be correct to think of him as before all 
 else the poet of the Scottish Reformation; for it is pre- 
 cisely the element of political courage combined with moral 
 earnestness that distinguishes Lyndsay from Dunbar, 
 though for sheer brilliance and creative energy the older
 
 THE POETS. 103 
 
 writer remains unapproached. So far is this the case that 
 the Scottish master had evidently ousted Chaucer as a 
 pattern of style and source of immediate inspiration. 
 What Chaucer was to King James I, and, in less degree, 
 to Dunbar himself, that Dunbar was to Lyndsay and prob- 
 ably to many versifiers of the age John Davidson, Alex- 
 ander Cunningham, Earl of Glencairn, and others. For 
 lack of evidence we cannot speak with certainty regarding 
 the others, but with Lyndsay it is different. The volume of 
 his writings has been preserved, and in it we can trace with 
 something like botanical accuracy the unfolding of his 
 literary life as an offset of the splendid genius that had 
 blossomed with the Thistle and the Rose. 
 
 Lyndsay's first poetical effort of any importance is con- 
 jectured to have been his Dream, which has much 
 > n y s j.j^ rem i n d s ug of Dunbar, from whom indeed 
 he has taken the very title. The rhyme royal, in 
 which the main body of the poem is written, shared by 
 Dunbar with Chaucer and others, is the identical metre 
 of the Thistle and the Boee; but more noteworthy in this 
 respect is the nine-line stanza used in the epilogue the 
 stanza of the Golden Targe. The language, too, is so similar 
 as to be almost coincident with that of Dunbar's court 
 poetry. One may mention also the exhoi'tation addressed 
 to the young King and the attacks on the clergy, both 
 echoes of notes previously sounded by Dunbar. The scenes 
 in hell, to which Lyndsay boldly assigns reverend ill-doers, 
 and other descriptions, have been compared with passages 
 in two thirteenth-century Old French poems, La Voie ou 
 Le Songe d'Enfer, by Raoul de Houdanc, and its continua- 
 tion, La Voie de Paradis ; but it does not seem beyond the 
 bounds of possibility that the spiritual pilgrimage on 
 which the dreamer sets out under the conduct of Dame Re- 
 membrance and John Commonweal, may. have been sug-
 
 104 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 gested, at any rate in part, by Dante's Comedy, eitli<-r 
 directly or indirectly through ' Dant in English ' (Lyd- 
 gate), or, in other words, Chaucer's House of Fame. Dun- 
 bar, too, saw Heaven and Hell in the Dance of the Seven >^ 
 Of John the Commonweal we shall hear again; he was 
 Lyndsay's Piers Plowman. 
 
 The Complaint, which is next perhaps in point of time 
 
 and was composed apparently in 1529, is 
 The Complaint, somewhat closely modelled on Dunbar's 
 
 kindred verse, more especially his Solistaris 
 at Court and To the King. The octosyllabic metre and the 
 contents alike correspond. The motive is a double one. 
 Lyndsay, after all his faithful services, feels himself a little 
 neglected; while he glances back with disdain and indigna- 
 tion on the prelates and temporal lords, from whose unde- 
 sirable tutelage the King had but lately effected his escape. 
 As regards the former he contests their right to interfere 
 at all with secular concerns. 
 
 Why should they inell with court or session, 
 Except it were in spiritual things P 
 
 Nothing can be more caustic and humorous than the con- 
 clusion in which he requests the loan of two thousand 
 pounds, promising to repay when spiritual persons no longer 
 seek af ter_honours and dignities, women after rule, or when 
 
 winter passes without rain, frost and snow, or at the 
 latest a week after Doomsday. All these conditions may 
 be regarded as equally favourable to the borrower. 
 
 Dunbar's influence is no less discernible in several of the 
 
 shorter poems, of which the most notable 
 
 Papingo&nA ftre ^ y e8tamenti am i Complaint of our 
 
 ofBag*be Sovereign Lord's Papingo and the Complaint 
 
 of Bagshe. The master, not only in the 
 
 Thistle and the Rose, but in The Tod and the Lamb, and in
 
 THE POETS. 105 
 
 his two satirical poems addressed to James Doig, had 
 adopted the form of the animal fable, under which thin 
 disguise he portrays more or less vividly human personages. 
 Without perhaps intending to indicate special actors on 
 the stage of Scottish politics, Lyndsay seizes on this ancient 
 type of parable to enforce his rapidly crystallizing views on 
 the state of the nation. In the Testament of the Papingo 
 the heroine is the King's parrot, which being ' right fat and 
 not well used to fly ' falls from the top of the tree she had 
 climbed and is mortally hurt. A raven, a kite, and a mag- 
 pie, personifying religious orders, swoop down to confess 
 her and profit by her bequests ; and this enables the poet 
 to introduce a tirade against the clergy, who are so devoted 
 to Dame Sensual that they 
 
 Thought but pain poor people for to teach. 
 
 The Complaint of Bagshe concerns rather the Court than 
 the commonalty. It professes to recount the experience of 
 an old hound so named, who had been discarded to make 
 room for a new favourite. Bagshe had not been a good 
 dog, so, having barely escaped the rope, he desires to warn 
 his successor against similar abuse of his day of power. 
 This was written in 1536, in which year also he wrote an 
 Answer to the King's Flyting. James, in a poem now lost, 
 had twitted Lyndsay with his strait-laced sentiments con- 
 cerning chastity, and this is the courtier's playful re- 
 joinder. 
 
 y Kitty's Confession is also Lyndsay's. In the Testament 
 of the Papingo he had shown that his position 
 
 differed from that of Dunbar, who, like Chaucer, 
 Confession. 
 
 had attacked the corruptions of churchmen 
 without for that reason ceasing to be orthodox in his beliefs 
 aii'l sound in his attachment to the forms and institutions 
 of the Church. From assailing the celibacy of the priests,
 
 106 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 in which he discovers the principal cause of their immorality, 
 he, in Kitty's Confession, proceeds to mine another strong- 
 hold of Roman practice, which is also, in his opinion, an- 
 other cause of clerical, and indeed laical, indulgence of the 
 flesh. Although the poem winds up with praise of the 
 confessional, as it was conducted in old times'of godly in- 
 nocence, he has clearly been forced to the conclusion that, 
 in the prevailing dissoluteness of manners, it is expedient 
 that females should confess their sins to the ' great God 
 Omnipotent,' who alone could absolve them, instead of 
 subjecting themselves to the gross impertinences of a father 
 confessor's string of questions, to say nothing of the peril 
 of hypocritical company, which was neither small nor 
 rare. 
 
 A Supplication in Contemption of Side Tails is a humorous 
 indictment of the fashion of wearing long trains 
 Various. a fashion which had taken possession not 
 only of court ladies, but even of nuns. Merely 
 mentioning the Deploration of Queen Magdalene, the con- 
 sumptive bride of King James, and the eldest daughter of 
 the French King Francis; and the Jousting between James 
 Watson and John Barbour, plainly suggested by one of 
 Dunbar's poems and composed in honour of Queen Mag- 
 dalene's successor, let us proceed to what is beyond question 
 the brightest and most popular of Lyndsay's poetical 
 attempts his Squire Meldrum. In this we escape for the 
 moment the rather oppressive atmosphere of theological 
 controversy and breathe the cool, sweet air of romance 
 which is yet not all romance. The adventures of the worthy 
 squire both in love and war, though founded in some measure 
 on fact, are of the most exaggerated description, but the 
 internal consistency of the poem and its joyous disregard 
 of mere probability soon produce a sense of sympathy for 
 the hero, who, if enjoying more than his fair share of the
 
 THE POETS. 107 
 
 martialist's luck, and not over nice in his morals, redeems 
 all by the superb defiance of his last fight, in which he ap- 
 proves himself every whit as stout as Withrington in Chevy 
 Chase. In pure charm none of Lyndsay's poems equals this 
 gay and gallant rhyme, and it is all his own, for we may 
 search in vain among Dunbar's genuine compositions for a 
 model, the nearest approach to it being perhaps the hilarious 
 Friars of Berwick, once ascribed to him, but now considered 
 to be of different authorship. Sqiiire Meldrum 
 3/T/ 6 * 8 ^^ten * n short couplets the traditional 
 
 metre for narrative poems in the days before 
 Chaucer, and certainly the best that could be chosen for so 
 sprightly a composition. No specimen could do justice to 
 the merits of the poem, which requires to be read through 
 in order to be properly appreciated. One of its most con- 
 spicuous marks is the incessant elan with which episode 
 after episode is retailed, and one may well believe that 
 Lyndsay was thinking of his own aim and ideal when 
 he wrote of the 'pleasant dulce talking' of the young 
 squire. 
 
 As a master of many rhythms Dunbar had displayed a 
 genius for versification by no means equalled by 
 Metres, his disciple, who for the most part confined him- 
 self to such conventional forms as rhyme royal and 
 yet royaller rhyme of the Golden Targe, the short couplet, 
 heroic verse, and so forth. Still Lyndsay manifests con- 
 siderable insight into the right use of metres, always select- 
 ing those which are by nature best adapted to the particular 
 theme, and in his longer poems, e.g., the Satire of the Three 
 Estates and The Monarchy varying the rhythms in con- 
 formity with changes in the subject-matter. It may be 
 added that in these more extensive works Dunbar's influence 
 is not so apparent as in the poems of which account has been 
 already taken.
 
 108 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 The Satire is a ' morality,' the first and the last in 
 Scottish literature. The general character of 
 ofth "1/1 raorality plays will be examined in another 
 Estates. place ; here some idea of their quality may be 
 
 gathered from this example, the performance 
 of "which, including an interval for refreshments, occupied 
 no less than nine hours. It speaks well for the endurance 
 of the king and his court that they sat out this long play, 
 which bristles with allusions to contemporary abuses, and 
 contains not a few jests offensive to good taste. In spite of 
 that the Satire of the Three Estates is a moral drama of 
 tremendous energy and efficacy, inasmuch as the allegorical 
 characters, amongst whom we again find John the Common- 
 weal, are as real as any of Langland's ; and the uncompro- 
 mising exposure of all that was rotten in the State and 
 detestable in the Church must have produced an instant 
 and lasting impression on the king and the higher orders 
 no less than on the auditory of common people. Pinkerton's 
 remark, therefore, that ' Sir David was more the reformer 
 of Scotland than John Knox; for he had prepared the 
 ground, and John only sowed the seed', is hardly an ex- 
 aggeration. John Commonweal actually promulgates, as 
 in Parliament, certain proposals for the reformation of 
 the country, and in 1540 the very year in which the play 
 was performed before king, queen, and council a moderate 
 act was passed by the Estates for abating ' the unhonesty 
 and misrule of kirkmen baith in wit, knowledge and 
 manners.' 
 
 This brings us to the somewhat complex question of the 
 date of the play. Tradition affirms that it was first acted 
 in the Play Field at Cupar in 1535, but there is absolutely 
 nothing that can be called evidence to support this belief, 
 and Laing frankly renounces it. ' I do not,' he says, ' hesi- 
 tate to assert that it was first exhibited at Linlithgow at
 
 THE POETS. 109 
 
 the feast of Epiphany ou the 6th of January, 1539-40, 
 in the presence of the King, Queen, the Bishops, and a 
 great concourse of people.' 
 
 As a spectacle there can be little question of its effective- 
 ness, for the manifold distinctions of the real world are 
 thrown into sharp contrast in this microcosm, in which 
 Chastity and Verity, essentially court ladies, rub shoulders 
 with such harridans as the tailor's and the shoemaker's 
 wife, whose conversation is much in the style of Dunbar's 
 gossips. 
 
 Lyndsay's last great effort was The Monarchy, in which 
 he returns to the stately manner of his 
 The Monarchy. Dream. Once more it is a glad May morn- 
 ing, which is described at length and in a 
 way that may well be thought to prelude a romantic tale 
 rather than a world-epic an anomaly which the poet, to 
 do him justice, perceives and acknowledges. Lyndsay is in 
 a thoroughly pious mood, and betakes himself to Calvary, 
 where he prays to be bathed in the fountain of Christ's 
 blood, and thereafter to write nothing save to His high 
 honour. All this in the prologue. In the first book he en- 
 counters in the park old Father Experience, who unravels 
 to him the whole course of the world's destiny from the fall 
 of Adam to the ultimate reign of Christ, and Lyndsay 
 determines to commit the recital to paper in the vulgar 
 tongue. The narrative is interrupted by occasional question 
 and answer, and by digressions on the state of things in 
 Lyndsay's own time, which, in his view, had touched the 
 nadir of degeneracy. 
 
 We find in The Monarchy hardly any new ideas, and 
 Lyndsay has no fear of repeating himself. For example, 
 we have once more brought under our notice the hard case 
 of the poor man ridden by the Vicar, who, as Pauper, had 
 expounded his wrongs in the Satire of the Three Estates.
 
 110 THE AOE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 At his father's death the best cow had gone as perquisite 
 to the Vicar, who, when his mother died, claimed the next 
 best beast. His wife Meg pines away for very sorrow of 
 heart, and soon a third cow will fall to the vicar, to say 
 nothing of the outer garments, the portion of the clerk. 
 That was Pauper's story. In The Monarchy this crucial in- 
 stance of ecclesiastical oppression is again brought forward 
 with the difference that a case is supposed in which the 
 survivors would be orphan children, cast on the mercy of 
 the world. 
 
 It is by the constant iteration of notions which had be- 
 come solid, indestructible convictions that Lyndsay hoped 
 to advance his ethical, religious, and political aims, but in 
 this and other ways he sacrificed his potential greatness as 
 a poet. The idea of The Monarchy, vaultingly ambitious, 
 could hardly be reduced to effective presentation owing to 
 historical vagueness and resultant lack of colour. To-day it 
 might be different, but Lyndsay knew little about Babylon, 
 and, had he known more, he must have passed, before he 
 had time to make the Babylonian empire real, to the 
 other monarchies, whose downfall he purposed to record, 
 and which would have had the same title to accurate por- 
 trayal. The best part of the poem is the prologue, and, 
 after that, those passages of prophetic earnestness in which 
 he lashes the depravity of his age. The rest is relatively 
 tame, dull, and poverty-stricken. Lyndsay is emphatically 
 one of those writers who, on the whole, shine most in 
 selections, his Squire Meldrum being, as we have implied, 
 an exception. He had talents of a far higher order than 
 Gower, the satirist of Plantagenet England, but in him, as 
 in Gower, the moralist was forever disputing with the poet 
 for expression and supremacy, and in his latter days had 
 fairly arrived at the throne of his soul. However, his ro- 
 mance, a model of elegant and brave narration, will always
 
 THE POETS. Ill 
 
 live to remind us of what he might have achieved in times 
 less afflicted by the consciousness of social, political, and 
 ecclesiastical turpitudes. 
 
 We have said that Squire Meldrum deserves to be fully 
 Squire perused, but it seems unsatisfactory to bid 
 
 Meldrum adieu to this writer without having given a 
 again. single quotation from his best poem. Here, 
 
 then, is a description of the parting of the lovers: 
 
 Yet something will we commune ' mair ' 
 
 Of this lady, which made great care, 
 
 Which to the squier was more pain 
 
 Nor all his woundis, in certain. 
 
 And then her friendis did conclude, 
 
 Because she might do him no good, 
 
 That she should take her leave and go 
 
 Till her country; and she did so. 
 
 But thir (those) lovers met never again, 
 
 "Which was to them a lasting pain; 
 
 For she against her will, was 'maryit.' 
 
 Wherethrough her ' weird ' she daily ' waryit ' 
 
 Howbeit her body was absent, 
 
 Her tender heart was aye present, 
 
 Both night and day, with her ' Squiar.' 
 
 Was never creature that made such care. 
 
 Penelope for Ulysses, 
 
 I wot, had never more distress; 
 
 Nor Oressid for true Troilus 
 
 Was not tenth part so dolorous. 
 
 I wot it was against her heart 
 
 That she did from her love depart. 
 
 Helen had not so mickle noy, 
 
 When she perforce was brought to Troy 
 
 I leave her, then, with heart full sore, 
 
 And speak now of this Squier more.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SPENSERIAN VANGUARD. 
 
 THE trinity of poets who between them share the chief 
 honours of the reigns of Henry VII and 
 Three Poets He y m iu ustra t e three types of their 
 under Two . J m , _ _. * r . 
 
 Kings order. The first, Stephen Hawes, is a court- 
 
 poet with a high moral tendency; the second, 
 Alexander Barclay, is a priest, orthodox in doctrine and a 
 rigorous censor of his fallible fellows, while Skeltoa? 
 though of the court, is in his truest manner not courtly. 
 Neither is he a satirist, in Barclay's style, but rather when 
 he is most sincere, most himself, a pasquiler. Of the three, 
 Skelton, who could turn his hand to anything, was the 
 most talented. One may even claim for him some degree 
 of genius, for he elevated doggerel into a fine art and 
 invented a species of verse so characteristically his own as 
 to be called after him. There are, however, good reasons 
 for dismissing the question of intellectual priority and 
 treating these writers in the succession named. 
 
 Concerning Hawes we hear something, not very definite 
 or certain, from Anthony a Wood, the gossip of 
 H T 's Oxford, who conjectures that he was a Suffolk 
 
 man, one of the Hawes of Hawes in the 
 Bushes. If this was so, it will help to explain a notable 
 idiosyncrasy of the poet, who laboured under the delusion, 
 not indeed confined to him, that Lydgate was an extra- 
 ordinarily great writer, well worthy to be followed as a
 
 THE POETS. 113 
 
 model and only to be mentioned in accents of timid 
 veneration. Now Lydgate was of Suffolk and probably, in 
 Hawes' boyhood, the glory of the county. Anthony a Wood 
 goes on to affirm that the poet studied at Oxford, though 
 no register shows that he took a degree; and that on quit- 
 ting the University he set out on a sort of grand tour, 
 embracing Scotland and the Continent, haunting especially 
 'receptacles of good letters' and returning a complete gentle- 
 man and master of several languages. With such excellent 
 recommendations, what wonder that he gained admission 
 to the court of Henry VII and was appointed groom of 
 the chamber to that monarch? Owing to his 'facetious 
 discourse' and 'prodigious memory' he rose high in the 
 opinion of his royal master; and, when Henry VIII 
 followed his father on the throne, he received from him 
 also marks of esteem. Speaking first of Henry VII, it has 
 been observed of this sovereign that, while extravagance 
 was not a fault that could be fairly laid at his door, his 
 household accounts prove that he could be liberal to the 
 nobler sort of parasite. To Master Bernard, a blind poet 
 less famous than the Scottish Harry and otherwise for- 
 gotten, was paid the sum of a hundred shillings, presum- 
 ably in recognition of his poetical accomplishments; and 
 Hawes is the subject of similar entries. ' For a ballet that 
 he gave to the King's grace ' he obtained from the seventh 
 Henry ten shillings. When Henry's queen died it was in 
 1502 four yards of black cloth were presented to Hawes, 
 that he might make a becoming appearance in mourning 
 weeds. But when in 1509 the King himself was laid to 
 rest in dull cold marble, Hawes was apparently forgotten 
 in the apportionment of funeral cloth a small instance, 
 perhaps, of the truth 
 
 Oh, how wretched 
 
 Ib that poor man, that hangs on prince's favours! 
 I. I
 
 114 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 But if a Pharaoh had arisen that knew him not, Hawes 
 did not accept these things as necessary or permanent. 
 Again the accounts speak, informing us that Henry VIII 
 or his deputy assessed a play of his at exactly seven 
 pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence, or, in other 
 words, eleven marks and a half. 
 
 The date of the poet's birth is unknown, and that of his 
 death is hardly more certain, although there is a fair 
 degree of probability that the will of one Stephen Hawes, 
 who had property at Aldborough, was that of our Stephen 
 Hawes. This was proved in the Archdeaconry court of 
 Suffolk on January 16th, 1523, and the testator bequeathed 
 his earthly possessions to his wife Katherine, so that on 
 this assumption the poet was married. In Thomas Felde's 
 Conversation between a Lover and a Jay, published in 1530, 
 'young Stephen Hawes,' who had 'treated of love so 
 clerkly and so well,' is spoken of as dead. At the time of 
 his decease he was perhaps forty-six or so, and, seemingly, 
 the last ten years of his life had yielded little in the shape 
 of literary production. From Wynkyn de Worde's edition 
 we learn that the Pastime of Pleasure was written in the 
 twenty-first year of Henry VII (1505-6), when Hawes was 
 literally a young man; and, as we have said, his literary 
 career appears to have closed at the age of thirty-six, when 
 he retired to the peaceful seclusion of his Suffolk home, 
 where, perchance, ho acquired local fame as an authority 
 on polled cattle and Southdowns. 
 
 As to Hawes' extraordinary retentiveness, Anthony a 
 Wood tells us that it ' did appear evidently in this, that he 
 could repeat by heart most of our English poets, especially 
 John Lydgate, Monk of Bury, whom he made equal in 
 some respects with Geoffrey Chaucer.' This statement is 
 assuredly true, as is shown, for instance, in the prologue 
 of the Example of Virtue, and although a tribute of admira-
 
 THE POETS. 115 
 
 tion cannot be withheld from a memory as powerful as 
 Macaulay's, we are at the same time compelled to recognize 
 that taste in literature was still undeveloped. Hawes was, 
 in this sense at least, a child of his time. Ten Brink, indeed, 
 holds that the very modesty of his achievements may be 
 set down in part to the spirit of repose that took possession 
 of the nation on the conclusion of the War of the Roses, 
 and is the poetical counterpart of the practical, unheroic 
 temper of its ruler. 
 
 The work by which Hawes is best known to posterity is 
 his History of Grand Amour and La Belle 
 
 Q , a Pucelle, called the Pastime of Pleasure. At 
 
 first sight this might seem to promise a 
 romance of the Isolde type, but the finish of the title is 
 disillusioning. 'Containing,' it says, 'the Knowledge of 
 the Seven Sciences and the Course of Man's Life in this 
 World.' This makes us certain that we are in another 
 circle of ideas, and whatever the fable may turn out to be, 
 we know now that it will be, rather more than less, a species 
 of lay-figure for the display of moral and intellectual 
 bravery. Still, ourselves were lacking in discernment, 
 should we find neither interest nor value in the clumsily 
 advertised poem. For here, unfolded to our view, is a 
 fifteenth-century clerk's interpretation of life in its higher 
 aspects; and the truth cannot be repeated too insistently 
 that no changes or improvements in material environment 
 have altered the essentials of conduct which remain pre- 
 cisely what they were then. Now, as then, when we stand 
 in the fair meadow of youth, there extend before us the 
 divergent paths of the Active and the Contemplative Life. 
 For most it is no longer a question of shutting themselves 
 up in a cloister; a measure of activity is exacted by press- 
 ing needs or the duties of a certain station, in consequence 
 of which absorption in contemplation or study is possible
 
 116 THE AGE OF TRANSITION*. 
 
 only within limits. Yet the difference in temperaments 
 renders the distinction eternal, elemental. 
 
 However, Grand Amour has no inclination for the noise- 
 less tenour of conventional discipline; he pronounces for 
 the Active Life. Fame brings him tidings of La Belle 
 Pucelle, and she, or what she represents, becomes hence- 
 forth the object to the acquisition of which all his efforts 
 are directed. First he must betake himself to the Tower of 
 Doctrine, whose daughters, the Seven Sciences, are medi- 
 aeval equivalents of the Muses. We shudder at their collec- 
 tive appellations, Trivium and Quadrivium, but one of the 
 latter bevy inspires a passage on which St. Cecily herself 
 might bestow a benison. The hero discovers Music playing 
 on an organ in the tower, and is by her introduced to the 
 charming Pucelle, with whom he holds loving discourse 
 and dances. Here, surely, is a subject for a Pre-Raffaelite 
 painter! The fair creature is only a momentary visitor. 
 All too soon she departs for her far-away home, and Grand 
 Amour has to pass through many a tough adventure before 
 he can obtain her hand. But on the whole and the point 
 seems important his course of life is prospered by Fortune. 
 He meets with no stunning or incurable reverses ; and the 
 poet, when setting him a stern task, takes care to provide 
 him with extraordinary means for achieving success. Thus 
 the companionship of Godfrey Gobilive, a sorry customer 
 who strives to poison his mind against the fair, is effectually 
 counteracted by Lady Correction with her knotted whip, 
 who identifies him as an escaped prisoner from the Tower 
 of Chastity. So, too, when he has to quell the three-headed 
 giant, Falsehood-Imagination-Perjury, he has his trenchant 
 blade Claraprudence to do it with. A stormy voyage 
 brings him to the islet of La Pucelle, where a worse fight 
 awaits him, and Claraprudence alone would not have 
 availed against his monstrous adversary, but, the sword
 
 THE POETS. 117 
 
 having been smeared with the ointment of Pallas, all goes 
 well, and the hero, after a gracious reception, is wedded 
 the next morn to the lady of his quest by Lex Ecclesiae, or 
 the Law of the Church. 
 
 At this point a common romancer, whose sole aim was to 
 please, would doubtless have checked his lay, for, the har- 
 mony of life having been established, there would have 
 been nothing more to say, and any addition would have 
 seemed an anti-climax. Hawes, however, with his philo- 
 sophic bent and outlook, could not conceal from himself, 
 or his readers, that all human bliss is by its very nature 
 brittle and transitory, and, like the Scottish maker, he 
 requires us to accompany his hero into the chilly scenes of 
 age, with its infirmities and temptations. No special ori- 
 ginality marks this portion of the poem, which, in an 
 artistic sense, might well have been omitted. It may be 
 remarked, however, that Grand Amour is mercifully pre- 
 served from the moral disfigurements incidental to advanced 
 life, which is further evidence that in the Pastime of Plea- 
 sure Hawes does not reflect common experience, never so 
 scrupulously guarded from disabling falls and mortifying 
 failures. He takes the view that the highest type of char- 
 acter, like the highest type of physical beauty, can only be 
 evolved under favouring conditions, actually realized in 
 the case of a fortunate minority, to whom the world is 
 rather a palaestra than an arena or a battlefield. For the 
 vast majority immersed in what is called the realities of 
 lifi', who rise early and late take rest, and whose ideals, be 
 they what they may, are too often shattered by contact 
 with joyless facts and the narrowing adamantine wall of 
 circumstance, these pleasant studies have no message, and 
 hardly any meaning. Truth to tell, Hawes writes for the 
 gilded youth. The Pastime of Pleature is a court-poem. 
 
 This accounts for the air of unbounded leisure which
 
 118 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 marks it. It is not every son or daughter of Adam who 
 will bear with, much less derive amusement from, the 
 quaint stanzas in which Hawes, led captive by an ill-re- 
 gulated enthusiasm for the minutiae of learning, describes 
 with animation a lesson of good Dame Grammar: 
 
 ' Madam,' quoth I, ' forasmuch as there be 
 
 Eight parts of speech, I would know right fain 
 What a noun substantive is in his degree, 
 And wherefore it is so called certain.' 
 To whom she answered right gently again, 
 Saying alway that a noun substantive 
 Might stand without help of an adjective. 
 
 The Latin word which that is referred 
 
 Unto a thing which is substantial 
 For a noun substantive is well averred, 
 And with a gender is decimal. 
 So all the eight parts in general 
 Are Latin words, annexed properly 
 To every speech, for to speak formally. 
 
 It is only fair to add that the Pastime of Pleasure is not 
 throughout of this quality, since it includes passages of 
 spirited description. Warton, indeed, no mean judge, is 
 disposed to think highly of the composition. 'This poem,' 
 he says, ' contains no common touches of romantic or alle- 
 gorical fiction; the personifications are often happily sus- 
 tained, and indicate the writer's familiarity with the 
 Provincial school.' And comparing him with his master 
 and model, he declares, ' Hawes has added new gi-aces to 
 Lydgate's manner.' Ellis notwithstanding, there is no sort 
 of doubt as to the general soundness of these criticisms, 
 although they must not be understood to imply blindness 
 to Hawes' defects, which are partly personal, and partly 
 those of his age and school.
 
