Page images
PDF
EPUB

LYDGATE.

And bade them leave the path haly
And climb up in the craggis hy;
And speed them fast the height to ta':1
Then might men see them stoutly gae,
And climb all gate up the height,
And leave not for their fayis might.
Maugre their fayis, they bare them sae
That they are gotten abune the brae.
Then might men see them fight felly ;5
And rusche" their fayis sturdily.
And they that till the pass were gane,
Maugre their fayis, the height has tane;
Then laid they on with all their might;
There might men see them felly fight.

JOHN LYDGATE.

23

LYDGATE belongs in the period of his reputation to the reign of Henry VI., about 1430. The years of his birth and death are unknown. He was an ecclesiastic of Bury. His genius, though not of the highest order, was plastic and versatile. He is ranked by Warton among those who contributed to amplify and improve the phraseology of the English language. Ritson, Percy, and Ellis abuse Lydgate; "Lydgate has been oftener abused than read," Turner's Hist. of England. He was much esteemed by Gray, a high authority: and Coleridge vindicates the merits of Lydgate. He was popular in his own age, and long afterwards. "To enumerate his peices," says Warton, would be to write the catalogue of a little library.' His chief poems, "The Fall of Princes;""The Siege of Troy;" "The Siege of Thebes," written at the request of the knightly and the noble, may be found too prolix and tedious for modern taste. His minor pieces are humorous and graphic, as representations of the society of the period.

1 Take.

[ocr errors]

THE GOLDEN AGE

Fortitude then stood steadfast in his might;
Defended widows; cherished chastity;
Knighthood in prowess gave so clear a light,
Girt with his sword of truth and equity.

GOD'S PROVIDENCE.

God hath a thousand handés to chastise;
A thousand dartés of punicion ;8

.8

A thousand bowés made in divers wise;
A thousand arlblasts bent in his dongèon.10

2 Go.

3 In every way 4 Cease not on account of. 5 Actively; also cruelly. 6 Drive. Notwithstanding (French, malgré). 8 Punishment (French). Or arblast, arbalist, arcubalist; from Lat. arcus, a bow; and balista, the Roman instrument for the discharge of arrows. Arblast is a crossbow. Dun, or dune, a hill; donjon, a castle built on a hill; applied to the principal

[ocr errors]

FROM THE LONDON LICKPENNY."1

Within the hall,2 neither rich nor yet poor
Would do for me aught, altho' I should die,
Which seeing I gat me out of the door,
Where Flemings3 began on me for to cry,
"Master what will you kopen or buy?
Fine felt hats, or spectacles to read?

Lay down your silver and here may you specd."

Then to Westminster gate I presently went,
When the sun it was at high prime :
And cooks to me they took good intent,
And proffered me bread, with ale and wine,
Ribs of beef, both fat and full fine,

A fair cloth they 'gan for to spread.
But, wanting money, I might not be sped.

Then unto London I did me hie.

Of all the land it beareth the price.
"Hot peascods !"-one began to cry,
"Strawberry ripe, and cherries in the rise."
One bade me draw near and buy some spice.
Pepper and saffron they 'gan me bid,
But for lack of money, I might not speed.

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

Then went I forth by London Stone,
Through out all Canwyke Street.
Drapers much cloth me offered anon.

[ocr errors]

or most defensive part of a fortress, called by eminence "the keep," or donjon-keep." Being the usual place of confinement for prisoners, the word dungeon has retained only this meaning See Scott's "Kenilworth," and "Marmion.'

1 "Some call London a lickpenny (as Paris is called by some a pick-purse), because of occasions of expense and allurements." Mr. Halliwell suggests "lackpenny" as more appropriate to the character assumed by the poet.

2 Westminster. Lydgate supposes himself to have come to town in search of legal redress for some wrong, and to have visited successively" the different courts. 3 The Lickpenny is valuable for its pictures of the manners and customs of the times. The Flemings had been the instructors of the English in manufactures. Koopen in Flemish is to purchase.

"The first canonical hour, or six o'clock. Prime was also used to signify the first quarter of the artificial day, from six to nine."-Chalmers, vid. Gloss. to Lyndsay's Works.

5 Market; Cheapside.

Supposed to have been the Roman central milliarium. It stood on the south side

JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND.

25

Then comes me one cried-"Hot sheep's feet."
One cried "Mackrell !"—" Rysses' green!" another
'gan greet.

One bade me buy a hood to cover my head,

But, for want of money, I might not be sped.

Then I hied me unto East Cheap.

One cries ribs of beef, and many a pie.
Pewter pots they clattered on a heap.

There was harp, pipe, and minstrally.

"Yea, by cock! nay, by cock!"-some 'gan cry. Some sang of Jenkin and Julian2 for their meed. But, for lack of money, I might not speed.

Then into Cornhill anon I yode,

Where was much stolen gear; among
I saw where hung mine own hood,
That I had lost among the throng.

To buy my own hood I thought it wrong;
I knew it, well as I did my creed,
But, for lack of money, I could not speed.

The taverner took me by the sleeve,

"Sir," says he, "will you our wine assay?"
I answered, "That cannot much me grieve,
A penny can do no more than it may."
I drank a pint, and for it did pay:
Yet sore a hungered from thence I yede,
And, wanting money, I could not speed.

JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND.
(1394-1437.)

THE truth of this great prince's life is stranger than fiction. His elder brother, the Duke of Rothesay, had fallen a victim to the criminal ambition of his uncle Albany; and his father, Robert III., in affectionate anxiety to avert a similar fate from his surviving son, determined to send James, at that time about eleven years old, to the court of France. The vessel in which he had embarked was captured by an English cruiser, although a truce then subsisted between the countries. From political motives, he was ungenerously detained prisoner in England by Henry IV.; but that monarch mitigated the baseness of his conduct by bestowing upon James an education worthy of his rank. His captivity

of Cannon (anciently Canwyke or Candlewick) Street. A small fragment of it still remains, inclosed in the street wall. 2 Ballads.

1 Rushes, with which the floors of houses were then strewed

* In the fifteenth century, a penny represented a much higher value than it now does. A labourer's wages were threepence a day, equal, perhaps, to three or four shillings of modern money.

As

in Windsor Castle matured him as a knight, a scholar, a statesman, and a gentleman. Its severity was softened by the poetic susceptibilities of his ardent mind; hope and the love of the Lady Joan Beaufort sustained the energies of the captive knight. After nearly twenty years of imprisoned exile, the policy or generosity of the English government permitted his ransom. He returned with his bride to Scotland; but he experienced the fate common to reformers in advance of their age. barbarous nobility bore ill the restraints which civilisation and law A would have laid on their savage licence, and James fell a victim to conspiracy at Perth in 1437. precipitate and merciless, but he is justly entitled to the praise of a great In his attempts at reform James was too monarch. As a poet he wrote in English, copying the grave romantic style of Chaucer. His chief poem is the Quire, book). Sleeplessly bewailing his unhappy lot, he rises from his King's Quhair" (that is, couch to attempt to forget his sorrows in the consolations of study. he looks out on the fresh morning, he suddenly beholds in the garden beneath his prison tower a lady of transcendent beauty, the sight of whom affects his heart with incurable love. He is carried in vision by Hope to the court of Venus, who, after testing the purity of his attachment, sends him to Minerva. She, after some virtuous advice, bids him go in quest of Fortune. wheel as to arrive at the summit of his desired felicity. The piece That goddess teaches him so to climb her concludes with an enthusiastic expression of gratitude for the blessing he enjoys in his lady's love and worth. is remarkable for a fine vein of fancy, feeling, and description. The The poem, though very unequal, language and versification are musical and elegant beyond what could be expected from the age. 'Christ's Kirk on the Green," and "Peeblis to the Play;" both The other poems ascribed to James are descriptive of the amusements and humours of the Scottish peasantry. Professor Aytoun says he considers "Christ's Kirk on the Green" to be the composition of some later writer than James I., one exclusively bred in Scotland, and familiar from his youth upwards, with the habits, peculiarities, and language of the lower orders; and such undoubtedly is the The language is too modern for the time of James I.

[ocr errors]

case.

SPRING.

QUHAIR: CANTO II.

IN Ver, that full of virtue is and good,
When Nature first beginneth her emprise,1
That whilom2 was, by cruel frost and flood,
And showers sharp, oppressed in many wise:
And Cynthius' beginneth to arise
High in the east, a morrow soft and sweet,
Upwards his course to drive in Ariete ;"

1 Enterprise; active operation.

Lately, also, at times: it is the Ang.-Sax. dative of while; umquhile (adj.) deceased.

3 Apollo and Diana are named Cynthius and Cynthia from Mount Cynthus in the Isle of Delos, their birth-place.

At morning.

The ram of the Zodiac.

[blocks in formation]

Passit but midday four 'greïs,' even

Of length and breadth his angel wingis bright
He spread upon the ground down from the heaven;
That for gladness and comfort of the sight,
And with the tickling of his heat and light,
The tender flowris openit them and sprad,
And in their nature thankit him for glad.

JAMES BEWAILS THE HARDSHIP OF HIS LOT.

CANTO II.

VII.

Whereas in ward full oft I would bewail,
My deadly life full of pain and pennànce,
Saying right thus :-"What have I guilt, to fail3
My freedom in this world and my pleasaunce?
Since every wight thereof has suffisance,
That I behold,--and I, a creature

Put from all this :-hard is mine aventùre!

VIII.

“The bird, the beast, the fish eke in the sea,
They live in freedom, everich in his kind,
And I, a man-and lacketh" liberty!
What shall I sayn? What reason may I find
That fortune should do so?" Thus in my mind;
My folk I would argewe-but all for nought-
Was none that might that on my painés rought.?

JAMES FIRST BEHOLDS THE LADY JANE.

CANTO II.

XII.

Now there was made fast, by the tower's wall,
A garden fair; and, in the corners set
An herbere green, with wandis long and small
Railéd about, and so with treïs set10

Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,

1 Degrees.

That I should lose.

2 That might be compared to death.
4 Each one.

The irregularity in the agreement of nominative and verb in old English has been noticed above.

6 Reason with.

Perhaps we should read, "Was none that wight that," etc. ie. "No one was such a person as took pity on my sufferings." Rought, past tense of rue, to care for; to have compassion.

8 In Windsor Castle.

A herbary; an arbour.

10 Surrounded; beset.

« PreviousContinue »