ries, and whose harshness is concealed, in the poem, by a singular sweetness of description, and touches of the tenderest feeling. It is one of the poet's master-pieces, and owes exceedingly little either to Petrarch, who is referred to as the authority, or to Boccaccio, whose prose narrative has by some been supposed to have really been the original.

We are raised almost into the sphere of religious poetry in the Man of Law's Tale, the history of Constance, which relates adventures used again and again in the romances, but found by all of them in the Gesta. The heroine, a daughter of the Emperor of Rome, becomes the wife of Ella, the Saxon King of Northumberland, and converts him and his subjects to the Christian faith. Twice exposed by malicious enemies in a boat which drifts through stormy seas, and accompanied in one of those perilous voyages by her infant child, she is twice providentially preserved; and on another occasion, when she is about to be executed on a false charge of murder, an invisible hand smites the accuser dead, and a voice from the sky proclaims her innocence. The Legend of Saint Cecilia, told by one of the Nuns, is purely a devotional composition: and of the same cast, with much greater poetical beauty, is the short story related by the Prioress, of the pious child slain by the Jews, the pathos of which makes us forget that the poet, in telling it, was fostering one of the worst prejudices of his age.

The two Prose Tales, which stand so oddly among the metrical ones, are in several respects curious. The Story of Melibeus, which the Poet represents himself as substituting for his unpopular rhymes, suspends, on a feeble thread of narrative, a mass of ethical reflections, recommending the duty of forgiving injuries. That which is called the Tale of the Parson or Priest, the piece with which the collection abruptly ends, is in fact a sermon, and a very long one, inculcating the obligation, and explaining with minute subdivisions the laws and effects, of the Romish sacrament of penance.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LITERATURE OF ENGLAND IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY AND OF SCOTLAND IN THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH.

A. D. 1399—A. D. 1509; AND A. D. 1306—A. D. 1513.

ENGLAND. 1. Poetry-John Lydgate-His Storie of Thebes.-2. Lydgate's Minor Poems-Character of his Opinions and Feelings-Relapse into Monasticism-Specimens.-3. Stephen Hawes Analysis of his Pastime of Pleasure.-4. The Latest Metrical Romances-The Earliest Ballads-Chevy Chase-Robin Hood-5. ProseLiterary Dearth-Patrons of Learning-Hardyng-William Caxton-His PrintingPress and its Fruits.-SCOTLAND. 6. Retrospect-Mich el Scot-Thomas the Rhymer. 7. The Fourteenth Century-John of Fordun-Wyntoun's ChronicleThe Bruce of John Barbour-Its Literary Merit Its Language.-8. The Fifteenth Century-The King's Quair-Blind Harry the Minstrel-Brilliancy of Scottish Poetry late in the Century Henryson-His Testament of Cressida-Gawain Doug las-is Works.-9. William Dunbar-His Genius and Poetical Works-Scottish Prose still wanting-Universities founded-Printing in Edinburgh.

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND.

1. THE miseries which afflicted England during the greater part of the fifteenth century, thinly veiled in Shakspeare's heroic pictures, darken frightfully the true annals of the country. The unjust and unwise wars with France, made illustrious for the last time by Henry the Fifth, had their issue under his feeble son in national disgrace. Fresh revolts of the populace were followed by furious wars between the partisans of the two royal houses, till the rival claims were united in the family of Tudor. The unnatural contest, desolating the land as it had not been desolated since the Norman invasion, blighted and dwarfed all intellectual growth. For more than a hundred years after Chaucer's death, our literary records do not set down any name the loss of which would at all diminish their lustre, unless Dan John of Bury may deserve to be excepted. Continental history as

In short, this age, usually marl

the epoch of the Revival of Classical Learning, was not with is i time either of erudition or of original inverti

The fifteenth century has Tansmittedto sa erga tum'«T Poetical Compositions; but most them less as instructive specimens of the guage was undergoing the latest of it into modern English. AftonCI. of many of the authors, two of the John Lrime a Benedi 1461 munds, beginning 3. Vande to have labored or more fun mense number of materna •rary kind. Hausm Princes is versel fra de la of Thebes is a bi

d. bet

deal from Stats ni me unhappy sons of Even

spirit and

scriptions.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LITERATURE OF ENGLAND IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, AND OF SCOTLAND IN THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH.