 THE POETS. 119 
 
 The Example of Virtue is a poem written, like the Pas- 
 time of Pleasure, in Chaucerian stanza, and 
 
 ,. T/ . a . is of much the same form and character. It 
 
 of Virtue. 
 
 is, if possible, even more courtly in tone, but, 
 on the other hand, it is more distinctively Christian. With 
 a few modifications the Pastime of Pleasure might pass as 
 a presentment of the highest pagan philosophy, but the 
 En-ample is deeply tinged with mediaeval asceticism, and 
 in it virtue almost spells virginity. Again the hero is a 
 youth surrounded by every sort of helpful nurture. Nature, 
 Fortune, Hardiness (or Courage), Wisdom, Discretion with 
 such dames to counsel him, could youth go astray? Dis- 
 cretion is his first mentor. He meets her, a beauteous lady 
 of middle height and clad in garments glistering with 
 pearls, in a lovely mead enamelled with flowers and shaded 
 with trees. Next, the scene changes to a haven, and Dis- 
 cretion conveys her charge on the sea of vainglory to a 
 wealthy island all gold and gems and diamonds. Of the 
 opulent allegory that follows as opulent almost as this 
 Eldorado we can furnish but a faint impression, and the 
 pity is that the moral element is always so aggressively 
 evident, or that modern taste has grown so intolerant of 
 this special blend of instruction and entertainment. 'Twere 
 easy to imagine that a child, or a person of childlike in- 
 tellect, might suck infinite gratification from the perusal of 
 the Example of Virtue, which lacks neither variety nor in- 
 cident, and abounds in little cameos. Hawes, if he had no 
 splendid gift of imagination, was endowed with a prolific 
 fancy which enabled him to vie with Dante in symbolic 
 profusion. 
 
 The knight, like his comrade in the Pastime of Pleasure, 
 is encouraged to persevere in the path of Discretion by the 
 promise of a glorious bride the Princess Cleanness (or 
 Purity), but before he wins her, he has attained the age of
 
 1 -< THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 sixty! In spite of this fact, t,ie elderly, but still hale 
 and hearty suitor, is not suffered to clasp the prize without 
 a final test of his merit. He may not be excused a fight 
 with the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, consolidated in 
 the form of a dragon with three heads, whose lair is a foul 
 Mack marsh at the foot of the heavenly hill. For this 
 dreadful encounter he is armed in the manner prescribed 
 by St. Paul, and, though not without sore difficulty, 
 emerges from it victorious. This is one of the earliest pre- 
 monitions of Spenser, for, doubt it not, the dragon is the 
 same loathsome fiend with which the Red Cross knight has 
 to battle in the Faery Queen. 
 
 But if Hawes anticipates Spenser, he also looks back to 
 the father of his line Geoffrey Chaucer seeing that on 
 her wedding morn Cleanness presents her lover with a 
 marguerite or daisy: 
 
 Which is a flower right sweet and precious, 
 Indued with beauty and much virtuous. 
 
 Clearly Hawes had not forgotten the prologue of the 
 the Legend of Good Women, nor, perhaps, is this his only 
 reminiscence. Another suggestion that may have come 
 from the same source is the name of the bride's father 
 the King of Love. 
 
 The marriage rite is now celebrated. In a chapel richly 
 (light, with high embowered roof aflame with emeralds and 
 rubies, assembles a strange congregation of angelical sub- 
 stances, personified virtues, and beatified humanity. Bede 
 is there, and Lady Prayer, and Michael, Gabriel, and their 
 fellows, 
 
 To help Saint Peter the masses to sing. 
 
 The holy ceremony is succeeded by a nuptial feast, 
 whither the bride is conducted by a pair of venerable.
 
 THE POETS. 121 
 
 Anglo-Saxon kings St. Edmund the Martyr and St. Ed- 
 ward the Confessor. Virtue, with a sexagenarian's longing 
 for quietude, now requests to be shown the more perfect 
 garden whereof Cleanness had told him earlier, and after a 
 vision of the nether regions and those who had come to be 
 denizens of the same by reason of lasciviousness and pride, 
 he is caught up with the whole celestial retinue to the 
 palace of the King of Love. The poem variously concludes 
 with a prayer for the King, the Queen-Mother, and Prince 
 Henry ; gratulations on the reconciling of the Roses, White 
 and Red ; and appeals to the mighty departed, Gower and 
 Chaucer and Lydgate, to intercede with the Almighty for 
 the illumination of their rude successor. 
 
 The poem must have been composed after 1502, or men- 
 tion would have occurred of Prince Arthur, who died in 
 that year. Otherwise there appeal's to be no clue as to the 
 date of the allegory. 
 
 Two other writings of Stephen Hawes must be recorded : 
 his Conversion of Swearers and his Joyful 
 
 Meditation on the Coronation of Henry VIII. 
 of & wearers. * 
 
 The former, a protest against profanity, is 
 
 chiefly remarkable for a metrical experiment of gradually 
 expanding stanzas, which may be ingenious, but has nothing 
 to recommend it on the score of rhythm or propriety. Later 
 English literature can show plenteous examples of me- 
 chanically constructed verse, which reminds one of nothing 
 so much as the lopping of trees and clipping of poodles, in 
 order to produce an artificial configuration. And it is 
 hardly creditable to Hawes to have created the precedent. 
 The Joyful Meditation, introduced by the cus- 
 
 tomary tribute to Lydgate and a note of self- 
 
 J J ' 
 
 disparagement Hawes had never dwelt near 
 
 Helicon embodies at least one singular feature, in that 
 the avarice of the late King is frankly envisaged. That it
 
 122 THE AfiE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 is also apologized for, may under the circumstances be 
 taken for granted. 
 
 As a versifier Hawes cannot be rated high, although Ten 
 Brink credits him with a decided talent for 
 
 the art. It is possible, as he suggests, that 
 in Literature. * 
 
 Wynkyn de Worde s type-setters may have 
 
 corrupted the text, and this more especially in the case of 
 the Example of Virtue, but it is certain that Hawes, in 
 common with the other poets, experienced the disorganizing 
 effects of a rapid change in pronunciation combined with a 
 desire to maintain the traditions of the school to which he 
 belonged. From a writer thus situated it would be as un- 
 reasonable to expect attractive rhythm as to demand fault- 
 less music from a performer whose instrument is becoming 
 more and more out of tune. A noticeable point in the 
 Pastime of Pleasure which proves Hawes to have been not 
 without feeling for the metrical fitness of things, is the 
 transition from the stately stanza, when the interlude of 
 Godfrey Gobilive would give an air of parody to the 
 measure, to the easy ' riding rhyme ' of the Canterbury 
 Tales. 
 
 Taking a wider view of his place in the economy of 
 literature, we cannot fail to mark two of its features. The 
 first is his relation to the contemporary morality play, for 
 which he has all the materials, and from which he is 
 separated only by his abjuration of dialogue and scenery. 
 The second is the way he pi'efigures Speuser. When the 
 Faery Queen was inditing, chivalry, as a social institution, 
 was dead, and all its romantic associations were requisi- 
 tioned for the service of allegory. In Hawes's time it still 
 lingered in some attenuated form, but was already enjoying 
 the sort of regard always willingly paid to that never-dying 
 type the gentleman of the old school. Hawes was the 
 first of English moralists to exploit the paraphernalia of
 
 THE POETS. 123 
 
 the feudal system in the interest of symbolism. Langlaud's 
 ploughman, hitherto the accepted mouthpiece of moral 
 wisdom, is now definitely deposed in favour of the better- 
 born and better-educated knight, who fights no more for 
 human damsel with human name, but for a visionary 
 entity. He himself also is dissolved into an abstraction 
 Grand Amour. 
 
 Alexander Barclay, to whom we next pass, was almost 
 certainly a Scot. Both Christian and surname 
 bespeak a northern origin, and a writer not 
 very far distant from his own time Dr. Wil- 
 liam Bullein unhesitatingly locates his birthplace ' beyond 
 the cold river of Tweed.' However, the latter question 
 cannot be regarded as determined. Other authorities, such 
 as Bale and Holinshed, had been content to say ' Scot,' 
 which is consistent with a different interpretation. He 
 might have been born anywhere on the face of the planet 
 without forfeiting his nationality. In his first eclogue 
 Barclay himself alludes to an early residence at Croydon, 
 
 While I in youth in Croydon town did dwell, 
 
 and stress has been laid on the fact that his first prefer- 
 ment was at Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, from which 
 it has been conjectured that he may have been a native of 
 that county. As against this evidence we must set a certain 
 infusion of Scottish terms in his vocabulary and the passage 
 in praise of James IV in his Ship of Fooh, which would 
 not have proceeded so naturally from one who was virtually 
 an Englishman as from a liegeman of his own. There is, 
 at any rate, no doubt that later Bare-lay was thoroughly 
 domesticated in England, which was for all the purposes 
 of life his country. The date of his birth cannot be pre- 
 cisely fixed. Probably the event occurred about the year 
 1474. Whether Barclay studied at Oxford or Cambridge
 
 124 TIIK AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 has nut transpired, but he knew something of the latter 
 university, since in his first eclogue we meet with the words 
 ' Once in Cambridge I heard a scholar say.' Moreover, he 
 allows that he had visited Trumpington. When he trans- 
 lates Sallust, he assumes the style of ' Sir,' which may be 
 tantamount to B.A. ; and in his last will and testament he 
 figures as a full-blown Doctor of Divinity. Barclay, how- 
 ever, was an extensive traveller, and it is not impossible 
 that he obtained these degrees abroad. His first eclogue 
 preserves the names of many an English town, from Ber- 
 wick in the north to Dover in the south, in which he had 
 set foot; and Rouen, Paris, and Florence were cities of his 
 remembrance. To this it may be added that Barclay's 
 earliest literary effort, evidently the fruit of his Continen- 
 tal wandering, was an anonymous ti'anslation, printed by 
 Wynkyn de Worde in 1506, of Pierre Gringoire's Chateau de 
 Labour, which had been published some seven years before. 
 
 For a would-be man of letters there was then no satis- 
 factory prospect outside the Church ; and Barclay was 
 doubtless well pleased to accept the* office of chaplain at 
 the College of St. Mary Ottery, founded nearly two cen- 
 turies before by the, locally, great Bishop Qrandisson. The 
 warden of the college was Thomas Cornish, suffragan Bishop 
 of Bath and Wells; and to him, as his principal, Barclay 
 dedicated his famous translation of Brant's Ship of Fools, 
 which he accomplished in 1508 and which was published 
 by Pynson at the close of the following year the year, by 
 the way, of Henry the Eighth's accession. 
 
 The author of the Suabian Narremchiff was still in the 
 flesh, and not even an old man, but his work 
 
 T> j. A) 
 
 XT I-A- was already classical. It had been turned 
 
 Narrenschiff. . J 
 
 into Latin under the name of Navis Stulti- 
 
 fera by Jacob Locker, and thence into French by Pierre 
 Riviere of Poitiers, not to mention a Low German version,
 
 THE POETS. 125 
 
 An English translation yet lacked, and that was now forth- 
 coming. It is no disparagement of Barclay's linguistic 
 talents to assume that he made as free use of the renderings 
 as of the original; indeed, he informs us that he translated 
 the poem ' out of Latin, French, and Dutch into English 
 tongue '; and of the three languages we can fancy that he 
 found Latin the most serviceable, especially as he gives it 
 the first place in his list. Nor does Barclay dissemble 
 another circumstance by no means slight or unimportant 
 namely, that he boldly inserted new matter of his own, 
 so that the poem, as it left him, was very distinctly Brant's 
 Ship of Fools with variations. 
 
 One of the chief attractions of the original was its series 
 of woodcuts, which Brant himself may have designed, and 
 which consisted of sensational character-drawings of all 
 sorts and conditions of fools to the number of one hundred 
 and fourteen. These drawings were copied by Pynson, some 
 being practically reproduced, and in this way Barclay was 
 enabled to profit by a device which, quite as much as the 
 poetry, had made the fortune of Brant's essay on man. 
 With this last we have no further concern further than to 
 point out that it was suggested by the carnival processions 
 of Shrove Tuesday. On such occasions one of the pageants 
 perambulating the streets was not seldom a waggon, on 
 which was supported a ship with a crew of harlequins. 
 
 On turning to Barclay's adaptation for the translation 
 is anything rather than scrupulous or exact 
 
 one is immediately reminded of Carlyle's 
 Skip qf Fool*. J ... , . , ,, 
 
 celebrated dictum branding his fellow-coun- 
 trymen as 'mostly fools.' This severe estimate had been, 
 in a large measure, forestalled by Barclay, who announces 
 in his prose prologue that his purpose and desire is ' to 
 cleanse the vanity and madness of foolish people, of which 
 over-great number is in this realm of England.' Unlike
 
 126 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 the original, which is written in the conventional octo- 
 syllabic couplet, Barclay employs Chaucerian stanzas in 
 the main, though some of the fools are fitted with special 
 metres for the sake of variety. What led Barclay to select 
 the stanza-form for his poem is not certain. It may have 
 been merely its vogue, or he may have deliberately in- 
 tended a burlesque. At any rate, one result was to render 
 the poem more distinctively English. Barclay, however, 
 knew of other, and perhaps better, methods of naturaliza- 
 tion, such as, for instance, the insertion of the names of 
 insular localities, London, Hull, and so forth. As he im- 
 posed on himself no vow of literal fidelity, confessing in- 
 deed that he added and subtracted as he judged fit, we 
 might reasonably look for specimen fools surprised in 
 their Westcountry habitat, and in this expectation we 
 are not disappointed. More than once in the course of the 
 poem he alludes to one Man sell of Ottery, apparently a 
 dishonest tailor who, he says, 'polled' the poor, adding 
 that were it not for his great belly, he should have an oar 
 in the Ship of Fools. In a later passage Mansell is asso- 
 ciated with a certain Soper, of the same craft and mystery, 
 and with Robin Hill (a common name in that mountainous 
 country) is promised a berth in a Universal Ship which 
 looms on Barclay's penal imagination. The poet has an 
 abundance of fools, paraded in no particular order, but, 
 while recognizing the wide extent of the epidemic, he is 
 not seduced into caricaturing worth when satisfied of its 
 genuineness. For Sir John Kirkham, sheriff of Devon in 
 1507 and 1523, he prescribes instant manumission, dis- 
 missing him in terms of generous applause and humble 
 subjection: 
 
 My master, Kirkham, for his perfect meekness 
 And supportation of men in poverty, 
 Out of my ship shall worthily be free
 
 THE POETS. 127 
 
 I flatter not I am his true servitour, 
 Hie chaplain and his bedeman while life shall endure, 
 
 Requiring God to exalt him to honour 
 And of his prince's favour to be sure; 
 For, as I have said, I know no creature 
 
 More manly and righteous, more discreet and sad. 
 
 But though he be good, yet others are as bad. 
 
 Barclay's conception of a fool is, to a great extent, the 
 Scriptural one, since lie is impressed with the idea that 
 covetousness, in its different forms, is the most glaring 
 and general manifestation of mental instability. In the 
 eyes of the world the typical fool is a man who neglects 
 opportunities of gain and self-advancement, but the ship- 
 master declines to make riches the standard of wisdom. A 
 young man who marries an old woman for her money is, in 
 his estimation, as wanting in sense as the proverbial old 
 fool, who is depicted in this work arrayed in a fool's cap, 
 with a staff in each hand, and one foot in the grave. The 
 poet does not except himself from the long list of the in- 
 discreet ; he knows and deplores that he is indolent, which 
 is to be unwise. This attitude does not characterize many 
 of his companions, who are either blind or recklessly in- 
 different. They are enslaved by avarice or pleasure or a 
 reprobate mind, which will not pause to consider its ways. 
 The folly of some of these people is transparent, and such 
 as other fools will readily contemn. Everyone, for instance, 
 must perceive the silliness of ' chargeable curiosity,' sym- 
 bolized by a fool stooping beneath the burden of the world. 
 Addison has sketched such a character in his Political 
 Upholsterer. Again, the misfortune of a temper easily in 
 censed at trifles, though Charles Lamb archly demurs, must 
 be evident enough to the possessor. But a very large pro- 
 portion of the fools are so only in a technical or spiritual 
 sense. Priests and clerks, who tell gestes of Robin Hood in
 
 128 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 the choir, are doubtless fools before God, but not necessarily 
 before man. If superior authority makes them suffer for 
 their levity, if they lose their cures, then they become fools- 
 in-ordinary. As regards this poem, sin and folly are for 
 the most part convertible terms; and, apart from it, it may 
 be conceded that vice of all kinds denotes intellectual as 
 well as moral imperfection. But the converse will not hold. 
 Not all folly is criminal, aud when Barclay inveighs against 
 dancing and serenading and suchlike amusements, he is 
 unconsciously weighing them against the ' heavenly life ' 
 of monk and friar when conformed to their rule. There is 
 not much of toleration in the poem, which amounts to an 
 indictment, but Barclay, or his author, contrives to say 
 many shrewd things, including some telling criticisms on 
 the diseases of society and the corruptions rampant in the 
 Church. Who would suspect that the gibe of the ' fool of 
 the family ' being selected for holy orders was already cur- 
 rent in the sixteenth century? 
 
 Of Barclay's remaining works the most important is his 
 set of eclogues. If we except Henryson's Robin 
 an ^ Makyn, of which an account has been 
 given previously, Barclay's quintette repre- 
 sents the first serious experiment in English pastoral poetry; 
 and, though less popular than his Ship of Fools, it will be 
 judged to possess far higher literary value. The story of 
 the poems is a little romantic. They appear to have been 
 originally composed in early life, after which they were 
 mislaid, and more than one fruitless search was made for 
 them. Meanwhile the writer had passed from Ottery St. 
 Mary to the great Benedictine monastery at Ely, where the 
 missing eclogues three of them, at any rate were dis- 
 covered. These were published without date or imprint. 
 A fourth was printed by Richard Pynson, and a fifth by 
 Wynkyn de Worde. Like their predecessors, the two latter
 
 THE POETS. 120 
 
 compositions are undated ; and the time of their produc- 
 tion must be gleaned from internal evidence, which in this 
 instance is unusually insecure. With regard to the fourth 
 eclogue, it contains an allusion to the 'noble Howard,' 
 who was killed in an attack on the French fleet near Brest, 
 in 1513. Probably, therefore, we shall be safe in assigning 
 the completion of the series to the year 1514; but it can- 
 not be questioned that between the period when they were 
 first sketched and the date of their eventual publication 
 the eclogues underwent considerable revision. Hence they 
 may be said to exhibit Barclay's powers in their maturity. 
 That the poet not merely revised the style, but added to 
 the content of the eclogues is proved both by the passage 
 in the fourth relating to the Lord High Admiral, and by 
 interpolations in the first and third, which lead to the con- 
 clusion that Barclay had got clear away from the associa- 
 tions of Ottery and was now fully steeped in the more 
 congenial atmosphere of Ely. In the former he pronounced 
 a warm eulogy on John Alcock, who had occupied the see 
 some few years before his coming (i.e. from 1486 to 1500), 
 and in the latter he pays a similar compliment to Alcock's 
 immediate predecessor, who had quitted Ely for the archi- 
 episcopal chair of Canterbury. Barclay's tribute to Alcock 
 takes the form of a punning allusion to his name a style 
 of panegyric which would not commend itself to all men, 
 but then the subject had himself set the example : 
 
 A cock was in the fen ; 
 I know his voice among a thousand men. 
 He laughed, he preached, he mended every wrong; 
 But, Corydon, alas! no good thing bideth long. 
 He all was a cock. He wakened us from sleep, 
 And while we slumbered, he did our folds keep. 
 No cur, no foxes, nor batchers' dogs wood 
 Could hurt our folds, his watching was so good* 
 
 I. K
 
 130 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 The hungry wolves, which that time did abound, 
 What time he crowed, abashed at the sound. 
 
 It is at once singular and significant that Barclay's 
 eclogues, though based on Latin models, are yet not direct 
 imitations of Virgil. This demonstrates that he was still 
 in the thraldom of the Middle Ages, when men professed 
 great admiration for Virgil, but, in general, were fain to 
 study any writings but his. As the Renaissance had not 
 yet dawned for Barclay, he followed the usual routine and 
 turned to contemporary Italy, where two Latinists, one 
 living, the other not long dead, supplied him with subjects 
 and stimulus. The first three eclogues were founded on 
 fheMiseriae Curialium of the accomplished Aeneas Sylvius 
 Piccolomini, who succeeded to the Papacy in 1458 as 
 Pius II, and died in 1464. Barclay's other guide was 
 Giambattista Spagnuoli, of whom Eoscoe remarks : ' The 
 applause which his works excited was not confined to 
 Italy, but extended throughout Europe, where under the 
 name of Mantuanus, or Mantuan, he was considered as 
 another Virgil, whose writings might stand in competition 
 with those of his immortal countryman.' This was so much 
 the case that during the sixteenth century the poems of 
 Mantuan, who died in 1515, were introduced into English 
 schools as a Latin reader. The fact of Barclay's imitating 
 the facile Carmelite rather than the fastidious laureate 
 of Augustus is thus explained; he succumbed to the 
 literary fashion of the day. 
 
 Great, however, as was Barclay's debt, we must beware 
 of supposing it to have been greater than it really was. 
 His fifth eclogue numbers one thousand lines as against 
 two hundred in the corresponding poem of Mantuan; and, 
 while expansion does not always signify improvement, it 
 certainly points to a measure of independence, which Bar. 
 clay unquestionably possessed. In his shorter poems, as in
 
 THE POETS. 131 
 
 the Ship of Fools, he acknowledges no obligations to the 
 writers from whom he borrows, and assumes full respons- 
 ibility for tone and form and matter. The impressions 
 of the world, the judgements on men and things, may be 
 considered therefore his own; and they prove him to be 
 the same Barclay whose characteristics had already stamped 
 themselves on the Ship of Fools. He is still the stern 
 opponent of vice and irreligion, but joined to his love 
 of rectitude and refinement is a very genuine sympathy 
 with the shepherd swains whose life he depicts in its 
 natural colours. With reference to the metre, the eclogues 
 are all in ' riding rhyme,' so obviously adapted to familiar 
 dialogue ; the single exception being the elegy on the 
 heroic Howard, where he reverts to the stanza. 
 
 During his lifetime Barclay won a wide reputation, which 
 caused eminent personages to take an in- 
 Other Works, terest in his work. One of his less distin- 
 guished patrons, Sir Giles Alington, urged 
 him to abridge Gower's Confessio Amantis. This task he 
 declined, but he made amends to the good knight by accept- 
 ing another suggestion and producing a rhyming version of 
 Domenico Mancini's Latin poem on the cardinal virtues* 
 which was printed by Pynson under the title of the Mirror 
 of Good Manner s, at the instance of Richard, Earl of Kent. 
 Another great nobleman, Thomas Duke of Norfolk, per- 
 suaded him to publish an Introductory to Write and Pro- 
 nounce French, which came out in 1521. Nine years later 
 Palsgrave issued his Lesclaircissement de la Langue Fran- 
 toyte, in which he took he took exception to Barclay's k's, 
 and avowed his belief that the substance of the work was 
 a century old, he having seen ancient parchments whose 
 contents were almost identical. Perhaps, then, Barclay 
 edited a venerable manuscript he had found at Ely. 
 
 If the In'rodudory be not original, the translation of
 
 132 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Sallust's Jugurthine War, with respect to which ho again 
 received encouragement from his grace of Norfolk, was 
 without doubt Barclay's own handiwork. The earliest 
 rendering of Sallust in our language, it is also one of the 
 first translations from the classics in a period which has 
 never been excelled, or even approached, for robust and 
 idiomatic Englishing. 
 
 Two or three other works attributed to Barclay are lost. 
 These are The Figure efthe Holy Mother Church oppressed by 
 the French King; A Life of the Glorious Martyr, Saint George, 
 taken from Mantuan; and a Book against Skelton, which is 
 vouched for by Bale, and which was probably in verse. 
 Barclay, it is certain, had no love for Skelton, whose Philip 
 Sparrow he pillories in the Ship of Fools. 
 
 Living in the reign of Henry VIII, and a famous man 
 in his vocation, Barclay could not but share in the events 
 of the time. Sir Nicholas Vaux, relying on his historical 
 erudition, applied to Wolsey for the loan of the Black 
 Monk to aid him in elaborating the details of the Field of 
 the Cloth of Gold. Then for some reason Master Barclay left 
 Ely, doffed his black habit, and went to reside at Canter- 
 bury as a Franciscan. The dissolution of the 
 Latter End. monasteries put an end to all that, but Bar- 
 clay still managed to keep his head above 
 water. He was appointed vicar of Much Baden in Essex 
 and Wokingin Somerset; and, finally, rector of Allhallows, 
 Lombard Street. He died in 1552 at the age of seventy- 
 six, and was buried at Croydon, in which town, as we 
 have seen, he had sojourned for some time in his youth. 
 Mention has been made of Wolsey. We do not know 
 precisely to what extent Barclay was acquainted 
 with the great Cardinal; but in the field of 
 letters, if not in the Field of the Cloth of Gold, 
 the relations between Henry's chief minister and John
 
 THE POETS. 133 
 
 Skelton appear to have been, for good or ill, much closer. 
 Born either in Cumberland or Norfolk, and not earlier than 
 1460, he was educated at Cambridge, where he took his Mas- 
 ter's degree in 1484. Here also he penned a moralizing poem 
 On the Death of Edward IV, the scope of which is sufficiently 
 indicated by the Latin refrain : Quia, ecce, nunc in pulvere 
 dormio. This was followed in 1489 by an Elegy upon the 
 Death of the Earl of Northumberland, written in Chaucerian 
 stanza, and with a Latin proem addressed to the 'little book' 
 (libellus),'\n. which he styles himself ' poet-laureate,' at that 
 time a recognized academic distinction. The earl had been 
 killed by a mob of insurgents in Yorkshire, and Skelton, 
 in lines of strenuous reproach, censures and expostulates 
 with the ' villains ' for their crime, while not sparing the 
 nobleman's attendants, who had been cowardly enough to 
 desert him so at least says the elegy. 
 
 From the preface to Caxton's Eneydos, published the 
 following year, we find that Skelton had already achieved 
 a high reputation as a scholar and translator: 
 
 For this book is not for every rude and uncunning man to see, 
 but to clerks and very gentlemen that understand gentleness 
 and science. Then I pray all them that shall read this little 
 treatise to hold me excused for the translating of it, for I acknow- 
 ledge myself ignorant of cunning to emprise on me so high and 
 noble a work. Bat I pray Master John Skelton, late created 
 poet-laureate in the University of Oxenford, to oversee and cor- 
 rect this said book and to address and expound, wherever shall 
 be found fault, to them that shall require it. For him I know 
 for sufficient to expound and English every difficulty that is 
 therein ; for he hath lately translated the epistles of Tully, and 
 the book of Diodorus, and divers other works out of Latin into 
 English, not in rude and old language, but in polished and 
 ornate terms craftily, as he that hath read Virgil, Ovid, Tully, 
 and all the other noble poets to me unknown. And also he hath 
 read the niuc Muses and understands their musical sciences,
 
 134 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 and to whom of them each science is appropred. I suppose he 
 hath drunken of Helicon's well. 
 
 Whether this handsome recognition induced Skelton to 
 form a more lenient opinion of Caxton's work than Gawiu 
 Douglas, we shall never know, but the printer's compli- 
 ments were probably well deserved. Skelton must have 
 been an extremely good Latinist, as he was poet-laureate 
 of three universities, Oxford, Cambridge, and Louvaiu. 
 Meanwhile he was pushing his fortunes at court. In 1489 
 he indited a poem in honour of Prince Arthur, newly created 
 Prince of Wales; and, five years later, when Prince Henry 
 became Duke of York, he marked the occasion with a set 
 of Latin verses. No wonder the poet rose in favour with 
 the prince's father.and with their grandmother, the Countess 
 of Richmond and Derby, who loved learning. No wonder 
 either he was appointed Henry's tutor, and could boast in 
 after years, 
 
 The honour of England I learned to spell, 
 In dignity royal that doth excel. 
 
 Skeltoii, however, did not confine himself to ' primordial 
 learning.' He composed for the special behoof of his pupil 
 a Latin treatise entitled Speculum Principle (the Prince's 
 Mirror), which has perished. In 1499, when Henry was 
 nine years old, Erasmus happened to pay a visit to Eltharn, 
 where the royal children were being brought up, and Sir 
 Thomas More presented the prince with a poetical effu- 
 sion. The learned foreigner had not prepared anything 
 literary, an omission which proved somewhat embarrassing; 
 but he promised to make good his deficiency, and in a sub- 
 sequent lyric congratulated the future monarch on having 
 as his teacher a unique light and ornament of British 
 letters.
 
