His merits as

poet

with pallid complexion, empty trunk, and threadbare hood; he nevertheless held lands on lease, and was sufficiently independent to resign the priory of Hatfield, to which he had been promoted, but which did not suit him, and return to his monastery at Bury. He died in or about 1451, rhyming to the last.

The fecundity of Lydgate certainly seems appalling, but many of his a descriptive longest poems are translations or paraphrases. This is the case with the longest of any, the Falls of Princes, written, as above mentioned, at the instance of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, which is a rendering in rhyme royal of Laurent de Premierfait's French translation of Boccaccio's De Casibus Illus

trium Virorum, and comprises more
than thirty-six thousand lines. Some
passages have genuine poetical
beauty. Warton, a fine connoisseur
of our ancient literature and not
the least among its restorers, quotes
with high praise for its harmony a
couplet descriptive of the portents
which preceded the strife of Cæsar
and Pompey :

Serpents and adders, scaléd silver-bright,
Were over Rome seen flying all the night.

The fifteen thousand heroic couplets of the Troy Book, though not precisely a translation, are mainly paraphrased from Guido delle Colonne. Such works made little demand upon the poet's invention, and his talent is principally shown in his descriptive passages. Here, within limits, he is a master. Lines like these immediately transport one into the thick of tumultuous conflict:

But strokys felle, that men might herden rynge

On bassinets, the fieldes round about,

So cruelly that the fyre springé out

Among the tuftés brodé, bright and shene

Of foyle of gold, of feathers white and grene.

The last three lines must have been consciously or unconsciously in the mind of the author of the passage already cited from the author of The Flower and the Leaf. Can he have been Lydgate himself?

The description of the architecture of Troy as rebuilt for Priam before the Trojan War is particularly interesting, and, as not the slightest attention is paid. to the truth of history, brings the mediaval city before us in all the splendour that the poet's imagination could bestow. A fragment of his picture may still be beheld in the "rows" of Chester. Lydgate excels principally, however, in the delineation of simple natural phenomena, especially the shows of the sun

LYDGATE AS A DESCRIPTIVE POET

189

and the atmosphere. "The colour of our poet's mornings is often remarkably
rich and splendid," says Warton, quoting the following passage in illustration :
When that the rowés1 and the rayés red,
Eastward to us full early ginnen spread
Even at the twilight in the dawénynge,
When that the lark of custom ginneth synge,
For to salue in her heavenly laye,
The lusty goddess of the morrowe graye,
I mean Aurora, which afore the sun

Is wont to enchace the blacké skyé dun,
And all the darkness of the dimmy night,
And fresh Phoebus, with comfort of his light,
And with the brightness of his beamés shene
Hath overgilt the hugé hillés grene;
And flourés eke, agayne the summer tide,

Upon their stalks gan pleyn their leavés wide.

Such passages, of which there are many, show that Lydgate could on occasion write well in the heroic couplet, and it is rather to his honour than otherwise if for this he needed the impulse of genuine interest in his subject. His versification, the truest index of the poet's feeling, kindles into melody when he writes of nature, and drags when he puts history into rhyme. It cannot be doubted that the author of the following description in The Complaint of the Black Knight must have had a thorough enjoyment of the country:

And by a river forth I gan costey

Of water clear as beryl or crystál,
Till at the last I found a little way

Toward a park, enclosed with a wall
In compass round, and by a gaté small
Whoso that woldé freely mighté goon
Into this park, walléd with grené stoon.
And in I went to hear the birdés' song,

Which on the branches both in plain and vale

So loudly sung that all the woodé rong

Like as it shouldé shiver in pieces smale,
And as methoughté that the nightingale
With so great might her voicé gan outrest,
Ryght as her heart for lové woldé brest.

The soyl was pleyne, smoothe, and under soft,
All overspread with tapetes that Nature

Had made herself, celured eke aloft,

With bowès grene, the floures for to sure
That in their beauty they may long endure
From all assault of Phoebus fervent fere
Which in his speré so hot shone and clere.

Lydgate's familiar poetry

That had his coursé, as I gan behold,
Under a hill with quické stremés cold.

The gravel gold, the water pure as glass,
The bankés round the well environing,
And soft as veluet the yongé grass

That therefor full lustily gan spring,
The sute of trees abouté compassing
Her shadow casté, closing the well round,
And all the herbés growing on the ground.

Lydgate, it will be remarked, is enough of an observer of Nature to make the nightingale sing by day. The whole poem, as well as this description, is imitated from Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, and it is interesting to compare the different manner of the two poets, Lydgate painting a rich landscape by many elaborate touches, Chaucer producing a general impression by a few careless strokes. It, as well as other pieces of Lydgate's, appears as Chaucer's in the early editions of the latter's works. The Story of Thebes was designed as an additional Canterbury Tale, and written about 1420. A general enumeration of Lydgate's works would exceed our limits, nor is it possible to discriminate with certainty between the genuine and the spurious. A large proportion are no more than the work of a poetical journeyman, executing commissions for patrons. It may, at all events, be said that no other writer gives so good an idea of what the readers of that day cared to read. One class of his poems, nevertheless, is really original and peculiar, the lively satirical pieces in which he hits off the humour of his age. Such are his Balade of the Times, the Description of His Lady, and especially the London Lack Penny, pungently but good-humouredly depicting the inconveniences of a short purse in a great

city:

Then unto Cornhill anon I yode

Where was much stolen gear among.

I saw where hung up mine own hoode

That I had lost among the throng:

To buy my own hood I thought it wrong,

I knew it as well as I did my crede,

But for lack of money I could not speed.

The taverner took me by the sleeve,

"Sir," sayth he, "will you our wine essay?"

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 lacking money I could not speed.

Then hyed I me to Billinsgate,

And one cried, "Oh! O! go we hence!"

I prayed a bargeman for Goddés sake

That he would spare me my expense.

"Thou scap'st not here," quod he, "under twopence,

I list not yet bestow any alr. dede:"

Thus lacking money I could not speed.