A. D. 1399—A. D. 1509; AND A. D. 1306—A. D. 1513.

ENGLAND. 1. Poetry-John Lydgate-His Storie of Thebes.-2. Lydgate's Minor Poems-Character of his Opinions and Feelings-Relapse into Monasticism-Specimens.-3. Stephen Hawes Analysis of his Pastime of Pleasure.-4. The Latest Metrical Romances-The Earliest Ballads-Chevy Chase-Robin Hood-5. ProseLiterary Dearth-Patrons of Learning-Hardyng-William Caxton-His PrintingPress and its Fruits.-SCOTLAND. 6. Retrospect-Mich el Scot-Thomas the Rhymer. 7. The Fourteenth Century-John of Fordun-Wyntoun's ChronicleThe Bruce of John Barbour-Its Literary Merit Its Language.-8. The Fifteenth Century-The King's Quair-Blind Harry the Minstrel-Brilliancy of Scottish Poetry late in the Century Henryson-His Testament of Cressida-Gawain Douglas-His Works.-9. William Dunbar-His Genius and Poetical Works-Scottish Prose still wanting-Universities founded-Printing in Edinburgh.

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND.

1. THE miseries which afflicted England during the greater part of the fifteenth century, thinly veiled in Shakspeare's heroic pictures, darken frightfully the true annals of the country. The unjust and unwise wars with France, made illustrious for the last time by Henry the Fifth, had their issue under his feeble son in national disgrace. Fresh revolts of the populace were followed by furious wars between the partisans of the two royal houses, till the rival claims were united in the family of Tudor. The unnatural contest, desolating the land as it had not been desolated since the Norman invasion, blighted and dwarfed all intellectual growth. For more than a hundred years after Chaucer's death, our literary records do not set down any name the loss of which would at all diminish their lustre, unless Dan John of Bury may deserve to be excepted.

In short, this age, usually marked in Continental history as

the epoch of the Revival of Classical Learning, was not with us a time either of erudition or of original invention.

The fifteenth century has transmitted to us a large number of Poetical Compositions; but most of them are quite valueless, unless as instructive specimens of the rapidity with which the language was undergoing the latest of the changes, that developed it into modern English. Although, likewise, we know the names many of the authors, two of these only call for notice.

of

d. bef.

1461.

{ John Lydgate, a Benedictine monk of Bury Saint Ed

munds, beginning to write before Chaucer's death, appears to have laboured for more than half a century, producing an immense number of compositions, many of which were of a tempo ⚫rary kind. His most ambitious works were three. The Fall of Princes is versified from the Latin prose of Boccaccio; the Storie of Thebes is an additional Canterbury Tale, borrowing a great deal from Statius and other classical sources, but investing the unhappy sons of Edipus in chivalrous drapery, not without much spirit and picturesqueness; and, in the Troy Book, the fall of Ilium is similarly dealt with, and adorned with many striking descriptions.

Some features in the Storie of Thebes are thus described by the earliest historian of our old poetry.

"This poem is the Thebaid of a Troubadour. The old classical Tale of Thebes is here clothed with feudal manners, enlarged with new fictions of the Gothic species, and furnished with the description, circumstances, and machineries, appropriated to a romance of chivalry. The Sphinx is a terrible dragon, placed by a necromancer to guard a mountain, and to murder all travellers passing by. Tydeus, being wounded, sees a castle on a rock, whose high towers and crested pinnacles of polished stone glitter by the light of the moon: he gains admittance, is laid in a sumptuous bed of cloth of gold, and healed of his wounds by a king's daughter. Tydeus and Polymite tilt at midnight for a lodging, before the gate of the palace of King Adrastus; who is awakened by the din of the strokes of their weapons, and descends into the court with a long train by torch-light. He orders the two combatants to be disarmed, and clothed in rich mantles studded with pearls; and they are conducted to repose, by many a stair, to a stately tower, after being served with a refection of hippocras from golden goblets. The next day they are both espoused to the king's two daughters, and entertained with tournaments, feasting, revels, and masques. Afterwards, Tydeus, having a message to deliver to Eteocles, king of Thebes, enters the hall of the royal palace, completely armed and on horseback, in the midst of a