 THE POETS. 135 
 
 So far, it has been mainly a question of Latin. Without 
 professing certainty on the point, it may be that Skelton 
 made his first considerable essay in English poetry towards 
 the end of Henry VII's reign, that essay being the Bowge of 
 Court, conceived in the fashionable allegorical style. The 
 title has a singular and even mysterious appearance to 
 any one not acquainted with its meaning ; but the mystery, 
 such as it is, is soon resolved. The term ' bowge ' is merely 
 the French bouche; and the whole phrase is one which 
 expresses in technical language the right to feed at the 
 King's table. 
 
 'Twas an autumn eve, and Skelton was musing in Power's 
 Quay, an hostel in the port of Harwich. The 
 f C ^ e subject of his meditation was the craft of old 
 poets who, with fresh utterance, could ' touch a 
 truth and cloak it subtily.' At last he falls asleep and be- 
 holds in a dream a goodly ship that sails into harbour and 
 casts anchor. She is forthwith boarded by traffickers, who 
 find therein royal merchandize, and the poet, not to be 
 behind the rest, pays a visit to the barque, which proves 
 to be the Bowge of Court, owned by Dame Saunce-peer 
 (Peerless). Her freight, of no mean value, is called Favour. 
 The nautical metaphors may have been suggested by Brant's 
 Ship of FooU, but the simile of a vessel is perfectly natural 
 and obvious in this connection, as is shown by the common 
 saying of what shall be done ' when my ship comes home.' It 
 is also sufficiently accounted for by the circumstances of the 
 hour, as recorded by the poet himself. Certain it is that 
 the poet is throughout thinking of John Skelton and his 
 experiences, which have been not entirely agreeable. The 
 very name he chooses for himself is significant, and befits a 
 novice. It is Dread, and the sequel demonstrates that, if 
 hu fears, his fear is not without reason. 
 
 In answer to her query, he informs Dauger, a grand
 
 136 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 dame in this Vanity Fair, that he has come to buy her 
 ware, and encounters her scorn. However, another lady, 
 Desire, takes him by the hand, counsels boldness, and 
 having given him a jewel, bonne aventure, warns him to 
 make friends with Fortune, who stands at the helm. In 
 truth, all the traffickers seek to her, and favour is obtained, 
 but ' under honey oft lies bitter gall.' The fact is, there 
 are on board seven passengers known as the Seven Sins of 
 the Court, great friends of Fortune, with whom she often 
 dances, and who bear no goodwill to Dread. One is the 
 mediaeval character, Favel, who has already figured in 
 Piers Ploivman, and the others are Suspect, Disdain, Riot, 
 Dissimuler, Subtlety, aud Harvey Hafter, who, like God- 
 frey Gobilive, may be reckoned the clown. These secret 
 foes approach him in turn and draw their meshes round 
 him, so that he is on the point of jumping overboard to 
 escape death at their hands. At this moment he awoke, 
 ' caught pen and ink, and wrote this little book.' 
 
 Skelton's true province is satire, and, as we shall see 
 more plainly hereafter, his powers of anathema are but 
 feebly exposed in this conventional poem. The circumstance 
 will hardly pass unnoticed that in this leading parts are 
 taken by ladies, although the poet does violence thereby to 
 the traditions alike of seamanship and of commerce. But 
 we must not forget this is a picture of the court in which 
 female influence has ever been paramount. Apart from 
 that Skelton had not only a decided spice of feminine 
 caprice, not to say, malice; and he was, very certainly, 
 what is called a ladies' man. His interest in the sex was 
 not invariably benevolent; but, at any rate, he was studiously 
 attentive, and, when he listed, could write love-songs. He 
 approved himself also an adept in society verse. The 
 beautiful Jane Scrope, who, with other young ladies, was 
 being educated by the Black Nuns at Carow, near Norwich,
 
 THE POETS. 137 
 
 had the misfortune to lose Philip, her pet swallow. She may 
 or she may not have called him Philip, as this 
 Sparrow would seem to have been a proverbial name for 
 sparrows, and, as such, appears in one read- 
 ing of Piers Plowman. However that may be, the poor 
 biped was killed by a cat, and Skelton, to comfort his 
 mistress, decided to follow the precedent set by Catullus 
 and others. Soon he was immersed in a whimsical com- 
 position, as much a tribute to the lady as an elegy on the 
 slain bird, which concludes with the words: 
 
 It were no gentle guise 
 This treatise to despise, 
 Because I have written and said 
 Honour of this fair maid. 
 "Wherefore should I be blamed 
 That I Jane have named, 
 And famously proclaimed? 
 She is worthy to be enrolled 
 With letters of gold, 
 Car elle vault. 
 
 Mistress Scropeis assuredly overwhelmed with praise; but 
 a critic has no difficulty in perceiving that her grief and 
 person are merely pretexts for a surprising display of 
 metrical skill and fluency. Not every one will admire the 
 brief measure for which this poet had so strong a predilec- 
 tion, but its brevity greatly added to the ordinary trials of 
 rhyming, which Skelton treats with positive contempt. 
 The verse is, in classic parlance, iambic trimeter, but the 
 accentuation varies, as do also the number of the feet. As 
 for the rhymes, Skelton is apt to double them and triple 
 them, and even quadruple them. Strictly regarded, then- 
 is something in such metres which tends to superfluity and 
 redundance; and it must be confessed that in bulk and
 
 138 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 ostentation PJiilip Sparrow'ia out of all proportion to the 
 theme and the occasion. But strictness and seriousness are 
 beside the mark. We have to do with a sort of elemental 
 force that cannot be restrained. The wilf u' man must have 
 his way at all costs, and the costs include parodies of 
 Church pi-ayers and the Psalter. These insertions of Latin 
 rhymes produce peculiar effects on the poem. They serve 
 as relief; they create an impression of false grandeur. 
 This, however, is only part and parcel of the exuberant 
 playfulness which is the essence and spirit of the whole. 
 
 Probably about the year 1519 Skelton composed in the 
 same rhythm a satire called Colin Clout, and reminding us 
 at once of Langland and David Lindsay, for in it the poet 
 lashes out at the bishops and clergy in the name of the 
 lower orders of both town and country. It has been sup- 
 posed that the combination, ' Colin Clout,' represents the 
 solidarity of interest of mechanics and husbandmen in this 
 great question of ecclesiastical abuse, ' Colin ' standing for 
 colonus and 'clout' (or patch) being the outward and 
 visible sign of much sitting. Be that as it may, Skelton 
 discharges his task with unction, punishing the offenders 
 severely for their luxury and indifference. The vigour of 
 the attack was so keenly felt by the subjects that they suc- 
 cessfully obstructed the printing of the piece, and thus 
 drew from the poet the following sarcastic reference : 
 
 And so it scemoth they play 
 Which hate to be corrected, 
 When they be infected, 
 Nor will they suffer this book 
 By hook nor by crook 
 Printed for to be, 
 For that no man should see 
 Nor read in any scrolls 
 Of their drunken rolls,
 
 THE POETS. 139 
 
 Nor of their noddy polls, 
 Nor of their silly souls, 
 Nor of some witless pates 
 Of divers great estates, 
 As well as other men. 
 
 By ' great estates ' is meant especially Wolsey, who in the 
 latter part of the poem meets with considerable attention. 
 It is well at this point to consider what were the actual 
 relations between the two men. And first it must be 
 pointed out that Skelton was himself in holy orders. He 
 was ordained in 1498, and later became rector of Diss, in 
 Norfolk. Here he secretly married his focaria or house- 
 keeper, by whom he had a family. In those lax times the 
 birth of children in the home of a celibate priest would 
 have provoked no great scandal, but it was a different 
 matter when the Dominicans discovered the facts. They 
 denounced him to the Bishop, and he was in consequence 
 suspended from his office, but not deprived of his living, 
 which he continued to hold till his death in 1529. 
 
 In these remarkable circumstances Skelton removed from 
 his parish to London, where the King showed himself well- 
 disposed to his quondam instructor, and the poet frequently 
 appeared at court. For a long time Wolsey and Skelton 
 were friends; Skelton, in fact, dedicated more than one of 
 his pieces to the prelate, and seemed anxious to secure his 
 favour. But Wolsey was growing into something more 
 than a prelate; and although Skelton's consideration for 
 him survived his appointment as Archbishop of York, Lord 
 Chancellor, and legate a latere of the Pope, the oppressive- 
 ness of the all-powerful minister, of which so many com- 
 plained, from the Archbishop of Canterbury downwards, 
 began to excite the resentment of the undaunted satirist, 
 who from that hour constituted himself the spokesman of 
 an indignant nation. In Colin Clout he enters a sufficiently
 
 140 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 stern protest against Wolsey's usurpation, and in Speak 
 Parrot, otherwise rather obscure, he is still 
 Speak Parrot, more emphatic. There are two dogs in the 
 poem, Bo-ho, and Hough-ho, the former 
 being intended for the King, and the latter for the church- 
 man, whom Skelton again depicts as uppermost: 
 
 Bo-ho doth bark well, but Hough-ho be ruleth the ring ; 
 From Scarpary to Tartary renown therein doth spring, 
 With He said and We said, I wot now what I wot, 
 Quod magnus est dominus Judas Scarioth. 
 
 Here, too, begins to flow the turbid stream of coarse vitu- 
 peration, in which Wolsey is taunted in no 
 Why come very recon( jite terms with his father's trade at 
 y/ Court? Ipswich. Skelton actually reviles the Cardinal 
 himself as a 'bragging butcher' and a 'fat 
 maggot bred of a flesh-fly.' This insulting strain is resumed 
 in another poem of about twelve hundred lines entirely de- 
 voted to Wolsey, and entitled, Why come ye not to Court? 
 This inquiry is addressed to the noblest in the land, who, 
 if they had so liked, might well have been incensed with 
 the poet for the ridiculous position in which he places 
 them. Skelton's idea is to exhibit Wolsey in the most 
 odious light imaginable as a grand vizier who will not allow 
 anyone else to ' live.' Great nobles, like the Earl of North- 
 umberland, shrink into impotence and insignificance before 
 the worthless, but imperious upstart: 
 
 Our barons be so bold 
 Into a mouse-hole they would 
 Bun away and creep, 
 Like a meyny of sheep ; 
 Dare not look out at door 
 For dread of the mastiff cur, 
 For dread of the butcher's dog, 
 Would worry them like a hog.
 
 THE POETS. 141 
 
 On the bench he is a very Judge Jeffreys, deeming and 
 speaking lightly of his colleagues and the bar. While, 
 however, he says in his courteous style to a pleader: 
 
 Thou huddypeke, 
 Thy learning is too lewd, 
 
 his method of determining cases is by no means complicated 
 Jay legal argument: 
 
 Straw for law canon, 
 Or for the law common, 
 Or for law civil ! 
 It shall be as he will. 
 
 Perhaps Wolsey could not do better, since, as the poet in- 
 sists, he is not highly educated, being 
 
 No doctor of divinity, 
 Nor doctor of the law, 
 Nor of none other saw : 
 But a poor master of art. 
 
 However, Skelton's main charge, a charge to which he 
 always returns, is Wolsey' s greasy genealogy: 
 
 He came out of a sank (blood} royal, 
 That was cast out of a butcher's stall. 
 
 This ' wretched original ' is a thing which the cardinal, if 
 there were any modesty left in him, ought to bear in mind 
 if only out of gratitude to his sovereign lord who had 
 raised him from his low degree and set him nobly in great 
 authority. But alas! Wolsey cannot see it. It is perhaps 
 rather strange that Skelton, on his part, was unable to see 
 the awkwardness of this train of reflections. If Wolsey 
 was, in fact, so unconscionably bod, it was surely a poor 
 compliment to King Henry to describe the monarch as the 
 1 chief root of his making,' and while trusting that Almighty
 
 142 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 God has provided against disloyalty in the Chancellor, to 
 bring up, as apposite, the old proverb concerning cat and 
 mouse: 
 
 Yet it is a wily mouse, 
 
 That can build his dwelling-house 
 
 Within the cat's ear 
 
 Withouten dread or fear. 
 
 These risks remind us that scurrility is a double-edged 
 weapon, liable to wound the striker; and if Skelton did 
 not suffer, he owed it rather to his good fortune than to 
 any special adroitness. Still the effectiveness of the poem 
 as invective cannot be called in question. Skelton deals 
 sledge-hammer blows; his thrusts are cruelly keen; and 
 until one has read his scathing and pitiless effusion one 
 hardly knows what satire is, or rather, what satire can be. 
 
 One of the mouse-holes into which Henry's courtiers 
 might have crept was a tavern near Leatherhead, and about 
 six miles from Nonsuch. 
 
 In the Tunning of Elinor Bumming Skelton turns his 
 powerful artillery on this paltry ale-house, 
 The Twnnwflr ^ reaO rt of dissolute women, who, to obtain 
 Bumming ^ e strong brew foul Elinor vends, are pre- 
 pared to sell themselves and all they possess 
 hose, and shoes, and furniture, husband's clothing, and 
 even the rosary. Sharply contrasting with this sordid and 
 realistic picture are the scenes of A Delectable Treatise upon 
 a Goodly Garland orChaplet of Laurel, wherein 
 
 A Goodly Skelton commemorates a pleasant episode in 
 
 Garland of , . v , T , . u T> i * 
 
 Laurel speaking of Barclay reference was 
 
 made to the Duke of Norfolk as a patron of 
 literature. This nobleman had the grant for life of Sheriff 
 Hutton Castle, some ten miles from York, and then the 
 property of the Crown. Skelton appears to have visited 
 there, and so far ingratiated himself with the ladies that
 
 THE POETS. 143 
 
 they and certain juvenile companions embroidered in col- 
 oured silks, with gold and pearls, a garland of laurel for 
 the poet's robe worn by Skelton at Court. The recipient 
 testified his appreciation by ' devising ' an allegory, varie- 
 gated with poetical tributes to the fair dames and perhaps 
 children, to whose industry he was indebted, but mainly 
 occupied with a personal problem of the highest importance 
 and concern. 
 
 Somewhat in the manner of the Book of the Duchess the 
 poet feigns himself in the woods adjacent to the castle, 
 where the note of the horn proclaims that a hunt is in 
 progress. But, unlike Chaucer, Skelton does not join in 
 the pursuit. Supported against a great tree, he falls asleep 
 and dreams of his literary affairs. In a rich pavilion the 
 question is hotly debated between Pallas and the Queen of 
 Fame, whether Skelton deserves to be crowned. The latter 
 holds that he does not, taxing him with idleness. Pallas, 
 however, stands firm, and eventually the Queen relents, but 
 on condition that he appears in his own person and defends 
 his claim. Next follows a description of a huge procession 
 of poets, beginning with Orpheus, whose presence has a dis- 
 turbing effect on Skelton's tree. All are athirst for fame, 
 and among the rest, there arrive Gower, Chaucer, and Lyd- 
 gate, with arms interlaced. These have the entry to the 
 palace of Fame, and after exchanging a few kind words 
 with Skelton, commit him to the care of the registrar, one 
 Occupation, who finally escorts him to a chamber in a 
 lovely plesaunce: 
 
 Where the noble Countess of Surrey in a chair 
 Sat honourably, to whom did repair 
 
 Of ladies a bevy with due reverence ; 
 
 * Sit down, fair ladies, and do your diligence.' 
 
 4 Come forth, gentlewomen, I pray you,' she said; 
 ' I have contrived for yon a goodly wark,
 
 144 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Aud who can work best shall be essayed. 
 A oronel (coronal) of laurel with verdures light and dark 
 I have devised for Skelton, my clerk ; 
 
 For to his service I have such regard 
 
 That of our bounty we will him reward. 
 
 Occupation apprises Skelton that he must recompense the 
 kind workers, and this he accomplishes by a chaplet of 
 dainty compliments in verse. Hereupon his guide wends 
 with him to the Queen of Fame, and, producing her Book 
 of Remembrance, enumerates a list of Skelton's works as 
 an answer to objections. The cry of Triumpha! rising from 
 the lips of thousands, and the blare of the clarions afford 
 ample assurance that he will be suffered to wear his gar- 
 land. And amid the din he awakes. 
 
 In the catalogue of writings just referred to, mention is 
 made of certain compositions now lost. This was the un- 
 toward fate of not a few poems of the age, including several 
 by a gentleman-usher, Sir Christopher Garnesche, who 
 boldly challenged Skelton to a scolding- match. The King 
 took a lively interest in this duel, but as only Skelton's 
 contributions have been preserved, that interest is not likely 
 to be shared by posterity, a good deal of the curiosity which 
 might have been felt having been baffled. It would have 
 been worth something to see so hard a hitter as the poet- 
 laureate paid back in his own coin, and we might also have 
 gleaned valuable information for his personal history, 
 whicli is none too long. All, however, has not yet been told. 
 The Garland of Laurel specifies as two of the poet's works 
 his ' sovereign Interlude of Virtue,' and his 
 ' Comedy Achademiss called by name.' These are 
 believed to have been morality plays, as was like- 
 wise his Necromancer. The two former have perished totally ; 
 the Necromancer, too, has perished, but not totally. A copy 
 of it, which belonged in the eighteenth century to William
 
 THE POETS. 145 
 
 Collins, the poet, has since disappeared, and no other copy 
 is known to exist. Fortunately "Wart on obtained a sight of 
 Collins' treasure, and he has described its contents. The 
 title of the work, which was printed by Wynkyu de Worde 
 in 1504, is quaint and appetising: 'The Negrainausir, a 
 moral enterlude and a pithie, written by Maister Skelton 
 laureate, and plaid before the King and other Estatys at 
 Woodstoke on Palm Sunday.' The characters were a ne- 
 cromancer, the Devil, a notary public, Simony and Phil- 
 argyria (i.e., Love of Money). The prologue was spoken by 
 the necromancer, who at the conclusion raised the Devil, 
 and was well kicked for his pains. Simony and Philargyria 
 were then placed on their trial, in the setting forth of which 
 various metres were requisitioned and French and Latin 
 phrases paraded a I'outrance. Taking different lines, Phil- 
 argyria cited Seneca and St. Augustine, while Simony es- 
 sayed to corrupt the Devil with bribery. This attempt 
 evoked an outburst of wrath, and the Devil swore a great 
 oath that Simony should be fried with Mahomet, Herod 
 and Pontius Pilate. According to Warton, the last scene 
 terminated with a vision of hell and a dance between the 
 Devil and the necromancer, after which the Devil tripped 
 up his partner, and vanished in a cloud of fire and smoke. 
 The 'inwardness' of this drama is revealed by its char- 
 acters. The necromancer and the Devil, it is true, furnish 
 no particular clue, but Simony is a crime peculiarly ecclesi- 
 astical, and thus the subject must have been the worldliness 
 of the church. 
 
 A morality of Skeltou, which has survived and is re- 
 garded as one of the best in the whole cycle of these plays 
 is his Magnificence, the purpose of which is to show, 
 
 How suddenly worldly wealth doth decay, 
 IIow wisdom, through wantonness, melteth away, 
 i. L
 
 146 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 How none estate living of himself can be sure; 
 For the wealth of this world cannot enduiv. 
 
 In order the best way to press home these lessons he per- 
 sonifies Magnificence, really a great lord of 
 Magnificence, noble disposition and ample means, and he 
 it is who has to master the stern truths 
 above mentioned in his own experience. In its most general 
 outlines the drama reproduces the story of Job, but tricked 
 out and modernized by those expedients which belong to 
 the morality play as a class, and which will be considered 
 more at length presently. 
 
 At first all goes well. Magnificence chooses as his 
 associates 
 
 Wealth with Measure and pleasant Liberty. 
 
 By-and-by, however, he gets into the company of bad 
 people with specious aliases, is parted from his former 
 friends, visited with poverty, and cast into prison, where 
 Mischief and Despair provide him with the means of com- 
 mitting suicide. Ere he can perform the deed, he is sur- 
 prised by Good Hope, who is followed by Redress and Sad 
 Circumspection; and, in the end, he is enabled, with the 
 help of Perseverance, to rise to a position superior to that 
 which he had before occupied. 
 
 As a dramatist, Skelton is remarkable rather for style, 
 humour, and fancy, than delineation of character and trans- 
 lation of motive into action, so that his satires must be 
 reckoned more typical of the man, and of greater intrinsic 
 value in themselves. By them he succeeded in drawing 
 upon himself the irreconcileable enmity of Wolsey, which 
 compelled him to take sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, 
 where he remained under the protection of Archbishop 
 Islip. And there he died in June, 1529. 
 
 The name ' Colin Clout ' must have struck students of
 
 THE POETS. 147 
 
 Elizabethan poetry as familiar. It is, of course, Spenser's 
 mask in the Shepherd's Calendar, in the notes to which 
 series the writer's friend, Edward Kirke, betrays a certain 
 dislike to recognizing the precedent as material. We, on 
 the contrary, can hardly doubt that Spenser chose the ap- 
 pellation advisedly, since in the fifth eclogue and elsewhere 
 he renders it evident that he is in complete accord with 
 Skelton's opinions and something more. Clearly, by this 
 time, ' Colin Clout ' had come to signify much the same as 
 ' Piers Plowman.' 
 
 As an adversary of Wolsey and champion of reform the 
 poet-laureate had an able seconder in William 
 William Roy. Boy, a Minorite friar, who, in conjunction 
 with another Minorite, Jerome Barlowe, pub- 
 lished a satire entitled The Bvrying of the Mass. This poem, 
 which was printed at Strasburg in 1528, was adorned with 
 a woodcut representing a grotesque coat of arms with two 
 fiends as supporters. The shield was charged with such 
 heraldic devices as axes, bulls' heads, a club ; and in the 
 centre is blazoned: 
 
 The mastiff cur bred in Ipswich town, 
 Gnawing with his teeth a kinge's crown. 
 
 The poem itself is described as ' A Brefe Dialogue between 
 two Preest's Servants named Watkin and Jeff rave'; and 
 the language is often as coarse as the invective is bitter. 
 Eoy, however, cannot be denied the merit of vigour and 
 directness. Wolsey ia thus pictured, riding in slate: 
 
 A great carl he is, and a fat ; 
 
 Wearing on his head a red hat, 
 Procured with angels' subsidy ; ' 
 
 And, as they say, in time of rain, 
 
 Four of his gentlemen are faiu 
 To hold over it a canopy. 
 
 1 Any el: a coin.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POETS OP THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE. 
 
 THE most important, as well as the earliest, representatives 
 of the English Renaissance, on its poetic 
 
 Courf Poetry. side ' Were Sir Thomas W 7 att **& ^d 
 Surrey, who though always mentioned as 
 
 aequales pietate, are by no means really so. Of both it may 
 be said that they typified the distinguishing qualities of 
 the movement its association with court life and breeding, 
 its regard for form, and its broad culture. Whatever is local 
 and national in their work has passed through the crucible 
 of contemporary European taste and emerges quite different 
 from what it would have appeared, if conformed to the 
 measures and models wherewith previous generations had 
 been content. Chaucer had indeed been a great master, pro- 
 foundly acquainted both with the technique of his art and 
 the secret springs of poetical efficiency, but his successors, as 
 we have often had occasion to note, had been unable to per- 
 petuate his music, which, from au imperfect understanding 
 of its principles, now sounded strangely. Against the decad- 
 ence of the age Skelton asserted himself strongly and suc- 
 cessfully, but in a way that could not be recommended for 
 imitation. However admirable we may hold his meteoric 
 genius, the fact cannot be gainsaid that he excelled in a kind 
 of verse which from its very nature soon palls and is too 
 abrupt to be beautiful; and accordingly he was ill-suited to 
 become the founder of a school. A s there is only one Niagara,
 
 THE POETS. 149 
 
 so there could only be one Skelton, and this the younger 
 writers instinctively recognized. Other influences were at 
 work, that were not negative. First and foremost were the 
 subtle, pervasive spirit of the time, which could not fail 
 to make itself felt in England, and the special circumstances 
 of the poets themselves Wyatt especially, since he came 
 more directly in contact with Continental example, and, as 
 the practical agent in imbuing his native letters with the 
 new tendency, served as intermediary in another sphere than 
 that of diplomacy. In lyric poetry, and perhaps generally, 
 Surrey was superior, but Wyatt has solid claims to distinc- 
 tion, and, if only on chronological grounds and, as 
 Professor Hales has shown, 1 these grounds are of great 
 importance must be first dealt with. 
 
 The life of Thomas Wyatt, who was a man of action as 
 well as a man of letters, is full of interest. 
 
 Born in 1503 at A 11111 ?* 011 Castle, Kent, he 
 was the son of Sir Henry Wyatt, a favourite 
 courtier of Henry VIII; entered St. John's College, Cam- 
 bridge, when only twelve years of age; proceeded bachelor 
 of arts at fifteen, and master of arts at seventeen. To us 
 these may well seem signs of extraordinary precocity, but 
 in those days people began life earlier than at present. 
 Wyatt had not only courted the Muses, but Elizabeth, 
 daughter of Lord Cobham, of Brook, whom he married; 
 and at seventeen was already a father. As his son was also 
 named Thomas, he paid the penalty for this early assump- 
 tion of responsibility by being known through the greater 
 part of his life as Thomas Wyatt the elder. Like his sire, 
 Sir Henry, the poet was destined for a career at court. He 
 obtained the post of Gentleman of the King's Bedchamber, 
 officiated as ewerer at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, whom 
 
 1 See Folia Litttfnrttm, i>. 132.
 
 150 THI-: A<;K OF -i KAN<I noN. 
 
 ho knew, in 1533; and, four years later, received the honour 
 of knighthood. After a brief incarceration in the Tower, 
 Wjatt was sent on an embassy to Charles V, and the next 
 two years were passed, grudgingly, in Spain. This pro- 
 longed absence was occasioned, to a large extent, by the 
 diplomatic effects of Henry's matrimonial escapades; and 
 although the work was not much to his liking, Wyatt 
 appears to have managed the delicate negociations with 
 considerable tact and address. His services were so well 
 appreciated that not many months had elapsed after his 
 return to Alliugton when he was called upon to resume 
 them. Meanwhile his father had died and the family pos- 
 sessions had been augmented by the house of the Friars at 
 Aylesford, adjoining Allington, by a grant from the Crown. 
 Wyatt' s new appointment was that of Ambassador Extra- 
 ordinary to the Emperor Charles, now occupied by the revolt 
 of Ghent; and the special duties of the English diplomatist 
 were to keep a sharp eye on the course of events, and to 
 send home confidential reports, together with such ob- 
 servations and advice as he might deem suitable. Again 
 Wyatt acquitted himself excellently, and although it had 
 not been intended that he should remain abroad for more 
 than four months, it was not until May, 1540, that he was 
 permitted to return to Allington. The fall of Thomas 
 Cromwell in the ensuing July involved that of Wyatt, who 
 during the winter was imprisoned in the Tower on a charge 
 of Use Majest'' and complicity with Cardinal Pole. It was 
 while in this situation that he penned the lines : 
 
 Sighs are my food ; my drink they are my tears ; 
 
 Clinking of fetters such music would crave; 
 Stink and close air away my life wears ; 
 
 Innoceucy is all the hope I have. 
 Bain, wind, or weather, I judge by mine ears; 
 
 Malice assaults that righteousness should have.
 
 THE POETS. 151 
 
 Sure I am, Bryan, this wound shall heal again; 
 Bat yet alas! the scar shall still remain. 
 
 The person addressed was Sir Francis Bryan, himself a 
 courtier and a poet. When, the trial came on, Wyatt had 
 as his accuser Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, with 
 whom, and Dr. Haynes, Chaplain to the King, he had been 
 associated in his embassy to Spain. The whole trend of 
 Euglish foreign policy at this time was to prevent an un- 
 derstanding between Francis I of France, and the Emperor 
 Charles ; and when a truce between these monarch s for ten 
 years proclaimed the failure of that policy, an attempt was 
 made to throw the blame upon Wyatt. The ' malice ' of 
 which he complains consisted in this that the steps taken 
 by him to procure information as to the intentions of those 
 opposed to him were misrepresented as collusion and ' in- 
 telligence with the King's rebel and traitor, Pole.' It was 
 no doubt a dangerous game, but Wyatt had just ground 
 for maintaining that ' the King should send for ambassadors 
 such as he trusteth or trust such as he sendeth.' Not that 
 Henry and his envoy had lost all faith in each other. In 
 the .peroration of his defence Wyatt observed : ' It is a 
 naughty, if any man have such, to think a quest dare not 
 acquit a man of treason when they think he is clear; for it 
 were a foul slander to the King's Majesty. He, God be 
 thanked, he is no tyrant; he will not such things against 
 men's conscience. He will but his laws, and his laws with 
 mercy.' 
 
 That Henry was no tyrant, is a questionable proposition, 
 but Wyatt pleaded his cause with effect. He was acquitted, 
 and the King a few days later made him a present of certain 
 lands in Lambeth. In the spring of 1542 Wyatt was ap- 
 pointed High Steward of the Manor of Maidstone; and 
 Henry, evidently on the best of terms with him, arranged 
 for an exchange of property, Wyatt to receive lands that
 
 152 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 had belonged to suppressed priories in Somerset and Dorset 
 in return for estates in Kent. Friendly transactions like 
 these were soon followed by Wyatt's rehabilitation as 
 a statesman. As so often happens, the ten years' truce 
 proved to have little or no binding force, and in 1542 
 Henry VIII and Charles V were already concerting measures 
 against the King of France. An ambassador, despatched 
 from Spain for the purpose, landed at Falniouth with- 
 out warning, and Wyatt was commanded, as the person 
 best qualified, to proceed with all haste to meet him. Un- 
 luckily, on reaching Sherborne, he was struck down with a 
 fever, which turned out to be malignant; and, though 
 tenderly nursed by Edward Horsey, whose acquaintance 
 he had made abroad, succumbed. This event befell in 
 October, 1542, and he was buried in the conventual church 
 of Sherborne, in the family vault of the Horseys. 
 
 These being the material circumstances of Wyatt's life 
 in the world, we turn now to his poetry, on 
 which those circumstances produced decisive 
 effects. Just as the intellectual supremacy of 
 Greece was never so felt at Rome as when she was politic- 
 ally a subject province of the empire, so in the sixteenth 
 century, as the Spaniard established his rule in Italy, the 
 poetical fashions of the conquered hind took firm hold of 
 the western peninsula, to which indeed they were not con- 
 fined. Beyond the Pyrenees, they appealed equally to the 
 French, sick of their old chansons. It does not belong to 
 the present work to trace at any length the influence of 
 Italian genius on Europe in general, but the facts of Wyatt's 
 poetical career will sufficiently demonstrate its potency. 
 Like most writers in what may be termed the educational 
 periods of our literature, Wyatt leaned very heavily on his 
 foreign models, and although he was not a mere translator 
 in the sense of writing verse as a pastime without com-
 
 THE POETS. 153 
 
 pelling it to reflect the movements of his own thought and 
 feeling, still he achieved no large quantity of purely original 
 work. The authors whom he flattered by imitation are 
 definitely known, and the extent of his obligations can be 
 indicated by the simple method of parallel quotations. The 
 poet to whom he owed most is undoubtedly Petrarch, from 
 whom he borrowed the sonnet hitherto unknown in Eng- 
 land, while out of the twenty- six examples of this form 
 that came from his pen no less than sixteen are direct 
 translations from Petrarch. Others are reminiscent of 
 Petrarch, and yet others are grafts from Italian or Spanish 
 writers trained in his school, leaving but two or three 
 which can be attributed to Wyatt's unassisted efforts. In 
 the sphere of satire also he was not, like Skelton, a law 
 unto himself, but, falling a victim to the prevailing ad- 
 miration for Luigi Alamanni, constructed his poems as 
 nearly as possible on the lines of that estimable writer. 
 
 Speaking first of Wyatt's contributions to lyric poetry, 
 it is important to observe that though he has adhered more 
 strictly than Surrey to the mechanism of the sonnet, he 
 lias not studied to reproduce, and can hardly have appre- 
 ciated at their worth, characteristic features which render 
 it so delicate and yet so perfect an instrument in the hands 
 of those who have sounded its meaning and realized its 
 capacity. Whatever may have been its origin, the sonnet 
 acquired in course of use certain aesthetic properties. The 
 square-built quatrains resemble the entrance towers to some 
 well-kept park ; the terzines the winding drive which, viewed 
 from without, gradually dies away. The clement of ' tone/ 
 however, suggests a better metaphor, that of the regular 
 advance of a sea-wave and its recession, with murmur so 
 sweet, so gentle and so sad. If it were a question of singing 
 them, we should mark the quatrains mezzo forte and the 
 terzines diminuendo. But in order that such marking may
 
 154 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 be reasonable, one point is essential: the rhymes of the 
 terzines, commonly three in number, may be arranged in 
 various ways but not so as to produce a couplet, especially 
 at the conclusion, since this cannot fail to impart an epi- 
 grammatic turn to the poem. It is to be regretted that 
 most of our earlier English sonnets are constructed on 
 radically false principles; indeed, the larger number is of 
 the bastard type patronized by Shakespeare, which repre- 
 sents a still wider declension from Petrarchan form, inas- 
 much as the first dozen lines are in alternate rhyme. 
 
 Wyatt and his companions brought English poetry into 
 line with Continental schools of verse by a more scrupulous 
 observance of syllabic precision, and by a marked preference 
 for strict iambic measure. This may be seen, for instance 
 in their use of Alexandrines, which was not all an im- 
 provement. The old English variety of this metre pos- 
 sessed a charming lilt and afforded far greater scope for 
 freedom and variety of rhythm, owing to the admission of 
 anapaests. The Alexandrine of the Renaissance poets, how- 
 ever, is not unmusical, and is decidedly more stately. Some- 
 times it is joined to a septeuar (or line of fourteen syl- 
 lables), with which it forms a couplet, just as in later times 
 it was the practice to interpolate an occasional Alexandrine 
 into the midst of heroic verse. It must not be supposed 
 that Wyatt and the other court poets aimed at cutting 
 themselves loose from native precedent; on the contrary, 
 they reverenced and imitated Chaucer and adopted the old 
 measures, though always with that new-born, conscientious 
 regard for scansion which was the hall-mark of their guild. 
 
 As might be expected in a court poet, the subject of 
 Wyatt's lyric is almost uniformly the same love. The 
 master passion is dealt with in all its phases and under 
 all its aspects, as in Petrarch's legacy of song, but in 
 general it is the pains, rather than the pleasures, of love
 
 THE POETS. 1.55 
 
 that command attention. Although the poems are, for the 
 most part, distinctly conventional both in manner and 
 matter, some of Wyatt's pieces have all the lightness and 
 grace of an Elizabethan madrigal. Take, for example, the 
 following: 
 
 Since love will needs that I shall love, 
 
 Of very force I must agree ; 
 And since no chance may it remove, 
 
 In wealth and in adversity 
 I shall alway myself apply 
 To servo, and suffer patiently. 
 
 Though for good will I find but hate 
 
 And cruelty my life to wast(e), 
 And though that still a wretched state 
 
 Should pine my days unto the last; 
 Yet I profess it willingly 
 To serve, and suffer patiently. 
 
 For since my heart is bound to serve, 
 
 And I not ruler of my own, 
 Whatso befall, till that I sterve, 
 
 By proof full well it shall be known, 
 That I shall still myself apply 
 To serve, and suffer patiently. 
 
 Yet, though my grief find no redresp, 
 But still increase before mine eyes; 
 
 Though my reward be cruelness, 
 With all the harm hap can devise, 
 
 Yet I profess it willingly 
 
 To serve, and suffer patiently. 
 
 Yet though fortune her pleasant face 
 
 Should show to set me up aloft, 
 And straight my wealth for to deface, 
 
 Should writhe away, as she doth oft, 
 Yet would I still myself apply 
 To serve, and suffer patiently.
 
 156 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 There is uo grief, uo smart, no woe, 
 
 That yet I feel or after shall, 
 That from this mind shall make me go, 
 
 And whatsoever me befall, 
 I do profess it willingly 
 To serve, and suffer patiently. 
 
 Several of Wyatt's compositions are written in the Italian 
 ottava rima. Eiglit-line stanzas were not entirely new to 
 English literature, having been employed by Chaucer and 
 others, but "Wyatt re-introduced them and that in a way 
 that was altogether novel namely, as independent poems. 
 He was indebted for this notion to Serafino Cimino, a 
 writer of stranibotti who died in 1500, and from whom he 
 borrowed also some of the matter of his verse. Such 
 bijoux, with their couplet ending, suggest rather epigrams 
 than love-ditties, and certain of them do in fact possess 
 that character ; but Wyatt, for the most part, invests these 
 little things with more charm than ingenuity, as witness 
 the following: 
 
 A face that should content me wondrous well 
 Should not be fair, but lovely to behold ; 
 
 Of lively look, all grief for to repel 
 With right good grace ; so would I that it should 
 
 Speak, without word, such words as none can telL 
 The tress also should be of crisped gold. 
 
 With wit and these perchance I might be tried, 
 
 And knit again with knot that should not slide. 
 
 It is as a satirist, however, that Wyatt achieved his 
 
 greatest success. Here also he figures as a pioneer, 
 
 Satire, since his essays are really the first English poems 
 
 in this style the urbane and cultivated style of a 
 
 man who knows the world, yet has preserved his taste for 
 
 the pleasures of the mind, who is versed in all the base
 
 THE POETS. 157 
 
 arts by which men seek and attain promotion, yet refuses 
 to stoop to them. 
 
 I cannot with my words complain and moan, 
 And suffer nought; nor smart without complaint; 
 Nor turn the word that from my mouth is gone. 
 I cannot speak and look like as a saint, 
 Use wiles for wit, and make deceit a pleasure; 
 Call craft counsail, for lucre still to paint. 
 
 How delightful is Wyatt's contrasting picture of his life 
 as a sportsman, which is quite in the spirit of Horace's 
 Epistle to Aristius Fuscus. 
 
 This maketh me at home to hunt and hawk 
 And in foul weather at my book to sit; 
 In frost and snow, then, with my bow to stalk. 
 No man doth mark whereso I ride or go, 
 In lusty leas at liberty I walk. 
 
 This is just ' vivo et regno simul ista reliqui ' writ large. 
 But it is not Horace that Wyatt copies here, at any rate 
 directly. The terza rima appears to point, does point, to 
 an Italian master, who is not the great poet with whom 
 that metre is eternally associated, but a distinguished con- 
 temporary, Luigi Alamanni, who, like Wyatt, was familiar 
 with the atmosphere of courts, living as he did for twenty- 
 five years at the Court of France, and, one may almost 
 add, dying in it in 1556. The particular satire from which 
 both quotations have been taken is based on Alamanni's 
 tenth. But and this is the odd thing the terza rima 
 ceases in the case of the other two satires (we have only 
 three) to be significant. Having once tried it, Wyatt found 
 it so much to his liking that he continued to use it, even 
 when he had deserted Alamanni for a Latin poet Probably, 
 however, he thought of his three satires as a kind of 
 trilogy.
 
 158 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 A Latin poet! Horace is not far off now. The fifth 
 satire of his second book furnished the hint 
 
 for How to Use the Couri > aud the sixtl1 for the 
 re-telling of the certainly rather hard- work* -<1 
 
 fable of the Town and Country Mouse. As the knowledge 
 of Latin is much more common than that of Italian, it 
 may be worth a man's while to compare Wyatt's versions 
 with the writings on which they are founded. It will then 
 be seen how far the English poet can lay claim to origin- 
 ality. In our opinion the claim is easily made good. Wyatt's 
 satires have both a modern air; there is nothing about 
 them that suggests the translator's hand, nothing crude, 
 nothing stiff. In fact, the principal point of resemblance 
 between How to Use the Court and the Roman satire is the 
 deliberately cynical and sarcastic tone of the two poems. 
 Horace no doubt, being prior in time, first heated the 
 curative iron, but iron and irony are nobody's privilege, 
 and Wyatt, in applying the same sort of remedy to the 
 sick anatomy of London society, exercises a large freedom 
 of phrase and fancy. It is in his satires that we get the 
 best impression of Wyatt's talents and character. That he 
 should have commented so boldly on the shortcomings of 
 the Court of Henry VIII is a sure proof of his courage, 
 which supported the test of an ordeal the most searching 
 and severe which the treachery of courtiers could institute. 
 At the same time he was not wanting in discretion, for- 
 bearing to attack individuals; and this wise restraint, while 
 it did not lessen the moral effect of his writings, must 
 have contributed to his personal security. The cap might 
 fit a hundred times, but only a fool would hasten to put 
 it on, and these satires suggest that, whatever else they 
 may have been, these courtiers were at least not fools. 
 
 We now come to Surrey, with whom Wyatt, as it were, 
 ran coupled. It is unnecessary here to dilate at any length
 
 THE POETS. 159 
 
 on the noble family of Howard, but it may be well to go 
 back a little on our traces, so as to render 
 i^Y^f owar clearer the position it occupied in the literary 
 annals of the period, and in the almanac of 
 the court. The grandfather of the poet was the Earl of 
 Surrey, who commanded the English army at Flodden, and 
 to whom, as the consequence, the forfeited Dukedom of 
 Norfolk was restored. His eldest son, Thomas Howard, 
 was the poet's father; another of his sons was Admiral 
 Lord Edward Howard, the hero Barclay has applauded 
 in one of his eclogues, and yet another Edmund was 
 father to Catherine Howard, one of the many wives of 
 Henry VIII. Among the ladies who helped to embroider 
 Skelton's Garland of Laurel were two named Howard, the 
 elder of whom may have been the poet's aunt, who married 
 Thomas Boleyn, while the younger Muriel Howard was 
 certainly his sister. His father, the Earl, was twice married, 
 first to Lady Anne Plantagenet, who died in 1511, and 
 secondly, to Lady Elizabeth Stafford, daughter of the 
 Duke of Buckingham, whom he took, much against her 
 inclination, from her betrothed, Ralph Nevill. From this 
 unhappy union so begun, how could it well be otherwise? 
 there sprang five children, of whom Henry, the eldest 
 son, appears to have been born in February, 1518. He 
 became Earl of Surrey (by courtesy) at the age of six, at 
 which time his father succeeded to the dukedom. 
 
 To the original cause of his wife's dissatisfaction the 
 Duke added a criminal attachment to Elizabeth Holland, 
 his daughter's governess, and this led to the eventual 
 separation of the couple. Henry Howard was brought up 
 in country houses belonging to the family, principally by 
 his mother, since his father was almost constantly employed 
 on the King's service either on the Continent or at Court. 
 He, however, took an interest in his son's education, and
 
 160 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 gave him for tutor John Clerke,^ graduate of Oxford, who 
 not only knew Latin, but was an excellent linguist. Amongst 
 other accomplishments he was a good Italian scholar, hav- 
 ing resided for sevei'al years in Italy ; and it can hardly be 
 questioned that from him Siirrey derived that taste for 
 Italian poetry, which was to manifest itself in his writ- 
 ings. 
 
 In 1529 the King's love-son, Henry Fitzroy, was con- 
 signed to the care of the Duke- of Norfolk, and according 
 to a report of Eustache Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador 
 in London, who had it from the Duke himself, expressly 
 that the boy might profit by the friendship of the youthful 
 Earl of Surrey, some sixteen months his senior. The two 
 lived together at Windsor till October, 1532, and in later 
 years Surrey looked back with a feeling of enchantment to 
 his early days in that splendid residence, 
 
 Where in lust and joy 
 
 With a king's son my childish years did pass 
 In greater feast than Priam's son of Troy ; 
 
 Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour: 
 The large green courts where we were wont to rove, 
 
 With eyes cast up unto the Maiden's tower, 
 And easy sighs such as folk draw in love : 
 
 The palm-play where, despoiled for the game, 
 With dazed eyes oft we, by gleams of love, 
 
 Have missed the ball and got sight of our dame, 
 To bait her eyes which kept the leads above. 
 
 Surrey, as is shown by the inscription on his portrait at 
 Arundel Castle, only lived to be twenty-nine, but into that 
 short span he succeeded in packing so many romantic 
 episodes and stirring adventures (with which his poetry is 
 intertwined) as are a source of considerable embarrassment
 
 THE POETS. 161 
 
 to a biographer whose space is limited. The sorrowful 
 allusion in the lines just quoted may serve as an illustra- 
 tion. They were written in 1537, when he was confined at 
 Windsor for striking a Seymour within the precincts of 
 the court, an offence for which he was liable to the loss of 
 his right hand; nor was this the only occasion on which he 
 struck, or on which he was imprisoned. However, we may 
 well make his intimacy with young Fitzroy, whom his 
 attached father had created Duke of Richmond, the start- 
 ing-point of his active career, which puts Wyatt's precocity 
 to shame. 
 
 The poet's ambitious and unscrupulous father sought to 
 advance the fortunes of the family in various ways, and 
 amongst others, by contracting his children, whilst of 
 tender age, in marriage. In this pursuit he was seconded, 
 during her short period of ascendancy, by his relative 
 Anne Boleyn, who was desirous of uniting the boy-earl to 
 her step-daughter, Mary Tudor, till dread of the King's 
 displeasure drove her to decist from the project; and, on 
 her advice Surrey was wedded, at the legal minimum of 
 fourteen, to the Lady Frances de Vere, daughter of the 
 Earl of Oxford. In another direction the queen obtained 
 her wish by bringing about an alliance between the Duke 
 of Richmond and Surrey's sister Mary, in the teeth of the 
 bride's mother. Three years after their wedding Surrey 
 and his wife came together, and the union, unlike that of 
 his parents, proved happy. Some have cast doubt on the 
 point, but without reason, on the ground of Surrey's con- 
 ventional addresses to a little lady whom he 
 Geroldine. calls Geraldine, and who was the youngest 
 daughter of a luckless Earl of Kildare. Her 
 real name was Elizabeth Fitzgerald, and the string of 
 love-sonnets, of which the fair child is the subject, stands 
 for no more than an intellectual pastime introduced from 
 i. M
 
 lt>2 11IK AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Italy, with which country the Fitzgeralds claiuifl ;m 
 hereditary connection. They professed descent from the 
 Giraldi of Florence; and to this real or imaginary tie 
 Surrey is well pleased to accord full recognition in his 
 verse: 
 
 From Tuscane came my lady's worthy race, 
 
 Fair Florence was sometime their ancient seat, 
 The western isle whose pleasant shore doth face 
 
 Wild Camber's cliffs did give her lively heat. 
 Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast : 
 
 Her sire an Earl, her dame of Prince's blood. 
 From tender years in Britain doth she rest 
 
 With king's child, where she tasteth costly food. 
 Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyrie; 
 
 Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she Light; 
 Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine, 
 
 And Windsor, alas! doth chase her from my sight. 
 Her beauty of kind; her virtues from above: 
 Happy is he that can obtain her love. 
 
 The husband who actually obtained her hand we dare 
 not say, her love at the age of fifteen, was Sir Anthony 
 Browne, a knight of sixty. 
 
 One of the oddest incidents of Surrey's life occurred iu 
 
 1543, when in company with Thomas Wyalt 
 Thames' ^ e voun o er ' whose father he had solemnly 
 
 praised for his metrical version of the penitent- 
 ial psalms, and a William Pickering, he went out on the 
 Thames by night. All three were armed with cross-bows, 
 from which they discharged pebbles at the brothels, and 
 not only at the brothels, but at the upper windows of 
 respectable citizens. This escapade, together with the 
 crime of eating meat in Lent, led to citation before the 
 Privy Council and committal to the Fleet Prison. Here 
 Surrey solaced himself with versifying, and in a strain of
 
 T1IE POETS. 163 
 
 grim and scarcely coudonable humour compared his roister- 
 ing serenade to a prophetic warning: 
 
 That as the fearful thunder-clap 
 
 By sudden flame at hand we know, 
 Of pebble-stones the soundless rap 
 
 The dreadful plague might make thee see 
 Of God's wrath that doth thee enwrap. 
 
 Meanwhile Surrey, like his father and sometimes with 
 his father, was frequently engaged in responsible public 
 offices. In 1536 he was in the Midlands in command of 
 the royal forces assembled to put down ' Captain Cobbler's* 
 rebellion. Three years afterwards, when the country was 
 menaced with invasion by a Continental alliance, he was 
 commissioned to put Norwich in a state of defence. Tn 
 1542, the very year in which his cousin Catherine Howard 
 was beheaded, he was ordered to York that he might take 
 part in the repulse of the Scots, who were reported to be 
 advancing thirty thousand strong. Nothing came of these 
 formidable preparations except the surprise and defeat of 
 ten thousand of the enemy by a small body of three 
 hundred horse. In 1543 the treaty with Charles V, which 
 had cost Thomas Wyatt his life, was ratified, and Surrey 
 set out on a fighting expedition to France, where not so 
 many years before he, with his friend Richmond, had ex- 
 perienced the courtesies of King Francis I. Very little was 
 accomplished in this campaign, but in 1544 the war was 
 conducted with more vigour. The chief English success 
 was the taking of Boulogne, but as against this must be set 
 the disastrous assault on Montreuil, in which Surrey, 
 
 always impetuously brave, had a narrow 
 f * fri*^ escape from death or capture. He was saved 
 
 by the devotion of his page Thomas Clere, 
 who there and then received a wound, from the effects of
 
 164 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 \\ hii-li lie died the following year. Surrey wrote a touching 
 sonnet to his memory, concluding with the words: 
 
 At Montreuil gates, hopeless of all recure, 
 Thine earl, half dead, gave in thine hand his will; 
 
 Which cause did thee this pining death procure, 
 Ere summers four times seven thou could'st fulfil. 
 
 Ah, Clerel if love had booted, care, or cost, 
 
 Heaven had not won, nor earth so timely lost. 
 
 In 1545 Surrey was despatched with five thousand men 
 to the relief of Boulogne, which was being beleaguered 1 y 
 the French, and fought several actions, in one of which 
 that at Saint-Etienne he was severely defeated. As his 
 achievements did not come up to his hopes and promises, 
 he was, in March, 1546, recalled to England in disgrace; 
 and in June a treaty of peace was signed between England 
 and France, one of the conditions being the surrender of 
 Boulogne. But for Surrey this result might have been 
 attained much earlier. 
 
 Surrey had never shown himself very diplomatic; and, 
 though on the whole a better man than his 
 
 father> had far less of that worldlv wisdom 
 which, in those slippery times, was so neces- 
 sary to men in high place. It must, of course, be remem- 
 bered that he was still a young man; but, even allowing 
 for that, rashness, rather than prudence, was one of his 
 most striking constitutional traits. He was now to pay 
 dearly for his lack of astuteness. The Duke of Norfolk, 
 still busy at his old trade of match-making, proposed to 
 the King a double matrimonial alliance between his own 
 family and that of the powerful Seymours. His daughter, 
 the widowed Duchess of Eichmond, was to marry Sir 
 Thomas Seymour; and Surrey's elder son a daughter of 
 Lord Hertford. Surrey, influenced probably by the anti- 
 pathy of his class to a race of parvenus, energetically re-
 
 THE POETS. 165 
 
 sisled the project, which came to nothing; and, by so 
 doing, incurred the mortal enmity of his own sister. 
 
 Thus the Howards and the Seymours, instead of being 
 united by ties of affinity, were thrown back into their old 
 position of rivals and antagonists; and as the days of the 
 reigning monarch were evidently numbered, it was a ques- 
 tion whether the leaders of the ancient nobility or Henry's 
 favourite advisers were to hold power during the minority 
 of his successor. On this point Surrey again displayed a 
 singular lack of caution by publicly declaring that the 
 regent would be the duke, his father. As Edward VI was 
 a son of Jane Seymour, such a solution was hardly practic- 
 able. It was violently opposed by the Seymours, who re- 
 presented the party of ecclesiastical reform, and Henry 
 himself desired nothing better for his son than the protec- 
 tion of his mother's kindred. Accordingly a charge of treason 
 was trumped up against Surrey and his father on the pre- 
 text that the assumption of the arms of Edward the Con- 
 fessor and that of the Scottish crown, which had been 
 granted to the Howards by royal favour for zealous and 
 valuable services, pointed to designs on the throne. The 
 } Duchess of Eichmond, meanly and wickedly, 
 crirru accepted this explanation, and Surrey and the 
 
 duke were both arrested. During the whole of 
 the proceedings the poet defended himself with a haughty 
 courage; but nothing that he could say by way of chal- 
 lenge or remonstrance was of the least avail. He was tried 
 by a packed jury before judges selected by his foe, Lord 
 Hertford ; and, having been found guilty, was sentenced to 
 death. His execution took place in January, 1547, on 
 Tower Hill. Whilst awaiting his almost certain doom 
 Surrey turned into English verse two of the Psalms (the 
 seventy- second and eighty-seventh) a becoming exercise 
 and, one may say, a praeparatio mortis.
 
 166 TTTE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 The Duke of Norfolk, owing to Lib legal status, could 
 only be tried by his peers, aud as the procedure was more 
 cumbrous, involving appreciable delay, he was rescued from 
 his son's untoward fate by the death of Henry VIII, 
 whose sign-manual it was essential to obtain. 
 
 We have treated Surrey's poetry in connection with his 
 life, because that seems to be the right method in 
 letters dealing with one whose whole life was a poem. 
 
 His verse, most of it, was spontaneous enough, 
 and the high-mettled earl charmed away many a dull hour 
 by describing his moods in language that must have cost 
 him but little labour. At the same time be was an artistic 
 poet. Already we have left far behind the rude and rugged 
 attempts of Lydgate and his admirers. As Puttenlmm 
 says in his Art of English Poetry : ' Sir Thomas Wyatt and 
 Henry Earl of Surrey were the two chieftains, who, having 
 travelled [metaphorically] into Italy and there tasted the 
 sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian Poesy. 
 . . . greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar 
 poesy from what it had been before, and for that cause may 
 justly be said to be the first reformers of our English 
 metres and style.' 
 
 The literary relations of the two poets, whose personal 
 
 relations had always been friendly, have now to 
 
 be considered. Wyatt, as we have seen, was 
 
 many years senior to Surrey, who stood in 
 
 somewhat the position of a disciple to him. As regards 
 
 metre, this is the case. If Wyatt employed terzines, Surrey 
 
 also demonstrated his ability to cope with this difficult 
 
 metre, which since their time has been represented hardly 
 
 at all in English poetry. He even surpassed Wyatt in his 
 
 love of what seems to have been the elder poet's invention 
 
 namely, the combination of Alexandrine and septenarian 
 
 verse. In daring and variety, however, Surrey is less note-
 
 THE POETS. 167 
 
 worthy than his master, confining himself to comparatively 
 few forms and exhibiting his still not so much in the 
 building of elaborate measures as in the perfection of his 
 rhythm. Wyatt had aimed at smoothness and metiical 
 accuracy ; but he never accomplished his object with quite 
 the success of his younger compeer, who must therefore be 
 regarded as the true progenitor of our later poets, and the 
 first to utter his thoughts in a way that strikes one as 
 cultivated and easy and classically modern. 
 
 Wo have stated that Surrey was not, on the whole, any 
 
 great innovator; but this was perhaps an 
 Blank verse. accident due to the fact that Wyatt had 
 
 done the work for him, and so there was no 
 need. His conversion of the sonnet into a short poem with 
 alternate rhymes and concluding couplet may be attributed 
 partly to misconception of its nature, and partly to the 
 instinct for simplicity which reveals itself in a truly im- 
 portant experiment his rendering of parts of the Aeneid 
 into decasyllabic blank verse. This* was, as might be anti- 
 cipated, no ' happy thought ' of Surrey. English versifica- 
 tion was now fully abreast of Continental practice, and it 
 was, as Puttenhani remarks, taste of Itali 'anpoesy that 
 decided the choice of metres on the part of the ' new com- 
 pany of courtly makers.' In Italy blank verse of one 
 kind or another had for some time been recognized as a 
 legitimate type of verse. We need not go back to St. Francis 
 of Assisi's Cantico del Sole, Ijecause that poem is not likely 
 to have exerted much influence on later Italian writers, 
 and, through them, on Surrey. But Ariosto in his comedies, 
 Trissino in a tragedy and an epic poem, and Alamanni in 
 his elegies had all dispensed with rhyme; and there was 
 extant in Italian blank verse a translation of two books of 
 Virgil, credited to Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. The cus- 
 tom was already spreading to other European countries
 
 THE AOE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 for instance, Spain and the first English poet to adopt it 
 was the Earl of Surrey. The step is memorable rather for 
 its ulterior than for its immediate results. Surrey's trans- 
 lation, which here and there betrays acquaintance with 
 Douglas's, is not in true blank verse, of which the charm 
 consists in the artful change of pause and subtle refine- 
 ments of rhythm; it runs rather like heroic couplets with 
 the rhymes taken out. Still, this does not lessen the im- 
 portant consequences of an example imitated by Shake- 
 speare and Milton, and flowering again, most beautifully, 
 in the Idylls of the King. 
 
 Surrey's misunderstanding of the sonnet and mis- 
 handling of blank verse are matters of small 
 momen * ^ n estimating his merits as a poet. 
 Amongst these we should place, if not first, 
 among the first, his extraordinary gift of melody. To 
 no poet can we more properly apply the epithet ' tuneful,' 
 and the music of his verse must be regarded as echoing the 
 music of his soul. Of the causes which go to produce this 
 inner music none is more potent than sympathy and accord 
 with external nature. Here Surrey is at one with Chaucer, 
 and his Description of Spring is thoroughly happy, thor- 
 oughly English, and like nothing so much as that delight- 
 ful old ditty Summer is a-coming in. But the reader shall 
 judge for himself : 
 
 The sweet seasbn, that bud and bloom forth brings, 
 
 With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale ; 
 The nightingale with feathers new she sings ; 
 
 The turtle to her mate hath told her tale. 
 Summer is come, for ev'ry spray now springs, 
 
 The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; 
 The buck in brake his winter coat he flings ; 
 
 The fishes fleet with new repaired scale. 
 The adder all her slough away she slings.
 
 THE POETS. 169 
 
 The swift swallow pursueth the flies emale ; 
 The busy bee her honey now she mings ; 
 
 Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale. 
 And thus I see among these pleasant things, 
 Each care decays ; and yet my sorrow springs. 
 
 A striking feature of this Renaissance period in England 
 is the widespread interest in poetry, which had 
 lotte s many practitioners who, if they made no great 
 name, yet were able to indite occasional verses 
 of very respectable merit. As if for the benefit of these 
 minor bards there came into existence a succession of mis- 
 cellanies stored with charming pieces which are either of 
 unknown or uncertain authorship, or proceeded from men 
 otherwise of the slightest account. It is remarkable that 
 Surrey's poems were first published in a book of this de- 
 scription, and commonly known (after the name of the 
 printer) as ' Tottel's Miscellany.' The actual title was: 
 ' Songs and Sonnets, written by the Right Honourable 
 Lord Henry Howard, late Earl of Surrey, and other. Apud 
 Riccardum Tottel. 1557. Cum privilegio.' 
 
 The editor of this collection was Nicholas Grimald, be- 
 lieved to be the son of an Italian clerk, and a graduate of 
 both Oxford and Cambridge. He was himself completely 
 English ; and his mother Anne, on whom at her decease he 
 wrote a funeral song, was perhaps a native of Huntingdon- 
 shire, in which county he was born in 1519. The first ver- 
 sion of Tottel's Miscellany appeared early in June, 1557, 
 and the second on the last day of July following. The 
 chief difference between them lay in the disappearance of 
 thirty poems by Grimald and the substitution of others. 
 The total number of distinct pieces in the two editions ex- 
 ceeds three hundred. 
 
 Hand in hand with the love of poetry went intense de- 
 light in music. The King Henry VIII was a song- writer
 
 170 TITE AGE OF TRANSITION'. 
 
 in Mil senses; and his favourite, William Cornish, a 
 
 musician of the Chapel Royal, contributed to 
 
 Henry the ^j s song-book, as did likewise a score or so 
 
 8 , of men of talent, some of whose names have 
 Song-lx)ok. 
 
 been preserved, and others not. It is not always 
 easy to distinguish the writer of the poem from the com- 
 poser of the music. Thus in Tottel's Miscellany, a piece 
 commencing ' Ah, Robin, gentle Robin,' is assigned to 
 Wyatt; in the King's book it is given to Cornish, who 
 may simply have invented the melody. This, however, is 
 by no means certain, as the editors of collections appear to 
 have found great difficulty in allocating poems to their 
 rightful owners. Henry's song-book belongs, perhaps, 
 rather to musical than to literary history; but his Pastime 
 with Good Company, written for three voices, may be cited 
 just to show what that extraordinary monarch was capable 
 
 of: 
 
 Green groweth the holly, so doth the ivy, 
 Though winter blasts blow never so high 
 Green groweth the holly. 
 
 As the holly groweth green and never changeth hue, 
 So am I, and ever bath been, unto my lady true. 
 Green groweth the holly, etc. 
 
 As the holly groweth green with ivy all alone, 
 When flowers cannot be seen, and greenwood leaves be gone. 
 Green groweth the holly, etc. 
 
 Now unto ray lady promise to her I make, 
 From all other only to her I me betake. 
 Green groweth the holly, etc. 
 
 Adieu mine own lady, adieu my special, 
 
 Who hath my heart truly, be sure and ever shall. 
 
 Green groweth the holly, so doth the ivy, 
 Though winter blasts blow never so high. 
 Green groweth the holly.
 
 THE POETS. 171 
 
 This is evidently a ' catch,' a short libretto, but we should 
 be very sadly mistaken were we to suppose that verse 
 ft' its elusive, half- rhapsodical nature is easy or devoid of 
 poetical merit. It is redolent of an age when England 
 was Merrie England still, and could hardly be produced 
 nowadays. It makes its way by suggestion rather than 
 by full and determinate expression; its charm lies in 
 its airiness and gaiety. These are such songs as Oberon 
 and Titania might have sung, or hearkened to, all night 
 long in the moonlight. They are not of the earth, but of a 
 finer element, and mock the slower inspiration of me- 
 fhanical bards, who abide by grammar and deem some 
 measure of sense iudispenable to serious poetry. Serious 
 yes, but these efforts are not serious. They are thrown off 
 in a frolic and always with the anticipation of lightsome 
 melody, or with a musical fantasy for a lead. 
 
 But it is time that we returned to our miscellanies. 
 Tottel's collection ran into eight editions, 
 The Paradise an( j ^ g guccegg naturally provoked imita- 
 Device* ' tions, the lx?st or, at any rate, the most 
 
 popular of which was the Paradise of Dainty 
 Devices. The reader will conclude from this example that 
 poets, or publishers, were beginning to study what is now 
 regarded as the all-important question of titles; and the 
 succeeding miscellanies hateful term ! will confirm this 
 inference with a brave show of variously attractive nomen- 
 clature The Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, A 
 Handful of Pleasant Delights, The Phoenix Nest, Eng- 
 land's Helicon, and A Poetical Rhapsody. Most of thes<> 
 works are so late as to be outside our present province, 
 but the Paradise of Dainty Devices, though not printed 
 until 1576, demands attention, inasmuch as it is largely 
 retrospective, and embraces many poems of an earlier 
 date.
 
 172 THE AGE OF TRANSITION 
 
 We have, however, not yet done with Tottcl. Among 
 the authors whom for some reason he has thought fit not to 
 name were Thomas Churchyard, Thomas Lord Vaux, John 
 Heywood, and Sir Francis Bryan. The last-named has 
 already been mentioned in these pages in connexion with 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt, and we now add that he received his 
 knighthood from the Earl of Surrey during the campaign 
 in Brittany. Thomas Lord Vaux is represented in the 
 ' Miscellany ' by two poems, the Assault of Cupid, and 
 another beginning, ' I loathe that I did love,' three stanzas 
 of which are quoted in the grave-diggers' song in Hamlet. 
 John Heywood is the famous writer of interludes, and 
 Churchyard the soldier of fortune, who contributed to the 
 Mirror for Magistrates. It is possible also that George 
 Boleyn, Lord Rochford, the darling of the ladies at the 
 court of Henry VIII, and beheaded in 1536 on suspicion 
 of incestuous intercourse with the queen, his sister, has a 
 niche in the collection, since a poem commencing, ' My lute, 
 awake,' which is given by Tottel to Sir Thomas Wyatt, is 
 attributed in the Nugae Antiquae to the ill-starred young 
 nobleman. 
 
 Concerning the Paradise of Dainty Devices, which was 
 dedicated to Lord Compton of Compton, we are told by 
 the printer, Henry Disle, that it ' was collected together 
 through the travail of one both of worship and credit for 
 his private use, who not long since departed this life.' 
 The reference is to a Richard Edwards, who had died ten 
 years before at the age of forty-three, and who was a 
 musician educated at Oxford, and appointed at the outset 
 of Queen Elizabeth's reign one of the gentlemen of her 
 chapel. He was a man of versatile talent, being reputed 
 the best fiddler, the best mimic, and the best sonneteer of 
 the court. He was the author of three theatrical pieces, 
 namely, Damon and Pythias, and Palamon and Arcite in
 
 THE POETS. 178 
 
 two parts; and his Soul's Knell, composed almost iu big 
 last moments, was once very generally admired. 
 
 The poems of the Paradise appear to have been selected 
 largely on the score of their aptness for musical setting ; 
 and this point is duly brought forward in the preface: 
 ' The ditties are both pithy and pleasant, and will yield a 
 far greater delight, being as they are so aptly made to be 
 set to any song in five parts, or sung to any instrument.' 
 Like Tottel's, this ' Miscellany ' sprang into great favour, 
 edition following edition to the number of seven in less 
 than twenty-five years. The second issue contains a good 
 many corrections, and the names of several of the authors 
 are more exactly stated, altered, or printed at length, in- 
 stead of being indicated by initials. It is not certain that 
 in every instance the revised editions are nearer the truth ; 
 and Ellis freely expresses his belief that Lord Vaux (' the 
 elder') was the real author of a poem Complaint for the 
 Loss of a Friend originally ascribed to him, but after- 
 wards transferred to W. Hunnis. 
 
 Like Edwards, Hunnis was a gentleman of the Chapel 
 Royal, and wrote a quantity of devotional poetry very 
 popular in its day. Another versifier, ten of whose com- 
 positions are inserted, was Francis Kinwelmarsh, of Gray's 
 Inn, who was associated with George Gascoigne in a 
 translation of a play of Euripides. Some of the signa- 
 tures are in hieroglyphics, and we cannot say for certain 
 that George Gascoigne is the ' G. Gaska ' or George Caven- 
 dish (author of the Life of Wolsey) is the ' M. (i.e. Master) 
 Candish ' of the Dainty Devices. These attributions, how- 
 ever, are not improbable. One of the oddest names is 
 'Yloop,' which has been supposed to be an inversion of 
 Pooly, but who Pooly was, cannot even be conjectured. 
 Without entering more deeply into the subject, these hints 
 will afford an insight into the quality of the book, which
 
 174 Till: AE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 is in a way an accident, but a very fortunate accident, since 
 it has been the means of preserving much charming verse, 
 and is a permanent memorial of the general culture of the 
 ;i'_,'e, as distinct from the genius of its principal writers. 
 This consideration induces us to instance a poem by Richard 
 Edwards, the originator of the anthology and an adept at 
 numbers, but not found in his book. There is an old satire 
 on women by Simon ides of Amorgos, of which the follow- 
 ing seems in some sort an echo: 
 
 When women first Dame Nature wrought, 
 ' All good,' quoth she, ' none shall be naught, 
 All wise shall be, none shall be fools, 
 For wit shall spring from women's schools. 
 In all good gifts they shall excel, 
 Their nature all no tongue can tell.' 
 Thus Nature said I heard it, I. 
 I pray you ask them if I do lie. 
 
 By Nature's grant this must ensue, 
 No woman false, but, ah ! most true: 
 None sow debate but love maintain, 
 None wish to see their lover's pain. 
 As turtles true, their chosen one 
 They love, and pine when he is gone. 
 This is most true, none can deny ; 
 I pray you ask them if I do lie. 
 
 No lamb so meek as women be, 
 Their humble hearts from pride are free ; 
 Bich things they wear, and wot you why? 
 O-ily to please their husband's eye! 
 They never strive their wills to have; 
 Their husbands' love, nought else they crave. 
 Vain tattle in them none can espy, 
 I pray you ask them if I do lie. 
 
 The eagle, with his piercing eye, 
 
 Shall burn and waste the mountain high.
 
 THE POETS. 175 
 
 Huge rocks shall fleet as ship with sail; 
 The crab shall run, swim shall the snail, 
 Springs shall return from whence they came; 
 Sheep shall be wild and tigers tame ; 
 Ere these my words false yon shall try. 
 Ha, ha! methinks I make a lie. 
 
 What Tottel's Miscellany arid the Paradise of Dainty 
 Devices are in the realm of lyric poetry, that 
 Maqistrntts ^ e ^ rror f 01 " Magistrates is in the domain 
 of narrative verse. A cyclic work, it grew 
 with every new edition until at last it came to form a toler- 
 ably continuous compendium of English, or rather British, 
 history from the primitive mythical dawn to the date of the 
 composition. The idea, originated by Edward Whitchurch 
 the publisher, fructified in the brain of William Baldwin, 
 who, although a graduate of Oxford and an ecclesiastic, 
 had an hereditary connection with the printing-press, and 
 himself acted as proof-reader to Whitchurch. He was even 
 expert enough to be his own type-setter, when he had 
 rhymed the Canticles of Solomon and desired to issue his 
 version in all the glory of print. Baldwin's principal lieu- 
 tenant in the larger enterprise was George Ferrers, an 
 Oxonian, who had studied in Lincoln's Inn, sat in Parlia- 
 ment in Henry's reign, supported Cromwell, and in 1542 
 made acquaintance with the interior of a gaoL He may 
 be described without disparagement as one who 'dabbled' 
 in literature, since he had no confirmed tastes, and turned 
 from translating Hagna Carta and other documents, 
 French and Latin, to collaborating with Graftou in his 
 Chronicle. His share in the work was the reign of Queen 
 Mary, and seeing that he had been attached to the Pro- 
 i.. tor, the Duke of Somerset, the direction of his sym- 
 pathies may be easily conceived. He wrote, besides other 
 verse, a number of fashionable interludes, and, in one year,
 
 176 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 was the King's Lord of Misrule, so that, altogether, Master 
 Ferrers may be reckoned a man of no mean accomplish- 
 ments, and endowed with much mental energy and initia- 
 tive. Baldwin records an interesting conversation which 
 took place between himself and this courtier of parts, 
 when the main lines of the work had been laid down and 
 agreed upon : 
 
 Master Ferrers (after he had found where Bochas left, which 
 was about the end of Bang Edward the Third's reign) said thus: 
 ' I marvel what Bochas meaneth to forget among his miserable 
 princes such as were of our own nation . . . Bochas, being an 
 Italian, minded most the Roman and Italian story, or else, 
 perhaps, he wanted the knowledge of ours. It were therefore 
 a goodly and notable matter to search and discourse from the 
 first beginning of the inhabiting of the isle, but seeing the 
 printer's mind is to have us follow where Lydgate left, we will 
 leave that great labour to other that may intend it, and (as one 
 being bold first to break the ice) I will begin at the time of 
 Richard the Second, a time as unfortunate as the ruler therein.' 
 
 The tenour of these observations suffices to show the 
 character of the undertaking. The Mirror (or Speculum) 
 was a common type of mediaeval writing, the object of 
 which was to place before the readers a faithful description 
 of the duties and dangers of their station. These could be 
 best illustrated by the experiences of those who had occupied 
 that station before them, and who, in these examples, had 
 been ' set in slippery places,' and ' cast down suddenly.' 
 Ferrers inaugurated the work with the fall of Robert 
 Tresilian, Chief Justice of England, choosing for the pur- 
 pose a species of Chaucerian stanza in Alexandrines. This 
 precedent was not maintained throughout, other measures 
 being employed, in addition to which the series is variegated 
 with prose colloquies between members of the company. 
 The first edition, which appeared in 1559, comprises nine-
 
 THE POETS. 177 
 
 * 
 
 teeii 'tragedies,' of which Baldwin supplied the largest 
 share. Ferrers wrote three, and Phaer, the translator of 
 Virgil, one that on Owen Glendower. The earliest 
 'tragedy' is ' Tresilian ' and the latest 'Edward IV.' In 1563 
 there came out a second edition, enriched with eight new 
 recitals, but the numerical addition was the least important 
 factor in the case. Far uiore significant was the quality of 
 Baldwin's recruits, one of whom, Thomas Sackville, con- 
 tributed an Induction, which alone has rendered the work 
 immortal. 
 
 Thomas Sackville was the son of Sir Eichard Sackville, 
 
 and was born at Buckhurst, in Sussex, in 
 Thomas, Lord 153g He wag educated firgt at Oxford and 
 oackvule. . 
 
 then at Cambndge, and afterwards entered 
 
 the Inner Temple. Before leaving the University for the 
 Bar, he had already made for himself a reputation as a 
 poet a matter to which Jasper Hey wood so kindly alludes: 
 
 There Sackville's sonnets sweetly sauced 
 And featly fined be. 
 
 However, the young lawyer had ambitions, or his friends 
 had ambitions for him, outside the court of the Muses. His 
 was to be a full, an honourable, and a useful life, in which 
 literary achievement was to play a subordinate part, and 
 yet a part testifying how great an artist perished in him. 
 Married at eighteen, Sackville, like Ferrers, obtained seats 
 in the House of Commons, commencing his public career 
 at twenty-one and approving himself no idle or indifferent 
 Member of Parliament. His father died in 1566, and the 
 following year Thomas Sackville was knighted and raised 
 to the peerage as Baron Buckhurst. Still gaining in im- 
 portance, when Burghley died which waa in 1599 he 
 was chosen to take his place as Lord High Treasurer of 
 England. Iu 1G04 he was created Earl of Dorset, and 
 
 I.
 
 178 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 four years later death, with dramatic suddenness, removed 
 him, at the age of seventy-two, from his seat at the Council 
 table. 
 
 In his young days, as a Templar, Sackville, in conjunction 
 with Thomas Norton, composed the first English tragedy, 
 which was entitled Oorboduc and produced, in 1561, at the 
 Christmas Revels of his inn. Here we need say no more of 
 the play than that it was written in blank verse of an in- 
 fantine description, 'tis true, but still not barren of effect 
 in the practice of later dramatists. 
 
 Coming now to Saokville's contributions to the Mirror 
 for Magistrates, we may observe at once that the Complaint 
 of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, whilst filling its 
 allotted place in the series for which it was designed, suffers, 
 and inevitably, from the limitations imposed by this very 
 circumstance. In the intention of its editor, the Mirror 
 or Magistrates was nothing if not historical, and thus 
 Sackville was compelled to hold in check the falcon flights 
 of feeling and faucy, lest they should ascend too far from 
 the terra firma of literal accuracy aud established fact. In 
 his Induction he was hampered by no such 
 The Induction, restrictions, and, as he there deals with an 
 ideal realm of his own creation, he is able 
 to demonstrate how far he has advanced from the crude 
 and callow symbolism of Stephen Hawes, how far he has 
 travelled towards the truly poetical conceptions of Edmund 
 Spenser. 
 
 The poem is a remarkable union of mediaeval allegory 
 with ideas derived from the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid, 
 and may in that sense be compared to an infinitely greater 
 work the Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Nor does the re- 
 semblance .end here, for Sackville possessed a similar gift 
 of gloomy portraiture. His pictures are in one sense even 
 more impressive, because unrelieved, as in Dante, by out-
 
 THE POETS. 179 
 
 breaks of savage humour and the ever-recurring thrill of 
 theatrical curiosity. 
 
 The Induction opens with a picture of a winter eve, full 
 of classical allusion, as became a Renaissance poem, but 
 containing many natural touches and some really fine 
 metaphors, such as 
 
 The naked twigs were shivering all for cold. 
 
 Sackville has gotten out into the fields, and, in despite of the 
 unfavourable conditions, which render him a prey to gloomy 
 thoughts, continues his peregrination. He encounters a 
 miserable and disconsolate form, which reminds us of 
 Niobe, but it is Niobe in grim exaggeration. The poet is 
 horrified at the sight of her anguish, and bids her uufold 
 the cause of her inordinate woe. She proves to be Sorrow 
 incarnate, and, when both have recovered a measure of 
 their self-control, undertakes to be his guide to the nether 
 regions. The imagination displayed in the ensuing stanzas, 
 particularly in the description of the allegorical figures 
 Remorse, Dread, Revenge, Misery, Heavy Sleep, Old Age, 
 Malady, Famine, War will bear comparison with anything 
 in the Faery Queen, and, indeed, anticipates a yet greater 
 poem. Some of the lines have a distinctly Miltonic ring. 
 For instance: 
 
 In dreadful fear amid the dreadful place. 
 
 In sheer intensity, Sackville's poetry has seldom been sur- 
 passed. What can be more awe-inspiring than his portrait 
 of Old Age? 
 
 Crook-backt he was, tooth-shaken and blear-eyed, 
 Went on three feet, and sometime crept on four, 
 
 With old lame bones that rattled by his side, 
 
 His scalp all piled (laid), aud he with eld forlore, 
 Ilia withered fist still knocking at death's door.
 
 180 TIIK AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Fumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath 
 For brief, the shape and messenger of death. 
 
 The purpose of this visit to the loathly lake Averne and 
 the realm of Pluto is that the poet may see and hear the 
 plaint of those who had borne sway amongst the best, but 
 are now reduced to the worst straits of grief and disap- 
 pointment. In reality he has only one interview that 
 with the Duke of Buckingham, whose aspect and gestures 
 are as dolorous as it is possible to conceive, and affect his 
 beholder with profound melancholy. Sackville's two con- 
 tributions to the Mirror /or Magistrates represent appar- 
 ently a mere instalment of his original design which, ac- 
 cording to the prose prologue, was far more comprehensive. 
 
 ' I have here the Duke of Buckingham, King Richard's chief 
 instrument, written by Masser Thomas Sackville.' ' Head it, 
 we pray you,' said they. ' With a good will,' quoth I, ' but first 
 you shall hear his preface or induction.' ' Hath he made a 
 preface?' quoth one. 'What ineaneth he thereby, seeing none 
 other hath used the like order?' 'I will tell you the cause 
 thereof,' quoth I, ' which is this. After that he understood that 
 some of the Council would not suffer the book to be printed in 
 such order as we had agreed and determined, he purposed with 
 himself, to have gotten at my hands all the tragedies that were 
 before the Duke of Buckingham's, which he would have pre- 
 served in one volume. And from that time backward, even to 
 the time of William the Conqueror, he determined to continue 
 and perfect all the story himself, in such order as Lydgate 
 (following Bocchas) had already used. And therefore, to make 
 a meet induction, he devised this poesy, whicli in my judgment 
 is so well penned that I would not have any verse thereof left 
 out of our volume.' 
 
 For this second edition of the Mirror for Magistrates 
 Churchyard wrote the tragedy of Jane Shore; he had 
 indited for the first a story of Mowbray's banishment by
 
 THE POETS. 181 
 
 King Richard, which was in subsequent editions acknow- 
 ledged as his. Some of this poet's pieces 
 had been previously published in Tottel's 
 
 Miscellany, and he was destined to write 
 and the Mirror J ' 
 
 for Magistrates. an( * publish more. As a soldier of fortune, 
 Churchyard's life was rich in incident, and 
 he carried some of this pugnacity into letters, as is proved by 
 his ' flyting ' match with Camell, begun with Dame Dycar's 
 Dream. His, however, is rather an interesting than great 
 or important personality; and, therefore, instead of sketch- 
 ing his biography, we prefer to proceed with our account 
 of the Mirror for Magistrates. 
 
 This work had evidently become a public institution, 
 somewhat resembling the Spectator \n the days of Addison, 
 save that it did not deal with matters of topical interest, 
 and merely ministered, in the most general way, to the 
 thirst for information and desire for moral improvement. 
 There could be no question of copyright in the idea; and 
 although the early ' tragedians ' worked harmoniously to- 
 gether, the scheme appears to have appealed to the clerical 
 and antiquarian mind, and very soon wide periods of na- 
 tional history were filled in by writers acting independently. 
 Thus in 1574, John Higgins, a clergyman who kept school 
 at Winsham, in Somerset, produced The First Part of the 
 Mirror for Magistrates, which accounted for the interval 
 between the advent of Brut and the birth of Christ. It 
 was impossible to go further back, and so Higgins ventured 
 to prefix a general ' induction,' suggested by Sackville's, 
 and, like it, in Chaucerian stanza. In 1578 Thomas Blen- 
 nerhasset printed twelve more 'tragedies,' ranging from 
 the invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar to the Norman 
 Conquest; and in 1587 Baldwin's and Higgins' edition were 
 united in one volume. In this form the collection served 
 through the reign of Elizabeth as a magazine, to which the
 
 182 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 dramatists of the time had recourse for their plots. A 
 feature in this joint edition was a new 'tragedy' by 
 Churchyard, on the subject of Cardinal Wolsey. Apart 
 from the Mirror for Magistrates, this writer, almost as busy 
 with his pen as with his sword, put forth a collection of 
 poems under the modest title of Churchyards Chips, various 
 items of which are tragical in name and quality, while 
 others are courtly and ceremonious. 
 
 Leading the life of Churchyard and sharing his aims, but 
 possessing far higher claims to poetical dis- 
 Gascof tinction, was George Gascoigne, who is com- 
 mended by Puttenham for ' a good metre and 
 a plentiful vein,' of whom Nash declares that ' he first beat 
 the path to that perfection which our best poets have 
 aspired to, since his departure,' and who, in the opinion of 
 Warton, 'has much exceeded all the poets of his age in 
 smoothness and harmony of versification.' 
 
 Born about 1525, the eldest son of Sir John Gascoigne, 
 a Bedfordshire knight, the poet seems to have had some 
 early connection with Westmorland, where, he tells us, he 
 stole such English as he had. From Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, he passed, without taking a degree, to the Middle 
 Temple, was admitted an ancient of Gray's Inn in 1555, and 
 was member of Parliament for Bedford from 1557 to 1559- 
 In 1567 Gascoigne, who had lived in the gay world and 
 ' misgoverned his youth,' married the widow of a William 
 Breton, whose son Nicholas gained some credit as an 
 author. Five years later he embarked for Holland, and 
 entered the service of the Prince of Orange, who was con- 
 ducting a desperate struggle against Alva and the Spaniards. 
 On the voyage from Gravesend the vessel in which he 
 sailed was wrecked off Briell, and the poet, with all on 
 board, was in imminent danger of drowning. His ex- 
 periences on this occasion are vividly narrated in a poetical
 
 THE POETS. 183 
 
 epistle to Lord Grey of Wilton, to whom also he describes 
 in allegorical verse his impressions of war. Gascoigne, to 
 be sure, had no lack of matter, for he was present at all 
 manner of engagements both by land and sea, tasted the 
 rapture of assault and the tedium of the siege, and in the 
 course of a twelvemonth earned not merely the thanks of 
 the Dutch prince, but a very acceptable gift of three 
 hundred guilders, over and above his pay, by means of 
 which he was able to pay off his creditors: 
 
 Where good Guillam of Nassau bade me be, 
 There needed I no other guide but he. 
 
 At length, having been posted at Valkenburg, he was 
 compelled by stress of circumstances to capitulate to the 
 Spaniards, who, though they had proved themselves a cruel 
 enemy to their revolted subjects, treated Gascoigne and his 
 officers with distinguished courtesy during the four months 
 they remained in their hands. 
 
 On procuring his release, towards the end of 1574, Gas- 
 coigne made his way back to England and took up his 
 quarters in what he calls in the preface of the Steel Glass 
 his ' poor house at Walthainstow.' He did not return to 
 the wars, of which he had probably seen enough, but, con- 
 tent with the company of his wife and his son William, 
 devoted himself to those poetical pains which he had never 
 entirely intermitted. His wife had five children by her first 
 husband, who had secured the property to them, but Gas- 
 ooigne's marriage, though it did not help him much to free 
 his estate from embarrassment, appears to have been fairly 
 happy, and a lawsuit instituted in the favour of the 
 Bretons speedily ended in a friendly arrangement. Gas- 
 coigne died at Stamford on October 7th, 1577, at the age 
 of fifty, or thereabouts. The truth is, the date of Gas- 
 coigne'a birth is very uncertain, so uncertain that Professor
 
 184 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Morley makes him no more than forty at the time of his 
 death. This is in accord with Anthony & Wood's account, 
 which would be consistent with still fewer years. On the 
 other hand, Gascoigne himself refers to his ' crooked age 
 and hoary hairs.' To be sure, these may have been among 
 4 the fruits of war,' but the natural interpretation is that he 
 was growing elderly, and by the use of such phrases antici- 
 pated the younger bards, who, when his style of verse had 
 gone out of fashion, were wont to allude to him, half- 
 irreverently, as 'old Gascoigne.' Whatever his age, he 
 accomplished, it would seem, a most edifying departure 
 from the world. His contemporaries were instructed in his 
 manner of leaving them by George Whetstone, who, ere 
 the breath was well out of his body, published a poem, en- 
 titled, ' A Remembrance of the Well Employed Life and 
 Godly End of George Gascoigne,' the narrator purporting 
 to be his ghost. He died poor, bequeathing to his wife and 
 son little more than his love and a request to the Queen 
 to befriend them, not for any services of his own, but for 
 Christ's sake. 
 
 The chronology of Gascoigne's poems is not nearly so 
 obscure as that of his life, since it is bur- 
 
 dened bv no initial difficu % vitiating the 
 whole problem. If the reckoning be made 
 on the basis of publication, the task is simplicity itself, but 
 the date of composition also is sometimes established by 
 autobiographic evidence, Let us take the case of the Com- 
 plaint of Philomene, begun in 1562, but not completed or 
 published until 1575, when, in a dedication to Lord Grey of 
 Wilton, Gascoigne told the story of its inception. ' Twelve 
 or thirteen years past,' he says, ' I had begun an elegy, or 
 sorrowful song, called the Complaint of Philomene, the 
 which I began to devise riding by the highway between 
 Chelmsford and London; and being overtaken with a sud-
 
 THE POETS. 185 
 
 den dash of rain I changed my copy, and struck over into 
 De Profundis, which is placed among my other poesies, 
 leaving the Complaint of Philomene unfinished, and so it 
 hath continued until this present month of April, 1575, 
 when I began my Steel Glass. And because I have in mine 
 exordium to the Steel Glass begun with the nightingale's 
 notes; therefore I have not thought amiss now to finish 
 and piece up the said Complaint of Philomene, observing 
 nevertheless the same determinate invention which I had 
 propounded and begun (as is said) twelve years now past.' 
 It is fair to infer from this testimony that the Complaint 
 of Philomene and the De Profundis really belong to the 
 close of the year 1562. So far as the latter is concerned, 
 there is no intimation that it was not finished in the course 
 of the ride and subsequently committed to paper indeed, 
 the contrary is implied yet it was first published in a 
 
 collection of Gascoigne's poems, which his 
 
 friends caused to be printed, with his know- 
 Flmcers ledge and consent, during his absence in the 
 
 Low Countries, or, more precisely, in 1572. On 
 his return to England, he set about revising this volume of 
 verse, which bore the quaint title of A Hundred Simdry 
 Flowers Bound up in one Small Posy, and was republished 
 in a revised edition, dated February, 1575. 
 
 The particular poem which called forth these remarks 
 
 Gascoigne's version of Psalm CXXX has no 
 rascotgne special interest or value. The circumstances 
 
 which led to its composition are stated in some 
 prefatory lines ; and in a set of poems printed in the same 
 volume, and entitled, Gascoigne's Memories, his habit of 
 'devising,' or thinking out, his verse on horseback 
 'writing none till he came to the end of his journey' is 
 again mentioned. These Memories, so called from his hav- 
 ing carried them for some time in his head, comprise five
 
 186 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 different poetical or, we may say, metrical experiments 
 on themes set by friends at Gray's Inn, when in the midst 
 of his youth he had determined on reformation and the 
 study of Common Law. The Posy we refer to the primi- 
 tive edition held yet other poems: Gascoigne's Good 
 morrow and Good Night, The Lullaby, The Divorce, The 
 Recantations of a Lover, etc. Those specified had all been 
 set to music, for which The Lullaby especially might be 
 deemed peculiarly adapted. It is, however, no ordinary 
 lullaby such as mothers love to croon over cradles, but a 
 grave admonition to George Gascoigne. The witching 
 rhythm and skilful construction of the stanzas, with their 
 semi-refrain, makes us almost forget this. 
 
 Sing lullaby, as women do, 
 
 Wherewith they bring their babes to rest; 
 And lullaby can I sing too, 
 
 As womanly as can the best. 
 With lullaby they still the child, 
 And if I be not much beguiled, 
 Full many wanton babes have I 
 Which must be stilled with lullaby. 
 
 First lullaby, my youthful years : 
 
 It is now time to go to bed : 
 For crooked age and hoary hairs 
 
 Have won the haven with my head. 
 With lullaby then, youth, be still, 
 With lullaby content thy will ; 
 Since courage quails, and comes behind, 
 Go sleep, and so beguile thy mind. 
 
 Next lullaby, my gazing eyes, 
 Which wonted were to glance apace; 
 
 For every glass may now suffice 
 To show the furrows in my face. 
 
 With lullaby then wink awhile; 
 
 With lullaby your looks beguile;
 
 THE POETS. 187 
 
 Let no fair face, nor beauty bright, 
 Entice you ' efte ' with vain delight. 
 
 And lullaby my wanton will, 
 
 Let reason's rule now rein tby thought, 
 Since all too late I find by skill, 
 
 How dear I have thy fancies bought. 
 With lullaby now take thy ease; 
 With lullaby thy doubts appease; 
 But, trust to this, if thou be still 
 My body shall obey thy will. 
 
 Thus lullaby, my youth, mine eyes, 
 
 My will, my ware, and all that was; 
 I can no more delays devise ; 
 
 But welcome pain, let pleasure pass. 
 With lullaby now take your leave; 
 With lullaby your dreams deceive; 
 And when you rise with waking eye, 
 Remember then this lullaby. 
 
 The second edition of Gascoigne's works contained a 
 number of new poems, one of which was a long account 
 of ' Dan Bartholomew of Bath,' a lover's tale indited in 
 the Netherlands. Other items were The Supposes, Jocasta, 
 The Fruits of War, and a prose narrative translated from 
 Bartello and entitled The Pleasant Fable of Ferdinando 
 Jeronomi and Leonora de Velasco. The Supposes a bad 
 rendering of I Suppositi, rendered worse by a self-incul- 
 pating gloss and Jocasta were both versions of Italian 
 plays, by Ariosto and Lodovico Dolce respectively, and 
 will be considered when we come to deal with the drama 
 and prose. Meanwhile we proceed with our notice of Gas- 
 coigne's achievements in poetry. 
 
 In the April of 1575 he penned a ' commendation ' in
 
 188 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 fifty-eight lines of ' The Noble Art of Veuery ' for George 
 Turberville's Book of Falconry or Hawking. At the same 
 time that he l>egan the Steel Glass, his best work, he 
 carried his Complaint of Philomene a step further. Both 
 were complete in about a year. These tasks must have 
 been seriously interrupted by occupations connected with 
 royalty, since Gascoigne was commissioned by the Earl of 
 Leicester to 'devise' masques, and so on, for the enter- 
 tainment of Queen Elizabeth, when she visited Kenilworth. 
 Printed the following year under the title of the Princely 
 Pleasures, or the Court at Kenilworth, they, with a letter 
 of a certain Ion vivant R. Laneham, or Langham, furnish 
 a perfect picture of hospitalities as magnificent as it ever 
 fell to a sovereign to receive or to a subject to offer. 
 At the new year Gascoigne presented Elizabeth with a 
 copy of his own Tale of Hemetes the Hermit, 
 'pronounced before the Queen's Majesty at 
 Woodstock,' i.e., in the previous September. 
 This was written in four languages English, French, 
 Latin, and Italian; Dutch, which he also knew, being passed 
 over. Such a linguistic feat inclines one to wonder some- 
 what at Webbe's criticism of the poet in his Discourse of 
 English Poetry : ' Master George Gascoigne, a witty gentle- 
 man, and the very chief of our late rhymers, who and if 
 some parts of learning wanted not (albeit is well known 
 he altogether wanted not learning) no doubt would have 
 attained to the excellency of those famous poets. For gifts 
 of wit and natural- promptness appear in him abundantly.' 
 Neither is it true that he neglected the theory of his art as 
 is proved by ' Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the 
 making of Verse or Rhyme in English,' published between 
 1572 and 1575. However, even Webbe's praise is better 
 than Prof essor Arber's epigrammatic dismissal of Gascoigne 
 as an ' esquire in poetry.'
 
 THE POETS. 189 
 
 The Steel Glass and the Complaint of Philomene, though 
 sufficiently unlike if we regard their es- 
 "^ "ne* sen *" 1 ^ qualities, have yet something in 
 common. It is a reasonable supposition 
 that the prologue of the Complaint of Philomene was 
 written pari passu with the exordium of the satire, which, 
 by Professor Arber's leave, is not the first in our language. 
 The choice of metres has some bearing on the question ; and 
 it is to be noted that, while not in every respect identical, 
 the verse is in both cases decasyllabic. The 'fable' of 
 Philomene, on the other hand, is written in what is known 
 as Poulter's measure, i.e., a combination of Alexandrine 
 and septenarian lines arranged in a quatrain. Thus the 
 opening stanza of the poem runs as follows: 
 
 In Athens reigned sometimes 
 
 A king of worthy fame, 
 Who kept in court a stately train; 
 
 Pandion was his name. 
 
 This is, on the whole, not a satisfactory rhythm. While 
 suitable enough for a serio-comic tale, it is better fitted 
 for ballad poetry than anything else. Perhaps it was this 
 feeling that led Gascoigne to drop or suspend the poem. 
 When he resumed it he chose a nobler measure deca- 
 syllabic verse, with alternate rhymes, not arranged in 
 stanzas, but carrying on the sense, if need be, to a point 
 beyond the limit of each fourth line. Subsequently the 
 pause at the conclusion of the quatrain was enforced, and 
 in this altered form Daveuant recommended the adoption 
 of the metre as the English heroic verse. 
 
 As has been intimated, doubtless it was on the narrative 
 portion that Gascoigne commenced, for the prologue in- 
 dicates a considerable ripening of poetical experience, and 
 the coincidence between tins 'April* of the dedication and
 
 100 TIIE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 the * April ' of the introductory lines cannot have been 
 casual. It will be noted that in the prologue Gascoigne 
 represents himself as walking out alone ' to hear the des- 
 cant of the nightingale.' This can in no sense be reconciled 
 with the ride between Chelmsford and London, where, as 
 we have seen, the Complaint was originally begun. The 
 epilogue, written in the same metre as the prologue, also 
 belongs to the later period; in it the poet addresses, though 
 not by name, Lord Grey of Wilton, to whom the work, 
 like so many more of Gascoigne's compositions, was dedi- 
 cated on its publication. 
 
 The Complaint of Philomene overflows into the Steel 
 Glass, and the Steel Glass into the Complaint. The latter, 
 which is merely the old Greek legend done into modern 
 verse, does not naturally lend itself to satirical uses, but 
 Gascoigne compels it to yield all of which it is capable in 
 this way in the epilogue, where we meet with such lines 
 as the following: 
 
 Yet God above which can both loose and bind 
 Will not so soon appeased be therefore. 
 He makes the male of female to be hated, 
 He makes the sire go sighing wondrous sore 
 Because the son of such is seldom rated, 
 I mean the sons of such rash-sinning sires 
 Are seldom seen to run a ruly race, 
 But plagued (belike) by fathers' soul-desires 
 Do gad abroad and lack the guide of grace. 
 Then (lapwinglike) the father flies about 
 And howls and cries to see his children stray, 
 Where he himself (and no man better) mougkt 
 Have taught his brats to take a better way. 
 Thus men, my Lord, be metamorphosed 
 From seemly shape to birds and ugly beasts: 
 Yea, bravest dames (if they amiss once tread) 
 Find bitter sauoe for all their pleasant feasts,
 
 THE POETS. 191 
 
 They mast in fine condemned be to dwell 
 
 In thicks unseen, in mews for minions made, 
 
 Until at last (if they can bride it well) 
 
 They may chop chalk, and take some better trade. 
 
 This is good, but the prologue, which is blither and in 
 sympathetic accord with the musical denizens of the wood, 
 brings back the atmosphere in which the old-world story 
 took shape. 
 
 The invocation of the nightingale at the commencement 
 
 of the Steel Glass is explained by the circum- 
 
 ^/ e ' stances which we have just reviewed. Rather 
 
 later in the poem there occurs an awkward 
 
 attempt to justify it on proper grounds, but Philomel, 
 
 commonly associated with amorous strains, has no natural 
 
 connection with satire, and we may rest assured that she 
 
 would not have been thought of as an adjunct of any steel 
 
 glass but for the accident already noted. 
 
 Steel preceded glass mirrors in general use, and Gas- 
 coigne affirms what seems to have been the common belief 
 that burnished steel reflects a truer image than the natter- 
 ing crystal which had been recently substituted. Here we 
 see the point of the title. The satire is to present the plain 
 truth in contradistinction to the deceptive gloss which men 
 in their folly are eager to mistake for it. The poem is in 
 blank verse, and compensates for the lack of rhyme by 
 abundance of rhetorical emphasis. It embodies Gascoigne's 
 mature opinions on the state of the kingdom, dealing 
 seriatim with the principal classes with which he had been 
 brought into contact kings, knights, soldiers, merchants, 
 priests and illumining its progress with many allusions 
 to classical story. As its author professes to have received 
 his glass by will and testament from old Lucilius, this 
 ostentation of learning is not to be wondered at. But the 
 composition if not in its essence pedantic. It ia a strong
 
 192 T1IE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 and skilful indictment of human weakness and human 
 wickedness studied at first hand; and, though there are 
 occasional faults of style, the literary quality of the poem 
 is undoubtedly high. We may specify, for instance, Gas- 
 coigne's apt use of alliteration, as in the lines ; 
 
 I see not one within this glass of mine, 
 Whose feathers flaunt and flicker in the wind, 
 As though he were all only to be markt, 
 When simple snakes, which go not half so gay, 
 Can leave him yet a furlong in the field, 
 And when his pride of all his peacock plumes 
 Is daunted down with dastard dreadfulness. 
 
 We must run rapidly over the remainder of this writer's 
 works. In April, 1576, he superintended 
 Other Works, the publication of Sir Humphry Gilbert's 
 Discourse of a New Passage to Cataia, with 
 regard to which he wrote to Sir John Gilbert an epistle 
 disclosing incidentally his relationship to Sir Martin Fro- 
 bisher. In the following May he lit on a mutilated copy 
 of a treatise De Miscria Humanae Conditionis by Lothario 
 Conti (afterwards Pope Innocent III), and, not knowing 
 it to be his, proceeded to make from it an English poem in 
 three parts entitled the Droom of Doomsday. In the autumn 
 of the same year, 1576, he published A Delicate Diet for 
 Dainty-mouthed Drunkards. On New Year's Day, 1577, he 
 presented the Queen with ' certain elegies ' which he termed 
 collectively The Grief of Joy. The seriousness and even 
 melancholy of his latest writings harmonize with his infirm 
 state of health, but the terminal note of his elegiac volume 
 ' left unperfect for fear of horsemen ' is not a little 
 mysterious. Probably his outspokenness had embroiled 
 him with persons of consequence. But his work was done. 
 His sickness grew apace, and from this date to his death
 
 THE POETS. 193 
 
 in the ensuing October he produced nothing that has 
 reached us. 
 
 There yet remain two kinds of poetical production on 
 
 which it is needful to bestow regard. These 
 
 Verse trans- are translations from the classics by scholar- 
 
 lations of the , ,, ,, . 
 
 Classics poets, and the first attempts at modern 
 
 English psalmody. Versions of Seneca en- 
 gaged the attention of several writers, working independ- 
 ently. Jasper Hey wood, one of the two clever sons of John 
 Heywood, Alexander Nevill, John Studley, Thomas Nuce, 
 and Thomas Newton, all took part in this labour, and in 
 1581, the last-named published in one volume the ten 
 translations accomplished by them in varying proportions. 
 The versions were in rhyme, and the metres of the dialogue 
 ranged from the septeuarian couplet to short stanzas of 
 four decasyllabic lines, rhyming alternately. The trans- 
 lations were embellished with original choruses an inno- 
 vation introduced by Jasper Heywood and imitated by the 
 others. 
 
 Septenarian couplets were employed also by Thomas 
 
 Phaer in his version of ' the nine first books of 
 
 Thomas ^ jjneidos.' Phaer was not only a tolerable 
 
 versifier, but a writer on law and medicine; and 
 
 in his time was advocate for the Marshes of Wales, and 
 
 doctor of medicine at Oxford a singular combination of 
 
 gifts and offices. His translation of the Virgilian epic was 
 
 completed, in a less satisfactory fashion, by another 
 
 physician Thomas Twyne of Lewes. 
 
 Again, septonarian couplets were the metre of Arthur 
 
 Golding's rendering of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 
 
 Arthur fi u i 8ne( i j n 1567, and destined to be long u 
 
 favourite. Qoldiug was an enthusiastic man of 
 
 learning, who had already given an English dress to 
 
 Caesar's Commentaries, Seneca's De Beiieficiis, and Justin, 
 
 i. o
 
 194 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 and his enthusiasm appears nowhere more evidently than 
 in the preface to his Ovid, in which he attributes to that 
 author much more than he would have presumed to claim 
 for himself, for there was certainly no cabalism in his 
 poems. That, however, was not Golding's opinion. 
 
 For this do learned persons deem of Ovid's present work, 
 That in no one of all his works the which he wrote do lurk 
 Mo dark aud secret mysteries, mo counsels wise and page, 
 Mo good ensamples, mo reproofs of vice in youth and age, 
 Mo fine inventions to delight, mo matters clerkly knit, 
 No nor more strange variety to show a learned wit. 
 
 We meet with other instances of the septenarian measure 
 
 in the Whole Book of the Psalms associated 
 
 Sternhold and with the names Q Sternllold and Hopkins, 
 
 1 1 1 > [ ' K 1 II -. t 
 
 and familiar to many generations of church - 
 folk as an appendix to the Prayer Book. The work was 
 first published in its entirety by John Day in 1562. Stern- 
 hold, however, a piously-inclined courtier, had died in 
 1549, and his psalms, fifty-one in number, had been printed 
 the same year. John Hopkins, a Suffolk clergyman in holy 
 orders, added fifty-eight more, and Thomas Norton, Sack- 
 ville's collaborator in the Tragedy of Gorboduz, twenty- 
 seven. Of the other translators the most learned and con- 
 siderable was the Dean of Durham, William Whittingham. 
 The common and just estimate of the merits of the collec- 
 tion is bluntly expressed in Rochester's lines to a parish- 
 clerk, whose voice was past its meridian and lacked training: 
 
 Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms, 
 When they translated David's psalms, 
 
 To make the heart fall glad ; 
 But had it been poor David's fate 
 To hear thee sing, and them translate, 
 
 It would have made him mad.
 
 THE POETS. 195 
 
 Likewise poor old Thomas Tusser may be granted a place 
 in this poet's corner. Not indeed that he was any 
 Tus' great poet, hardly, indeed, a poet at all. But 
 always unlucky from the day he entered Eton, 
 where he was beaten with many stripes by Nicholas Udall, 
 to the day of his death he found his principal solace in 
 rhyming. After a term at Cambridge, he tried farming 
 operations in different places Ln East Anglia, and en- 
 deavoured to establish relations between the Muse and 
 practical agriculture. His ambition was low enough, and 
 possibly, if his object was purely utilitarian, he may be 
 judged to have succeeded, for his Hundred Points of Good 
 Husbandry, afterwards five times multiplied, cannot be 
 denied the virtues of perspicuity and good sense. Elegance, 
 however, is another matter, and here honest Tusser, who 
 at one time figured as singing-man in Norwich Cathedral, 
 breaks down. There was no need for this failure, as the 
 Georgics sufficiently testify, but the failure was a fact. 
 Occasionally Tusser's advice is dry, but excellent. He had 
 spoken of syrups, ' which easeth the sickly so much,' but 
 he has no mind to be a quack, so he adds with shrewd 
 humour: 
 
 Ask Medicos' counsel, ere medicine ye make, 
 And honour that man for necessity 'a sake. 
 
 Among the published works of Barnaby Googe is a 
 
 translation of the Four Books of Husbandry, by 
 
 * ^ Conrad Heresbachius a work which reached a 
 
 second edition, but is of no particular interest to 
 
 us now. The translator, however, deserves some notice as 
 
 one of the pioneers of Elizabethan literature. Born about 
 
 1540, and educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, lie 
 
 woke up one morning, if not, like Byron, to find hiinsi-lt 1 
 
 famous, yet with fame before him. On his roturn from
 
 196 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 travel in Spain and elsewhere, he discovered that his friend 
 Bundeston had caused his youthful poems to be printed, 
 and it is on this volume, published when he was twenty- 
 three years of age, that his reputation mainly depends. It 
 contains a number of eclogues imitated from Italian models, 
 idealizing country life, but with very distinct allusions to 
 the Marian persecutions which made Grooge a determined 
 Protestant in prose as well as verse: 
 
 Such sheep as would not them obey 
 
 But in their pasture bide, 
 (With cruel flames) they did consume 
 
 And vex on every side. 
 
 The collection is noticeable also for its ' sonnets ' to Bishop 
 Bale and 'Edwards of the Chapel,' and its epitaphs on 
 Phaer and Grimald. 
 
 In 1570 probably, however, there were earlier editions, 
 
 though no copy of them is now extant ap- 
 eo ge peared a similar volume, entitled, Epitaphs, 
 
 Epigrams, Songs and Sonnets, by George Tur- 
 berville, who was born about 1530 at Whitchurch in Dorset, 
 educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, and at 
 one time acted as secretary to Sir Thomas Randolph, Eng- 
 lish ambassador at Moscow. Turberville is known also for 
 his metrical translations of Ovid's Epistles and Mantuan's 
 Eclogues, his works on hunting and falconry, and his ten 
 Tragical Tales from the Italian, besides minor productions. 
 Neither Googe nor Turberville can be compared with that 
 sadly-neglected genius, Thomas Watson, whose work hardly 
 comes within our sphere, but they were both men of talent 
 who kept the torch of English poesy ablaze in the early 
 part of Elizabeth's reign, and are decidedly interesting as 
 links between TotteVs Miscellany and the Shepherd's Cal- 
 endar.
 
 CHAPTEE VII 
 
 BALLADS AND SONGS 
 
 THE days between Chaucer and Spenser produced no Eng- 
 lish poets if we except Dunbar, the Scotsman 
 
 Ballads *^ a ^ can ^ re S ar( ^ e< i as worthy of serious 
 comparison with the two great pillars of our 
 literature, which, like Termini, close the epoch at each end. 
 As compensation for this stint of divine afflatus in the au- 
 thentic and legally-attested bards, it may be confidently 
 affirmed that this was the golden age of the English ballad. 
 Whatever other times may have yielded in this kind, never, 
 we are certain, were there such royal effusions as Chevy 
 Chase and Robin Hood, which, in their own way, are every 
 whit as important as Shakespeare's plays, being integral 
 parts of the national heritage without which England 
 would stand shorn of a large portion of her traditional 
 glory. The conditions of life to which they point the men 
 and the manners are to the last degree romantic, but 
 nothing in the matter can exceed the native charm, the 
 opulence of spirit, of the ballads themselves, manifestly 
 the compositions of minstrels, who, without much urging, 
 would have stolen deer in the King's forests, or rained 
 heavy blows on the bodies of his enemies. Chevy Chase 
 represents sport at its wildest; Robin Hood, a cycle of out- 
 lawry, makes poaching an occupation for a gentleman. 
 Tli -re are other writings to be considered, but we may
 
 198 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 well begin with these magnificent specimens of anony- 
 mity. 
 
 In his Apology for Poetry, Sir Philip Sidney remarks of 
 the former: 'Certainly I must confess my 
 own barbarousness. I never heard the old 
 
 ChcvJ Chase son & ^ P ercv "^ Douglas that I found not 
 my heart moved more than with a trumpet; 
 and yet is it sung but by some blind crowder [fiddler], with 
 no rougher voice than rude style; which being so evil ap- 
 parelled in the dust and cobwebs of that uncivil age, what 
 would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pin- 
 dar?' The obvious reply to this question is that a thing 
 which is good of its kind does not of necessity become 
 better for being transformed into something different, and 
 the ballad, however rude its style, must have possessed no 
 common virtue to have stirred the poet-critic so mightily. 
 Nevertheless, Sidney laid his finger on a characteristic 
 which all must acknowledge to be a stumbling-block in the 
 later as well as in the earlier version. The versification is 
 not nearly so smooth as in the kindred ballads recounting 
 the Battle of Otterbourne, about which more will be said 
 presently. Sidney's allusion to ' some blind crowder ' may 
 have been no more than a chance reminiscence of a some- 
 what pitiful scene, but it is noteworthy that we owe the 
 ballad in its most ancient form to one of that order, who 
 lived in the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, and whose name 
 appears at the end of the manuscript, now in the Bodleian 
 Library. This does not intimate that he composed the 
 ballad, but rather that he wrote it out or dictated it for his 
 own use, or that of others, or merely that it was his par- 
 ticular copy. If he were blind, of which there is no evidence, 
 it would have been by so much less serviceable to him. 
 Theale's trade was recitation, and iu the rough scansion of 
 many of the lines we may trace the ignorance or careless-
 
 THE POETS. 199 
 
 ness of a strolling minstrel, who by his manner of chanting 
 and fiddling was able to disguise their metrical imper- 
 fections. 
 
 At the conclusion of the ballad we meet with the 
 stanza: 
 
 This was the hunting of the Cheviot, 
 
 That tear began this spurn : 
 Old men that knowen the ground well enough 
 
 Call it the battle of Otterburn. 
 
 Chevy Chase, which is the name of a locality as well as of 
 a poem, and not, as some mistakenly sup- 
 Unhistorical. pose, a corruption of chivachie, has no con- 
 nection with Otterbourne or the battle fought 
 there. In the strictest sense the ballad is unhistorical, the 
 details being purely imaginary, but it seems not improb- 
 able that it took its rise from a confused report of the 
 battle of Piperden or Pepperden, which was the outcome 
 of a raid by Sir Henry Percy, and in which, according to 
 Scottish accounts, the victory was gained, after great 
 slaughter, by William Douglas, Earl of Angus, and his 
 meyny. This battle, however, took place in 1436, whereas 
 there are plain intimations in the poem that the date of 
 the engagement it commemorates falls in the reigns of 
 James I of Scotland and Henry IV of England. The battle 
 of Homildon or Humbleton, in which Henry is stated to 
 have avenged the loss of Percy, occurred in the year 1402, 
 before James ascended the throne, and the names of the 
 principal heroes, which are given differently in the two 
 versions, are difficult or impossible to identify. 
 
 All this shows that the ballad, as regards its particulars, 
 is of no historical value, and that it should be viewed as a 
 romance founded on the turbulent conditions of border 
 life, and the bloody rivalry between Scots and English ever
 
 200 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 likely to assume the form of private war levied on their 
 immediate neighbours. Such a state of affairs cannot be 
 considered otherwise than deplorable, but it was consistent 
 with a fine spirit of generosity and mutual respect, to 
 which the ballad bears testimony. Percy is the aggressor, 
 since, in sheer despite, he kills and carries off the fattest 
 bucks in all Cheviot; but Douglas is loth to involve ' guilt- 
 less men ' in the fighting that must ensue, and defies the 
 English lord to single combat. The challenge is readily 
 accepted, but the fierce pride of a ' poor squire of land,' 
 unwilling to stand aside and look on, brings about a 
 general melie, which begins an hour before noon, and at 
 evensong is not half done. Out of two thousand Scottish 
 spearmen but fifty -five escape, and not more than seventy - 
 three of the fifteen hundred English archers. Percy and 
 Douglas both fall, and the ' poor squire ' with them. The 
 bard especially laments this valorous hero : 
 
 For Withrington my heart was wo, 
 
 That ever he slain should be, 
 For when his legs were hewn in two 
 
 He kneeled and fought on his knee. 
 
 The whole cast of the poem is Homeric, and there are 
 single points, like the use of the standing epithet in the 
 style of 'the doughty Douglas,' the enumeration of the 
 captains, etc., which powerfully remind us of the Iliad. 
 Addison, who had as great a love for the ballad as Sidney, 
 
 has discovered traits that link it with the 
 Epic quality. Aeneid, which may be called an echo of the 
 
 older epic. But while it is interesting to 
 trace generic resemblances, it is no less delightful to ob- 
 serve specific differences. One distinction is the absence 
 of mythology from the English poem, which deals with a 
 recent past. It is a plain tale of a stand-up fight j it has
 
 THE POETS. 201 
 
 no supernatural sanctions. The fighters are not invulner- 
 able or nearly so, and purchase reputation with their lives. 
 Lust of adventure, desire for the upper hand, fear of 
 shame such are the motives that impelled the ' barbarians ' 
 to the havoc again and again. In courage and endurance 
 they were ten times better than the bravest Greeks or 
 most resolute Trojans. 
 
 We have relapsed into the historic tense, for it must not 
 be forgotten that Chevy Chase, though it represents no 
 actual encounter that we know of, is a reflex of general 
 truth. It is redolent, to borrow Professor Hales' apt 
 quotation, of 
 
 old unhappy far off things 
 And battles long ago. 
 
 Other ballads, and notably the Otterbourne group, reflect 
 particular or literal truth. There are three 
 
 of tliem> One is to be found in Perc y' 8 
 Beliques of Ancient English Poetry, another 
 
 in Scott's Mintrelsy of the Scottish Border, and a third in 
 Kurd's Scottish Songs, the first being the English, and the 
 two latter the Scottish versions of a raid into England in 
 1389, undertaken in revenge for Kichard II's invasion of 
 Scotland two years previously. The date of these composi- 
 tions is necessarily uncertain, but Professor Hales is of 
 opinion that they came into existence about the time of 
 the events they so minutely and accurately depict. So far 
 as the mere details are concerned, it is worthy of note that 
 at line 130 of the Percy poem reference is made to the 
 ' Chronicles,' and written accounts of the battle were avail- 
 able. But the ballads relate circumstances otherwise unre- 
 corded, which, it is suggested by the first editor of the 
 Reliyuei, were ascertained from oral sources, from the lips 
 of old people. Possibly, however, some MS. has perished.
 
 202 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 The point is important, because the two ballads of the 
 Percy folio have lines in common. It is hardly possible to 
 decide the question of priority, as the retentive memories 
 of ancient men and women and consulted annals suffi- 
 ciently explain the greater historicity of the genuine Otter- 
 bourne ballads as compai'ed with Chevy Chase, which 
 claims to be of their company. For aught we can see, the 
 ballads may have arisen contemporaneously, but it is evi- 
 dent that they were produced or handed down under 
 widely different conditions. It should be noted that an 
 appeal to ' mine author ' is a very old ' trick of the trade,' 
 so that the ' Chronicles,' after all, may be purely imaginary. 
 In that case the Otterbourne poems were almost certainly 
 the more primitive, and Chevy Chase was in part formed 
 upon them. 
 
 Over Ottercap Hill they came in 
 
 And so down by Rodclyffe crag, 
 Upon green Leyton they lighted down, 
 
 Stirring many a stag; 
 And boldly brent Northumberland, 
 
 And harried many a town, 
 And did our Englishmen great wrong, 
 
 To battle that were not bown (ready). 
 
 However, as the affair is a surprise, the Scottish earl, in 
 withdrawing, deems it but due to his rival of Northumber- 
 land, as well as to his own sense of chivalry, to offer him 
 fair conditions. They appoint Otterbourne for a tryst, the 
 champions meet, and Douglas falls, mortally wounded. 
 The manner of his dying, as related in the Scots ballad, is 
 noble and affecting: 
 
 But Percy with his good sharp sword, 
 
 That could so sharply wound, 
 Has wounded Douglas in the brow, 
 
 Till he fell to the ground.
 
 THE POETS. 203 
 
 Then ho called on his little foot-page, 
 
 And said ' Run speedily, 
 And fetch my ain dear sister's son, 
 
 Sir Hugh Montgomery.' 
 
 ' My nephew good,' the Douglas said, 
 
 'What recks the death of ane, 
 Last night I dreamed a dreary dream, 
 
 And I ken the day 's thine ain. 
 
 ' My wound is deep, I fain would sleep, 
 Take thou the vanguard of the three, 
 
 Au-3 hide me by the bracken bush, 
 That grows on yonder lilye lea. 
 
 ' bury me by the bracken bush, 
 
 Beneath the blooming briar; 
 Let never living mortal ken 
 
 That e'er a kindly Scot lies here.' 
 
 Afterwards the English are beaten off, and Earl Percy 
 after fine resistance, is taken prisoner. The last of the 
 above stanzas but one was deservedly a favourite of Sir 
 Walter Scott. 
 
 He suffered no woman to be oppressed, violated, or other- 
 wise molested : poor men's goods he spared, abundantly reliev- 
 ing them with that which by theft he got from abbeys and the 
 houses of rich carles : whom Maior (the historian) blameth for 
 his rapine and thef', but of all thieves he amrmeth him to bo 
 the prince and the most gentle thief. 
 
 Such is Stow's account of Robin Hood, of whose char- 
 acter it shadows forth the traditional lines. 
 Robin Hood. Whether the forester ever existed in the 
 flesh, and, if so, when, are questions not 
 easily resolved. The later fabulists, clearly convinced of 
 his personality, assigned him to the eleventh century, that 
 great age of outlaws, while the more comparative, but per-
 
 204 TUB AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 haps not more scientific investigators of our own time seek 
 to establish a connexion between the bandit and Woden. 
 Here what concerns us more nearly is the folk-verse of 
 which this archer is the hero, and which also is not devoid 
 of mystery. Robin Hood, Little John, George a-Green, 
 Friar Tuck, Maid Marion, are friends to whom English 
 people will be long in bidding adieu, and their circle of 
 acquaintance is wide. From the May-games of the village- 
 green, Ben Jouson lifted them to the higher region of the 
 Muses' hill, Sir Walter Scott makes room for them in 
 Ivanhoe, and another great romancer, Victor Hugo, has 
 cast his charm over them. Thus they form an immortal 
 group, as important as any in the world's literature. 
 
 If we go back to the beginnings of the story, we find it 
 humble enough. As a gleeman's song at Whitsuu ales, it 
 is mentioned with scant respect. In Piers Plowman, it is 
 Sloth who confesses: 
 
 I can nought perfectly my Paternoster, 
 As the Freest it singeth, 
 
 But I can rhymes of Robin Hood 
 And Randolph, Earl of Chester. 
 
 Again, in Chaucer's Troilus, Pandar speaks of the hazel- 
 wood, where Jolly Kobin played. Sorry patrons, these 
 Sloth and Pandar! After an interval of a hundred and 
 fifty years or more, Bishop Latimer joins a fytte of Robin 
 Hood and the Canterbury Tales, as types of unprofitable 
 reading. During this interval the invention of printing 
 had taken place, and Caxton's successor, Wynkyn de Worde, 
 published, as one of his early ventures, a set of Robin Hood 
 ballads, entitled, ' A Little Geste of Robin Hood and his 
 Meiny; and of the Proud Sheriff of Nottingham.' The 
 eight fyttes have the advantage of being telescopic; they 
 run one into the other, and so constitute a complete story 
 or serial tale.
 
 THE POETS. 205 
 
 The date of the collection is seemingly 1500-1510; and 
 the poems of which it is comprised may be considered to 
 have assumed their present shape during the previous half- 
 century. Herr Brandl suggests that the fermentation of 
 ideas in Wyclif's days, which led to the peasant rising of 
 1381, was a factor in the production of this poetry, and that 
 another influence was the story of Hereward, as it had come 
 down from mouth to mouth, or, in written form, as Oesta 
 Herewardi. Manuscript copies of Robin Hood and ike 
 Potter, still extant, are not much older than the printed 
 geste of Wynkyn de Worde, but at least one Robin Hood 
 poem goes back to the reign of Edward II, which knew 
 nothing of peasant risings. The original nest of the legends 
 was, without doubt, somewhere in the Midlands. 
 
 Returning a little, the communism of Wat Tyler and 
 Jack Straw is present in the poem; but the vulgarity of 
 Demos is not to be traced in it. Far from that, what strikes 
 us first and most forcibly is the loyalty and courtesy of 
 Robin Hood, who is a gentleman every inch of him. 
 Towards his betters he has not an atom of churlishness or 
 malice; and if the ballad is severe on the avaricious Abbot, 
 the unchaste Prioress, or the proud Sheriff, this is not on 
 account of their station, but because advantages are abused. 
 The poem is not precisely moral, since theft is necessarily 
 condoned ; at the same time it sets before us fine examples 
 of honour and manly simplicity. Churchmen were apt to 
 be crafty; but Robin is not prejudiced even against 
 churchmen as such, for when the King visits him in Abbot's 
 weeds, he is greeted heartily and complimented as a ' stal- 
 wart frere.' Strange as it seems, these yeomen of the 
 greenwood can reconcile with absolute disregard for his 
 forest laws the strongest attachment to the person of the 
 king. This comes out with charming naivete in Robiu'a 
 acceptance of the monarch's invitation to court*
 
 206 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 'I make mine avow to God! ' said Robin, 
 
 ' And right 80 shall it he, 
 
 I will come to your court 
 
 Your service for to see ! 
 
 And bring with me of my men 
 
 Seven score and three. 
 
 But me like well your service, 
 
 I come again full soon ; 
 
 And shoot at the dun deer 
 
 As I wont to done.' 
 
 There is but one word to describe the relations subsist- 
 ing between king and forester; it is ' sports- 
 Adam Bell, manlike.' In the outlaw ballads your robber 
 is ever a sportsman, and the ministers of the 
 law scurvy knaves who seek to interpose obstacles in the 
 way of his loved freedom, and even to compass his un- 
 merited death. The Robin Hood set has not the character 
 of gruesomeness it is blithe with the life of the woods 
 but the ballad which recounts the Brobdingnagian adven- 
 tures of Adam Bell, Clyin o' the Clough, and William of 
 Cloudesley, presents a combination of its special character- 
 istics with the carnage of Chevy Chase. According to a 
 rhyming Pedigree, Education and Marriage of Robin Hood, 
 Adam Bell was contemporary with the more famous for- 
 ester's father, who beat him and his companions in a 
 shooting match. The statement is of no value historically, 
 but it suggests the conjecture that the ballads concerned 
 with the two heroes were not separated by any great in- 
 terval of time. They have many elements in common. 
 For instance, just as Robin Hood rescues Little John when 
 about to be hanged, so Adam Bell delivers William of 
 Cloudesley from a similar mischance, only with more 
 difficulty. On the other hand, the scene is changed. 
 
 Adam is a north-country yeoman, who attempts to dis-
 
 THE POETS. 207 
 
 suade his comrade in outlawry, William of Cloudesley, 
 from visiting Carlisle. William, however, yearns to see 
 fair Alice and his children, and, at the peril of his neck, 
 ventures within the gates. Unluckily there lies by the 
 hearth an old wife, whom seven years before William had 
 taken in out of charity, and all this long time she had 
 never set foot to ground. Now she recovers strength to 
 inform against her benefactor. The result is that a mob, 
 headed by sheriff and justice, besiege the house, to which 
 they ultimately set fire. The outlaw, having first let down 
 his wife and children with a rope, himself leaps out of 
 window, and, with sword and buckler, charges his foes 
 where they swarm. His courage avails him nothing. He 
 is taken and committed to a cell, with the promise of a 
 speedy hanging on a new gallows. Meanwhile the city 
 porter receives instructions to admit nobody until after 
 the execution. 
 
 William's two friends vow to release him. Feigning 
 they are King's messengers, they claim admittance at the 
 gate, and thus deceive the porter, whose neck they wring, 
 whose keys they seize, and whose body they fling into a 
 deep dungeon. Adam Bell and Clym o' the Clough then 
 proceed to the market-place, where they find William, 
 bound hand and foot, lying in a cart with a rope round 
 his neck. Even in this desperate plight his heart fails him 
 not. Forthwith his comrades loose their shafts, and sheriff 
 and justice fall mortally wounded. To free Cloudesley is 
 the work of a moment, after which the three good yeomen 
 fight their way out. The odds are terrific. No sooner have 
 they disposed of one party than an outhorn is blown, bells 
 are rung, and the mayor arrives with a second rout. In 
 order to forge a passage through the opposing mass, the 
 outlaws begin by using their bows; then, when all their 
 arrows are spent, their trusty blades. With no fringed
 
 203 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 aegis thrown over their shoulders, and with no 'dread 
 unweariable fire,' they paralyze their foes by sheer daring 
 and thin them with massacre. When they arrive safe at 
 ' English wood,' far from congratulating themselves on 
 their fair escape, they actually lament that the sport is 
 at an end: 
 
 ' So God me help,' said Adam Bell, 
 And Clym o' the Clough so free, 
 ' I would we were in merry Carlisle 
 Before that fair meiny.' 
 
 The third fytte conducts the outlaws to court, where 
 they confess their sins as regards the fallow deer, and, 
 through the intercession of the queen, obtain the desired 
 charter of peace. Then come messengers from the north 
 with grievous news of what has occurred, and, to appease 
 the monarch's wrath, William performs the feat associated 
 with the name of William Tell. After this exhibition the 
 seemly fellows regain the royal favour, and are appointed 
 yeomen of the King's chamber. 
 
 We meet with similar scenes in the King and the Barker 
 and John the Reeve in the latter especially, which may be 
 regarded as being more or less a parody on certain well- 
 known romances. Like Cleges, John fights with the porter; 
 like the Green Knight and the challenger in Sir Percival, 
 he rides on horseback into the hall, terrifying the queen. 
 
 The comic element in John the Reeve is even more con- 
 spicuous in The Friar and the Boy. The boy 
 
 in question is a piper with a vengeance, for 
 and the Boy. . . ,f , -, -, ,, 
 
 when he pipes all must needs dance, and the 
 
 friar, who has designs on the modesty of the lad's step- 
 dame, suffers in consequence. No wonder he denounces 
 him as a witch, or that others are unwilling to credit the 
 report of his accomplishments until they have made per-
 
 THE POETS. 209 
 
 sonal trial of the same. This scepticism leads to extra- 
 ordinary spectacles. When Gentle Jack, who had received 
 the pipe from an old man, grateful for relief, is summoned 
 before the ' official,' that dignitary succumbs like the rest, 
 leaping over the desk and dancing about 'wonder fast,' 
 until both his shins were broken. The poem, which was 
 printed by Wynkyn de Worde and reprinted by Eitson, is 
 probably a free translation of a French fabliau, since the 
 friar observes: 
 
 He is a great necromancer, 
 In all Orleans is not his peer. 
 
 There is another version, entitled The Child and his 
 Step-dame, of which a manuscript copy has beeii pre- 
 served. This is quite distinct as to the wording, and de- 
 cidedly inferior. 
 
 We have travelled some little way from the outlaw 
 ballads, but are recalled to the subject by 
 
 5 iV / that most delectable of anonymous poems 
 brown Maid. J 
 
 The Nutbrown Maid. As Warton reminds 
 
 us, Laneham , in the letter to which allusion has been made 
 (see p. 188), ranks it among the popular tales and poems 
 of the day, at which the historian expresses mild surprise, 
 holding the sentiment too refined for general taste. First 
 printed in 1502, and again in the last century by Douce 
 and by Messrs. Hales and Furnivall, it was probably a 
 product of the late fifteenth century, and probably also the 
 composition of a lady, who in the last stanzas prefers to 
 disguise her sex. She ess&ys to defend them against the 
 aspersion varium et mutabik semper. The effort was 
 imitated by Matthew Prior in his Edwin and Emma,, 
 which, better known to most students, is by no means 
 equal in merit to its prototype. 
 
 Tlie Nutbrown Maid is scarcely what is commonly uu-K-r-
 
 210 TI1K A<iE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 stood by a ballad, since it is founded on sentiment rather 
 than on action, but it forms an admirable accompaniment 
 to those spirited narrations to which the term is applied. 
 The Kuight, who might be Robin Hood, regularly speaks 
 of himself as an outlaw and a ' banished man,' which 
 means apparently the same thing. Another point that 
 may be touched upon in this connexion is that the measure 
 is a dancing measure, and that, etyinologically, is the sig- 
 nification of ' ballad.' A piece in the Percy Folio modelled 
 on this poem is called a ' jig,' and the lines of The Nut- 
 brown Maid, with their triple rhymes, foot it excellently. 
 
 If we look at the internal arrangement of the poem, it 
 resolves itself, after a brief preamble, into a dialogue be- 
 tween a nameless knight and a nutbrown maid, who, if 
 there be aught in the old French proverb, should be blithe 
 and neat, and who certainly shows herself tender, true, and 
 brave. The pleadings of both are pathetic in their un- 
 selfish devotion, the knight putting from him the precious 
 boon of the girl's love, and the girl pressing it upon him 
 with resolute scorn of hardship and peril and public re- 
 probation. In the end this affectionate strife turns out to 
 be nothing more than a searching test of the maiden's 
 fidelity, and she finds that her nobility of mind and con- 
 stancy of purpose have purchased for her no ill-starred 
 outlaw, but an earl's son who can live as such. If there 
 be one jarring note in the poem it occurs in the stanzas in 
 which the knight cruelly declares that he has a paramour 
 in the forest, and the patient maid accepts even this re- 
 pulsive condition. But we are surely entitled to believe 
 that neither lover nor lady is arguing seriously now, that 
 the nutbrown maid is assured by the very extravagance 
 of the discourse that her triumph is near, as proves indeed 
 to be the case. 
 
 There seems to be no reason for placing any but a purely
 
 THE POETS. 211 
 
 human interpretation on the poem, but it has suggested to 
 some not very wise person a symbolical reference to the 
 Passion of Christ, in which new guise it may be found in 
 Mr. Hazlitt's Early Popular Poetry of England. 
 
 We quote two stanzas which exhibit both the form and 
 the spirit of what Professor Hales rightly describes as ' one 
 of the most exquisite pieces of late mediaeval poetry,' merely 
 observing that the last line in each constitutes the refrain 
 or quasi-refrain : 
 
 I counsel you remember how it is no maiden's law 
 Nothing to doubt, but to run out to wood with an outlaw: 
 For ye must there in your hand bear a bow ready to draw, 
 And as a thief thus must ye live, ever in dread and awe, 
 By which to you great harm might grow, yet had I leefer 
 
 than (then), 
 That I had to the greenwood go(ne), alone, a banisht man. 
 
 I think not nay, but as ye say, it is no maiden's lore ; 
 But love may make me for your sake, as ye have said before, 
 To come on foot, to hunt and shoot, to get us meat and store; 
 But so that I your company may have, I ask no more; 
 From which to part, it mak'th my heart as cold as any stone, 
 For, in my mind, of all mankind, I love but you alone. 
 
 As this sketch approaches its term, one becomes sensible 
 how vast an underwood of verse must needs be neglected. 
 This consideration applies to every age, but a period so 
 wide as that comprised in the present small work offers 
 large opportunity for selection. Popular politics clothe 
 themselves in many poems of various forms and of various 
 worth. We think of such productions as The Twelve Letters 
 that shall Save Merry England and of the Dirge for the 
 Duke of Suffolk ' Jack Napes ' which purports to have 
 faum made by the Commons of Kent when Jack Cade was 
 their captain,' and begins: 
 
 In the month of May wLen grass grows green.
 
 212 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Popular theology, too, is voluminous, and counts amongst 
 its versified appeals the otherworldly The Adulterous Fal- 
 mouth Squire, which is not by any means so sensational as 
 its title might seem to imply. Many of these pieces are 
 for the curious only; their interest is not exactly literary. 
 
 It is otherwise with the carols, which bear the 
 Carols, same relation to Christmas as the miracle plays 
 
 to Easter, and move in the same plane. A set of 
 these little poems, preserved in a manuscript at Balliol 
 College, has been most conveniently printed in Mr. A. W. 
 Pollard's Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse. All are 
 marked by a quaint unconventional manner, expressing 
 sometimes the season's festiveness, and sometimes a child- 
 like appreciation of the great miracle commemorated on 
 Christmas Day. A few stanzas drawn from one of the 
 liveliest will show of what these bards were capable. 
 
 The shepherd upon a hill he sat, 
 He had on him his tabard and his hat, 
 His tar-box, his pipe, and his flagat, 
 His name was called Jolly, Jolly Wat I 
 For he was a good herds-boy. 
 
 Uthoy! 
 
 For in his pipe he made so much joy. 
 Can I not sing but hoy! 
 The jolly shepherd made BO much joy. 
 
 The shepherd upon a hill was laid, 
 His dog to his girdle was taid, 
 He Lad not slept but a little braid, 
 But ' gloria in excelsis ' was to him said. 
 
 Uthoy! 
 For in his pipe he made so much joy. 
 
 Can I not sing, etc. 
 
 The shepherd on a hill he stood, 
 Bound about him his sheep they yode,
 
 THE POETS. 213 
 
 He put bis band tinder his bood, 
 He saw a star as red as blood. 
 
 Uthoyt 
 For in bis pipe he made so much joy. 
 
 Can I not sing, etc. 
 
 Now farewell Mall, and also Will, 
 
 For my love go ye all still, 
 
 Unto I come again you till 
 
 And ever more will ring well your bell. 
 
 Ut hoy! 
 For in bis pipe he made so much joy. 
 
 Can I not sing, etc. 
 
 For the benefit of persons of musical taste it may be 
 observed that several fifteenth century carols are given, 
 with the traditional airs, in Bramley and Stainer's collec- 
 tion. 
 
 Of the homely sort of secular lyrics (though at Yuletide 
 
 the line of demarcation between sacred and 
 Good ale. secular was fairly abolished) none is better or 
 
 more tuneful than the bold hilarious drinking 
 song in Gammer Gurtoris Needle, a play first printed in 
 1575. 
 
 I cannot eat but little meat, 
 
 My stomach is not good ; 
 Bat sure I think that I can drink 
 
 With him that wears a bood. 
 Tbo' I go bare, take ye no care, 
 
 I nothing am a-cold, 
 I stuff my skin so full within 
 
 Of jolly good ale and old, 
 Back and side, go bare, go bare, 
 
 Both foot and hand go cold ; 
 But, belly, Qod send thee good ale enough, 
 
 Whether it be new or old.
 
 214 THE AOE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 I love no roast bat a nut-browu toast, 
 
 And a crab laid in the fire; 
 A little bread shall do me stead, 
 
 Much bread I nought desire, 
 No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow, 
 
 Can hart me if I wold, 
 I am so wrapt and thoroughly lapt 
 
 Of jolly good ale and old. 
 Back and side, etc, 
 
 And Tib my wife, that as her life, 
 
 Loveth well good ale to seek, 
 Full oft drinks she, till ye may see 
 
 The tears run down her cheek. 
 Then doth she troll to me the bowl, 
 
 Even as a malkworm shold, 
 And saith ' Sweetheart, I took my part 
 
 Of this jolly good ale and old.' 
 Back and side, etc. 
 
 Now let them drink till they nod and wink, 
 
 Even as good fellows should do ; 
 They shall not miss to have the bliss 
 
 Good ale doth bring men to. 
 And all poor souls that have scour'd bowls, 
 
 Or have them lustily troll'd, 
 God save the lives of them and their wives, 
 
 Whether they be young or old. 
 Back and side, eto.
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 1401. Rebellion in Wales. Statute de haerclico combun'ndo. 
 
 1402. Welsh defeated; death of Hotspur at Shrewsbury. 
 1405. The youthful King James I (of Scotland) captured at sea, 
 
 and imprisoned in the Tower. 
 1413. Death of Henry IV ; accession of Henry V. 
 1415. Battle of Agincourt. 
 
 1422. Death of Henry V; Henry VI (aged nine months) pro- 
 claimed king. 
 1424. Ransom and return of James I of Scotland. 
 
 1428. Siege of Orleans. 
 
 1429. Orleans relieved by Joan of Arc. 
 
 1431. Coronation of Henry VI at Paris. Joan of Arc burnt at 
 
 Ronen. 
 1435. European congress at Arras with a view to a general 
 
 peace. 
 1437. Assassination of James I of Scotland. 
 
 1440. Foundation of Eton College by Henry VI. 
 
 1441. Foundation of King's College, Cambridge, by Henry VI. 
 1445. Marriage of Henry VI to Margaret of Anjou. 
 
 1447. Death (murder?) of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester. 
 
 1450. Printed Bible at Maintz. 
 
 1458. Capture of Constantinople by the Turks. End of the 
 
 Hundred Years' War. 
 1455. First Battle of St. Albans ; Henry VI defeated and taken 
 
 prisoner by Richard of York. 
 1458. Capture of Athens by the Turks. 
 1400. Henry VI defeated and taken prisoner at Northampton 
 
 (July). Battle of Wakeneld (December); Richard of 
 
 York defeated by Margaret of Anjou, and beheaded.
 
 216 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 1-Wil. Second Battle of St. Albans; defeat of the Yorkists. Entry 
 of Edward IV into London, where ho is crowned at 
 Westminster Abbey (March). Victory of the Yorkist 
 party at Towton. 
 
 14G4. Battles of Hedgeley Moor and llexham, won by the 
 Yorkists. 
 
 1465. Capture of Henry VI, and his imprisonment in the 
 Tower. 
 
 1466 Marriage of Edward IV to Elizabeth Woodville, the 
 beautiful widow of Sir John Grey. 
 
 1470. Restoration of Henry VI by Warwick. 
 
 1471. Battle of Barnet; Warwick defeated and slain by Ed- 
 
 ward IV (April). Landing of Margaret of Anjou, who 
 is defeated and taken prisoner by Edward IV at 
 Tewkesbury (May). Henry VI assassinated in the 
 Tower (May). 
 
 1476. Caxton erects printing-presses at Westminster. 
 
 1477. Caxton prints Dictes and Sayings, his first book printed 
 
 in England. 
 
 1478. Execution of the Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV. 
 1483. Death of Edward IV. Richard III becomes king, on the 
 
 death of the children of Edward IV in the Tower. 
 1486. Defeat of Richard by Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, 
 
 at Bosworth (August 11). 
 1486. Henry VII marries Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, 
 
 thus effecting the union of the Roses. 
 1492. Perkin Warbeck's rebellion (executed in 1498.). First 
 
 voyage of Columbus. 
 1497. Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape; the Cabots sail in 
 
 search of the North- West Passage; first voyage (?) 
 
 of Amerigo Vespucci. 
 1499. Erasmus at Oxford. 
 1503. Marriage of James IV of Scotland to Margaret, daughter 
 
 of Henry VI. 
 1505. Foundation of Christ's College, Cambridge. Patent 
 
 granted by Henry VII to the Merchant Adventurers. 
 1509. Accession of Henry VIII (April) ; his marriage to Cathe- 
 rine of Aragon (June).
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 217 
 
 1513. Battle *of Fhxlden; death of James IV; accession of 
 
 James V. 
 1515. Cardinal Wolsey, Lord High Chancellor. 
 
 1520. Field of the Cloth of Gold ; alliance between Henry VIII 
 
 and Charles V. Luther condemned by a Papal Ball. 
 
 1521. Luther begins his translation of the Bible (finished in 
 
 1534). 
 
 1525. Tyndal's translation of the New Testament. 
 15-G. Hans Holbein in England. 
 
 1529. Fall of Wolsey. Sir Thomas More Chancellor. Siege of 
 
 Vienna by Solyrnan II. 
 
 1530. Confession of Augsburg. 
 
 1532. Fall of More. Machiavelli'e Principe (written in 1612) 
 
 published. 
 
 1533. Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn. Cranmer Archbishop 
 
 of Canterbury. Elizabeth born, September 7. 
 
 1534. Act of Supremacy. 
 
 1535. Thomas Cromwell Vicar-General. Execution of Sir 
 
 Thomas More. Coverdale's Bible. 
 
 1536. Execution of Anne Boleyn, May 19. Henry marries Jane 
 
 Seymour, May 20. Suppression of the monasteries. 
 Catholic risings. 
 
 1537. Birth of Edward VI; death of Jane Seymour. 
 
 1538. Marriage of James V of Scotland and Mary of Lorraine. 
 10;,9. The Six Articles. 
 
 1540. Marriage of Henry VIII and Anne of Cloves, January 6; 
 
 annulled (July). Henry marries Catherine Howard 
 
 (July). 
 1542. Execution of Catherine Howard. Defeat of James V of 
 
 Scotland at Solway Moss. Birth of Mary Stuart. 
 
 1548. Henry VIII marries Catherine Parr. 
 
 1545. Opening of the Council of Trent. 
 
 1546. Death of Luther (February). Assassination of Cardinal 
 
 Beaton. 
 
 1547. Death of Henry VIII (28 January). The Protector 
 
 Somerset routs the Soots at Pinkie. 
 
 1549. First Act of Uniformity. Execution of Thomas Seymour, 
 
 brother of the Protector.
 
 218 THE AOE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 1552. Execution of Somerset. 
 
 1558. Death of Edward VI. Restoration of the Roman Catholic 
 religion by Mary. 
 
 1554. Wyatt's rebellion. Lady Jane Grey beheaded. Marriage 
 
 of Queen Mary and Philip II of Spain. 
 
 1555. Ridley and Latimer burnt. 
 
 1556. Crantner burnt.' 
 
 1558. The Dauphin marries Mary Stuart. Death of Mary, 
 
 Queen of England, and accession of Elizabeth. Sir 
 William Cecil (afterwards Lord Burghley) appointed 
 Secretary of State an office in which he was re- 
 tained till his death (1598). 
 
 1559. Coronation of Elizabeth. Acts of Supremacy and Uni- 
 
 formity. Parker becomes Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 Accession of Francis II of France, Mary Stuart's 
 husband. 
 
 1560. Death of Francis. 
 
 1561. Return of Mary Stuart to Scotland. 
 
 1563. The plague decimates London. First Poor Law of Eliza- 
 beth's reign. 
 
 1565. Parker's regulations of public worship. Revolt of Ulster. 
 
 1566. Birth of James I and VI. 
 
 1567. Assassination of Darnley. Marriage of Mary Stuart to 
 
 Bothwell. 
 
 1568. Mary Stuart takes refuge in England, where she is im- 
 
 prisoned. Constant immigration of foreign Protest- 
 ants, principally artisans. English Roman Catholics 
 establish a college at Douay. The Bishops' Bible. 
 
 1569. Assassination of the Regent Murray. Excommunication 
 
 of Elizabeth. 
 
 1571. Battle of Lepanto. Enforcement of the Thirty-Nino 
 
 Articles. 
 
 1572. Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Death of Knox. 
 
 1575. . Completion of Jerusalem Delivered by Tasso. 
 
 1576. Frobisher commences his voyages. 
 
 1577. Drake sets out on his voyage round the world (returns 
 
 1580). 
 
 1578. Sir Humphry Gilbert receives a patent for the coloniza- 
 
 tion of America.
 
 INDEX TO VOLUME I. 
 
 Abbey Walk, The, 79. 
 
 Adam Bell, 206. 
 
 Addison, 127, 181, 200. 
 
 Ad 'ulterousFalmouth Squire, The, 
 
 212. 
 
 Adcenture ofGawain, The, 73. 
 Aegidius, 26. 
 Aeneid, the, 200. 
 
 Douglas's translation, 93, 97- 
 
 99; PhaerX 193. 
 jEsop, 74. 
 
 Alamanni, Luigi, 153, 157, 167. 
 Albany, the Dnke of, 53, 100. 
 Albon and Amphabele, 47. 
 Alcock, John, 129. 
 Alington, Sir Giles, 131. 
 Ancient Songs, 45. 
 Answer to the King's Fly ting, 
 
 105. 
 
 Arber, Professor, 188, 189. 
 Ariosto, 167, 187. 
 Art of English Poetry, 166. 
 Arthur, Prince, 121, 134. 
 Asohain, 13. 
 
 Assault of Cupid, The, 172. 
 Assembly of Ladies, The, 5. 
 u Wood, Anthony, 113, 114, 184. 
 
 Had by, John, 30. 
 Baldwin, William, 175-176. 
 
 Ballad of the Feigned Friar of 
 
 Tvngland, 88. 
 Ballade in Commemoration of Our 
 
 Lady, 12. 
 Barclay, Alexander, 24, 112, 123- 
 
 132. 
 
 Barlowe, Jerome, 147. 
 Battle ofHarlaw, 71. 
 Beaton, Cardinal, 102. 
 Beaufort, Lady Jane, 62. 
 Beauty and the Prisoner, 86. 
 Bellenden, 51. 
 Bernard, Master, 113. 
 Bible, the, 43. 
 Birth of Antichrist, 88. 
 Black Knight, The, 3, 39-41. 
 Blennerhasset, Thomas, 181. 
 Blind Harry, 54-55, 113. 
 Bloody Serk, The, 79. 
 Boccaccio, 41, 43. 
 Boethius, 64, 97. 
 Boleyn, Anne, 149, 172. 
 Boleyn, George, Lord Kochford, 
 
 172. 
 
 Book against Skelton, 132. 
 Book of Chess, The, 27. 
 Book of Falconry, The, 188. 
 Book of the Duchess, The, 10, 29, 
 
 143. 
 Hower, Walter, 49.
 
 220 
 
 THE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Bouye of Court, The, 135-136. 
 
 Boyce, 51. 
 
 Bradley, Mr. Henry, 13 n. 
 
 Bruce, The, 50, 51. 
 
 Bryan, Sir Francis, 151, 172. 
 
 Bullein, Dr. William, 123. 
 
 Burnand, Sir F. C., 18. 
 
 Burying of the Mass, The, 147. 
 
 Bycornc and Chichcvache, 44. 
 
 Camell, 181. 
 
 Canterbury Tales, The, 204. 
 
 Canticles of Solomon, 175. 
 
 Carlyle, 125. 
 
 Carpenter, John, 46. 
 
 Cavendish, George, 173. 
 
 Caxton, 27, 44, 97, 133. 
 
 Cesarotti, 38. 
 
 Charles V, 150, 151, 152. 
 
 Chartier, Alain, 12. 
 
 Chateau de Labour, 124. 
 
 Chaucer, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 
 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 
 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 30, 37, 42, 
 43, 44, 48, 64, 67, 69, 84, 85, 86, 
 94, 95, 103, 120, 143, 156, 168. 
 
 Chepman, Walter, 55. 
 
 Chevy Chase, 197-201, 202. 
 
 Child and his Stepdume, The, 
 209. 
 
 Christ's Kirk on the Green, 69, 
 70. 
 
 Christine de Pisan, 16, 26. 
 
 Chronicle, Graf ton's, 175. 
 
 Chronicle made by Chaucer, The, 
 4. 
 
 Churchyard's Chips, 182. 
 
 Churchyard, Thomas, 172, 180- 
 181, 182. 
 
 Churl and the Bird, The, 44, 64. 
 
 Cicero, 67. 
 
 Ciinino, Serajiliino, 156. 
 Clanvowe, Sir John, 6. 
 Clanvowe, Sir Thomas, 6. 
 Clere, Thomas, 163-164. 
 Clerk's Tale, The, 44. 
 Cockelbie's Soie, 72. 
 Coke, Sir Edward, 21. 
 Colin ClotX, 138. 
 Collins, 145. 
 
 Complaint, Lyndsay's, 104. 
 Complaint of Bagshe, 104-105. 
 Complaint of Fair Anelida, 85. 
 Complaint of Henry Stafford, 
 
 Duke of Buckingham, 178. 
 Complaint of Philomene, 184-185, 
 
 189-191. 
 
 Confessio Amantis, 131. 
 Conscience, 95. 
 Conti, Lothario (Pope Innocent 
 
 III), 192. 
 Conversation between a Lover and 
 
 a Jay, 114. 
 
 Conversion of Swearers, 121. 
 Cornish, Thomas, 124. 
 Cornish, William, 170. 
 Court of Love, The, 9. 
 Cuckoo and the Nightingale, 6-7. 
 
 Daniian, John, Abbot of Tung- 
 land, 88. 
 
 Damon and Pythias, 172. 
 
 Dance of the Seven Sins, 104. 
 
 Dante, 39, 87, 104, 178. 
 
 Davenant, 189. 
 
 David I, 49. 
 
 Davidson, John, 103. 
 
 Davie Dy car's Dream, 181. 
 
 De Beneficiis, Seneca's, 193. 
 
 De Casibus Virorum Ill-u atrium, 
 43. 
 
 De Consolatione Philosophiae, 64.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 221 
 
 De' Medici, Cardinal Ippolito, 
 
 167. 
 De Miseria Humanae Conditionis, 
 
 192. 
 
 De Profundis, 185. 
 Delicate Diet for Dainty-Mouthed 
 
 Dntnkards, 192. 
 Deploration of Queen Magdalene, 
 
 106. 
 
 Description of Spring, 168. 
 Dialect, East Midland, 2. 
 Dirge, 211. 
 Discourse of a New Passage to 
 
 Cataia, 192. 
 Dolce, Ludovico, 187. 
 Donne, 24. 
 
 Douglas, Catherine, 68. 
 Douglas, family of, 99. 
 Douglas, Gawin, 24, 74, 81, 85, 
 
 93-100. 
 Douglas, William, Earl of Angus, 
 
 199. 
 
 Dramatic Idylls, 98. 
 Dream, Lyndsay's, 103. 
 Droom of Doomsday, 192. 
 Drummondof Hawthornden, 72. 
 Dunbar, William, 24, 48, 54, 73, 
 
 74, 81-93, 98, 102, 103, 104. 
 
 Earl of Northumberland, 133. 
 
 Early Popular Poetry of Eng- 
 land, 211. 
 
 Edwards, Richard, 172, 174, 196. 
 
 Edioin and Emnut, 209. 
 
 Ellis, 39, 95, 118. 
 
 K Hi/land's Helicon, 171. 
 ha (Caxton'u), 133. 
 
 l-:/,i*tle* t Ovid's, 196. 
 
 Epistre au Dieu a" Amours, 26. 
 
 Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs, and 
 Sonnets, 196. 
 
 Erasmus, 134. 
 
 Example of Virtue, The, 114, 119- 
 121. 
 
 Fables, Henryson's, 76. 
 Faery Queen, 70, 120, 122. 
 Falkland on the Green, 69, 70. 
 Falls of Princes, T/ie, 42-43. 
 Famous History of Friar Bacon, 
 
 91. 
 
 Felde, Thomas, 114. 
 Ferrers, George, 175-176, 177. 
 Fifteenth-Century Prose and 
 
 Verse, 212, 
 Figure of the Holy Mother Church, 
 
 132. 
 First Part of the Mirror for 
 
 Magistrates, 181. 
 Fitzgerald, Elisabeth, 161-162. 
 Fitzroy, Henry, 160. 
 Flee from the Press, 69. 
 Fly ting of Dunbar and Kennedy, 
 
 87. 
 
 Flower and the Leaf, The, 5, 85. 
 Fordoun, John de, 49. 
 Four Books of Husbandry, 195. 
 Fox and th'e Lamb, The, 82. 
 Francis of Assisi, St., 167. 
 Fremund, 47. 
 
 Friar and the Boy, The, 208. 
 Friars of Berwick, The, 91, 107. 
 Frobisher, Sir Martin, 192. 
 Fruits of War, The, 187. 
 Fornivall, Dr., 4, 22, 25, 209. 
 
 Gammer Gurton's Needle, 213. 
 Garment of Good Ladies, The, 
 
 79. 
 
 Garuesche, Sir Christopher, 144. 
 Gaacuigue, George, 173, 182 193.
 
 222 
 
 THE AGE OF TRANS1I K>N. 
 
 Gascoignc's Memories, 185. 
 
 Gaunt, John of, 16. 
 
 Gay, 44. 
 
 Gentilesse, 15. 
 
 "Geraldine," 161-162. 
 
 Gcsta Annalia, 49. 
 
 Gesta Herewardi, 205. 
 
 Gcsta Romanorum, 79. 
 
 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 192; Sir 
 John, 192. 
 
 Giles's Trip to London, 45. 
 
 (ilendower, Owen, 177. 
 
 Golagros and Gawain, 73. 
 
 Golden Targe, The, 85-86. 
 
 Golding, Arthur, 193. 
 
 Good Counsel, 69. 
 
 Goodly Ballade of Chaucer, 12. 
 
 Goodly Garland of Laurel, A, 
 142-144. 
 
 Googe, Barnaby, 195-196. 
 
 Gorboduc, 178. 
 
 Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant In- 
 ventions, A, 171. 
 
 Govcrnail of Princes, The, 26-32. 
 
 Gower, 1, 14, 30, 86, 131, 143. 
 
 Grandisson, Bishop, 124. 
 
 Grey of Wilton, Lord, 183, 190. 
 
 Grief of Joy, The, 192. 
 
 Grimald, Nicholas, 169, 196. 
 
 Gringoire, Pierre, 124. 
 
 Hailes, Lord, 45. 
 
 Hales, Prof., 201, 209, 211, 
 
 Hamlet, 172. 
 
 Handful of Pleasant Delights, A, 
 
 171. 
 Hawes, Stephen, 2, 24, 112-123, 
 
 178. 
 
 Hazlitt, Mr. 211. 
 Henry V, 15, 27, 62. 
 Henry VII, 113. 
 
 Henry- VIII, 113, 114, 121, 124, 
 134, 144, 150-152, 158, 106. 
 
 Henry the Minstrel, 54-55. 
 
 Henryson, Robert, 74-76. 
 
 Here.sbachius, Conrad, 195. 
 
 Hertford, Lord, 165. 
 
 Heywood, Jasper, 177, 193. 
 
 Heywood, John, 172. 
 
 Higgins, John, 181. 
 
 Hockliffe, Village of, 32. 
 
 Holinshed, 51, 123. 
 
 II oil and' s Howlat, 72. 
 
 Holland, Richard, 72. 
 
 Homer, 39. 
 
 Hopkins, John, 194. 
 
 Hurse, the Sheep, and the Goose, 
 The, 44. 
 
 House of Fame, The, 95, 104. 
 
 Hoio to Use the Court, 158. 
 
 Howard, Lord High Admiral, 129, 
 131. 
 
 Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, 
 43, 44, 47. 
 
 Hundred Points of Good Hus- 
 bandry , A, 195. 
 
 Hundred Sundry Flowers, A, 
 185. 
 
 Hunnis, W., 173. 
 
 Idylls of the King, The, 168. 
 Iliad, The, 200. 
 Induction, The, 178-180. 
 Introductory to Write and Pro- 
 nounce French, 131. 
 Irvine, Dr., 73. 
 Irving, Mr. David, 91. 
 Ivanhoe, 73, 204. 
 
 Jack Hare, 44. 
 Jack Upland, 12.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 223 
 
 James I (of Scotland), 12, 24, 48, 
 
 49, 60-71. 
 
 James IV, 84, 90, 123. 
 James V, 101, 103, 105. 
 June Shore, 180. 
 Jean de Meun, 26. 
 Jocasta, 187. 
 John the Reeve, 74, 208. 
 Johnstone, Patrick, 80. 
 Jonson, 24, 204. 
 Jousting between James Watson 
 
 and John Barbour, 106. 
 Joyful Meditaton on the Corona- 
 
 tion of Henry VIII, 121. 
 Jugurthine War, The, 132. 
 Justin, 193. 
 
 Kennedy, Walter, 81, 82. 
 Kent, Richard, Earl of, 131. 
 King Edward the Fourth and the 
 
 Tanner ofTamworth, 74. 
 King Heart, 94, 95, 96-97. 
 King Lear, 11. 
 King's Quair, The, 63-68. 
 ivinwelmarsh, Francis, 173. 
 Kirkham, Sir John, 126. 
 Kittredge, Mr. G. L., 6. 
 Kitty's Confession, 105. 
 Knight's Tale, The, 1, 42, 63. 
 KIIOX, 102, 108. 
 
 !, Herr, 35. 
 
 La Male Regie, 18. 
 
 I.niiijr, 91. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 127. 
 
 Lament for the Makers, A, 48, 
 
 54,87. 
 
 Lancelot of the Lake, Sir, 31. 
 Langland, 1. 
 Latimer, Bishop, 204. 
 Leaultc Vault Richcsse, 12. 
 
 Legend of Good Women, The, 5, 
 
 25, 95, 120. 
 Letter of Cupid, The, 6, 10, 12, 
 
 25-26. 
 
 Life of St. Edmund, 46. 
 Little Geste of Hobin Hood, 204. 
 London Lickpenny, 45. 
 Lucilius, 191. 
 Luick, Herr Karl, 24. 
 Lullaby (Gascoigne's), 186-187. 
 Lydgate, John, 3, 12, 14, 23, 24, 
 
 33-47, 64, 79, 86, 112, 113, 114, 
 
 143. 
 
 Lydgate, Village of, 33. 
 Lyndsay, David, 81, 91, 100-111. 
 
 Macaulay, 115. 
 Macbeth, 51. 
 Magnificence, 145-147. 
 Mair, or Major, John, 54, 69. 
 Mancini, Domenico, 131. 
 Mantuanus, 130, 132, 196. 
 Maphaens, 97. 
 
 Metamorphoses (Ovid's), 193. 
 Milton, 168. 
 Minot, Lawrence, 11. 
 Minstrelsy of the Border, 201. 
 Mirror of Good Manners, 131. 
 Mirror for Magistrates, The, 172, 
 
 175-182. 
 
 Miserae Curialium, 130. 
 Moir, Mr., 59. 
 
 Monarchy, The, 107, 109-110. 
 Monk and the Miller's Wife, 91. 
 Monk's Tale, 42. 
 More, Sir Thomas, 134. 
 Mother of God, 25. 
 My Health, 18. 
 
 Necromancer, The, 144-5. 
 Nevill, Alexander, 193.
 
 224 
 
 I II K AGE OF THANSITION. 
 
 Newton, Thomas, 193. 
 
 Norfolk, Thomas, Duko of, 131, 
 
 142, 159, 164, 166. 
 Norton, Thomas, 194. 
 Northumberland, Earl of, 140. 
 Nnce, Thomas, 193. 
 Nugae Antiquae, 172. 
 Nulbrown Maid, The, 209-11. 
 
 Occleve, Thomas, 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 
 
 17-32, 35, 36, 67. 
 Ockley, 32. 
 
 Octavian de St. GelaLs, 95. 
 Odd Texts, 4. 
 Odyssey, The, 39. 
 Oldcastle, Sir John, 31. 
 < llivier de la Marche, 79. 
 On the Death of Edward IV, 133. 
 Original Chronicle, The, 50-53. 
 Orison to the Holy Viryin, 24. 
 Otterbourne Ballads, The, 201- 
 
 203. 
 Ovid, 193, 196. 
 
 Palace of Honour, The, 74, 85, 
 94, 95. 
 
 Palamon and Arcitc, 172. 
 
 l';i!s^rave, 131. 
 
 Paradise of Dainty Devices, The, 
 171-175. 
 
 Pastime of Pleasure, The, 115-118, 
 122. 
 
 Pastime with Good Company, 170. 
 
 Pciligree, Education, and Mar- 
 riage of Robin Hood, 206. 
 
 Peebles to the Play, 69. 
 
 Percy, Bishop, 78. 
 
 Percy Folio, The, 210. 
 
 Percy, Sir Henry, 199. 
 
 Petition of the Gray Horse, 89. 
 
 Petrarch, 153, 154. 
 
 Phaer, Thomas, 177, 193, 196. 
 Philip Sparrmc, 132, 137-138. 
 Phoenix Nest, The, 171. 
 Piers Plowman, 136, 137, 204. 
 Pinkerton, John, 70, 91, 108; 
 
 68 n. 
 Pleasant Fable of Ferdiiinm!:, 
 
 leronomi, 187. 
 Poetical Rhapsody, A, 171. 
 Pole, Cardinal, 150-151. 
 Political Upholsterer, The, 127. 
 Pollard, Mr. A- W., 26, 46, 212. 
 Pope, 70. 
 
 Praise of London, 83. 
 Premierfait, Laurent de, 43. 
 Princely Pleasures, 188. 
 Prior, Matthew, 209. 
 Prophecies of Merlin, 11. 
 Proverbs, 12. 
 Purse, 11. 
 
 Puttenham, 166, 182. 
 Pynson, Richard, 124, 125. 
 
 Ralph the Collier, 73. 
 Ramsay, Allan, 91. 
 Raoul de Houdanc, 103. 
 Reliques of Ancient English 
 
 Poetry, 78, 201. 
 Richmond, Duchess of, 161, 1C4- 
 
 165. 
 
 Ritson, 45, 209. 
 
 Rivers, Lord, 8; his 'Balet,' ib. 
 Robert III, 61. 
 Robin and Makyn, 78, 128. 
 Robin Hood, 127, 197, 203-206. 
 Robin Hood and the Potter, 205. 
 Rochester, Lord, 194. 
 Romance of the Rose, 10, 85. 
 Ros, Sir Richard, 12. 
 Roscoe, Thomas, 130. 
 Roasetti, D. G., US.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 225 
 
 Rowe, 44. 
 
 Roy, William, 147. 
 
 Sackville, Thomas, 9, 177-180. 
 
 Sallust, 132. 
 
 Satire of the Three Estates, 107, 
 
 108-109. 
 
 Schipper, Prof., 87, 92. 
 Scogan, Henry, 15-16, 17. 
 Scotichronicon, The, 48-49, 55. 
 Scots, Lowland, 2, 98. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 73, 77, 81, 93, 
 
 203. 
 
 Scottish Songs, Hurd's, 201. 
 Scrope, Mistress Jane, 136, 137. 
 Seasons, The, 99. 
 Secretum Secretorum, 27. 
 Sejour d'Honneur, 95. 
 Seneca, 193. 
 
 Seymour, Family of, 164-165. 
 Shakespeare, 51, 154, 168. 
 Shaw, Sir John, 83. 
 Shepherd's Calendar, The, 147. 
 Ship of Fools, The, Barclay's, 
 
 123-131; Brant's, 124-125. 
 Shirley, John, 3-5, 12, 68. 
 Sidney, Sir P., 198. 
 Sirnonides, 174. 
 Sir Penny, 45. 
 Skeat, Professor, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 
 
 13 n., 33, 69, 71. 
 
 Skelton, John, 112, 132-147, 148. 
 Smith, Mr. Gregory, 19, 33. 
 Solistaris at Court, 104. 
 Somerset, Duke of, 175. 
 Song on Absence, 70. 
 Song-book, Henry VIII's, 170. 
 Soul's Knell, The, 173. 
 Spagnnoli, Giambattista, 130. 
 Speak Parrot, 140. 
 Spectator, The, 181. 
 L 
 
 Spenser, 9, 147. 
 
 Squire Meldrum, 108, 111. 
 
 St. Serf, 53. 
 
 Statins, 41. 
 
 Steel Glass, The, 183, 191-192. 
 
 Stevenson (Life and Death of 
 
 King James I), 68. 
 Story of Thebes, The, 33, 41-42. 
 Stow, 4, 203. 
 Stndley, John, 193. 
 Suffolk, Duke of, 211. 
 Supposes, The (I Suppositi), 187. 
 Supplication in Contemption of 
 
 Side Tails, 106. 
 Surrey, Lord, 159-169. 
 
 Table of Confession, The, 90. 
 Tale ofHemetes the Hermit, 188. 
 Tale ofOi-pheus and Euridice, 78. 
 Tale of Sir Chanticlere and the 
 
 Fox, 76. 
 Tale of the Dog, the Sheep, and 
 
 the Fox, 77. 
 
 Temple of Glass, The, 3. 
 Ten Brink, 41, 115. 
 Testament and Complaint of Pa- 
 
 pingo, 104. 
 
 Testament, Lydgate's, 34. 
 Testament of Cressida, 77. 
 Testament of Love, The, 13. 
 Testament of the Papingo, 104. 
 Thistle and the Rose, The, 84-85. 
 Thomson, James, 99. 
 Three D.ad Pmois, The, 80. 
 To the King, 104. 
 Tottel's Miscellany, 169. 
 Tragedy of Gorboduc, 194. 
 Tragical Tales, 196. 
 Trautmaun, Herr, 73. 
 Treasure without Gladness, 89. 
 Tiv-iliaa, Robert, 176.
 
 226 
 
 TIIE AGE OF TRANSITION. 
 
 Troiliu and Cressida, 37, 63, 77, 
 
 204. 
 
 Troy-book, Lydgate's, 37. 
 Turberville, George, 188, 196. 
 Tusser, Thomas, 195. 
 Two Married Women and a 
 
 Widow, 87, 90. 
 Twyne, Thomas, 193. 
 Tyrwhitt, 23. 
 
 Udall, Nicholas, 195. 
 Usk, Thomas, 13 n. 
 
 Vaux, Thomas, Lord, 172, 173. 
 
 Vegetius, 27. 
 
 Vergil, Polydore, 100. 
 
 Virelai, 8. 
 
 Vote (La) ou Le Songe d'Enfer, 
 
 103. 
 
 Voie de Paradis, 103. 
 Vox Clamantis, 30. 
 
 Wallace, 55-60. 
 
 Warton, Thomas, 14, 17, 43, 85, 
 
 118, 145, 209. 
 Watson, Thomas, 196. 
 Webbe, 188. 
 
 Whetstone, George, 184. 
 Whittingham, William, 194. 
 Why come ye not to Court? 140- 
 
 142. 
 
 Whole Book of the Psalms, 194. 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, 132, 139-142, 
 
 146, 147, 182. 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 149-158, 166, 
 
 167, 170, 172. 
 Wynkyn de Worde, 44, 114, 122, 
 
 124, 128, 145, 204, 209. 
 Wyntoun, 50-53. 
 
 Yloop, 173. 
 
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 THE AGE OF DRYDEN 
 
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 and fine critical sagacity." Times. 
 
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 his subject. Westminster Review. 
 
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 the period with which he deals, and goes straight to the point without revelling 
 in circumambient fancies. The result of this is that in 250 pages of good print 
 we have as concise a history of Queen Anne literature as we could wish." 
 Cambridge Review. 
 
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 indeed in its first volume, ' The Age of Pope.' " Manchester Guardian. 
 
 11 We can hardly imagine a critical and biographical handbook of the period 
 better executed." DR. BAYNE in the Literary World. 
 
 1THE AGE OF JOHNSON 
 
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 students of the period may read with pleasure and profit. " Speaker. 
 
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 history from 1748 to 1798 affords scarcely any opening for detailed criticism. 
 Little can be said, except that everything is just as it ought to be : the ar- 
 rangement perfect, the length of the notices justly proportioned, the literary 
 judgements sound and illuminating ; while the main purpose of conveying in- 
 formation is kept so steadily in view that, while the book is worthy of a place 
 in the library, the student could desire no better guide for an examination." 
 Bookman. 
 
 " He has knowledge, he is eminently careful, and, best of all in a handbook- 
 maker of this kind, he is judicial. We like Mr. Seccombe's arrangement. 
 There is a capital introduction, solid and grave rather than brilliant, on which 
 the student may stand in confidence before he dives off into the stream of his 
 tutor's survey. Briefly, we have here a thorough, almost encyclopaedic, review 
 of a great literary period stimulating to the younger student, and to his elder 
 refreshing by its perception." Outlook. 
 
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 our readers." -Journal of Education. 
 
 " One cannot but be struck by the alertness of his observations and the 
 sufficiency of his knowledge. The labour involved in the production of such a 
 volume as this is immense. The temptation to be prolix is always present, 
 but it has been faithfully resisted. To the very end of the volume the author 
 preserves his freshness, and his attention to detail never flags. The young 
 student could not read a better book to get a comprehensive and yet detailed 
 account of the literary history of the latter half of the eighteenth century." 
 Morning Post. 
 
 " Mr. Seccombe has supplied an admirable volume to an excellent series. 
 His biographies are models of condensation and accuracy, and his book may 
 be read with pleasure and studied with advantage." Notes and Queries.
 
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 students of the period may read with interest and profit." Guardian. 
 
 " A full index and a chronological table add value to the book, which is both 
 handy and accurate as a text-book and readable as a contribution to the litera- 
 ture of criticism. Mr. Herford has thrown light on his period by considering 
 mainly its relation to ' far-reaching and many-sided revival of imaginative 
 power commonly known as Romanticism, 1 and his work is not only informing 
 but suggestive." Manchester Guardian. 
 
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 throughout is a model of vigorous and incisive English. " Educational Review. 
 
 " The introductory essay on Romanticism in our literature is an admirable 
 piece of work, full of suggestive thought, but Professor Herford is at his best 
 and a very fine best it is in his brief summaries of the lives and works of 
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 with true literary finish." Literary World. 
 
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 we consider its claims are unusual." Speaker. 
 
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 seek. More than that, it has been written by the one Englishman most com- 
 petent to deal with it. Whatever Professor Herford does he does well ; but he 
 has given us nothing at once so good and so helpful as this book." University 
 Correspondent. 
 
 THE AGE OF TENNYSON 
 
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 "An instructive and readable manual . . . an admirable first text-book on 
 the subject. " Scotsman. 
 
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 judiciousness, critical insight, adequate knowledge and mastery of facts, keen 
 discernment of qualities and effectiveness of grouping. . . . We have read no 
 review of the whole of the Tennysonian age so genuinely fresh in matter, 
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