JOHN LYDGATE

Was born at a place of that name in Suffolk, about the year 1370. His translation (taken through the medium of Laurence's version) of Boccaccio's Fall of Princes, was begun while Henry VI. was in France, where that king never was, but when he went to be crowned at Paris, in 1432. Lydgate was then above threescore. He was a monk of the Benedictine order, at St. Edmund's Bury, and in 1423 was elected prior of Hatfield Brodhook, but the following year had licence to return to his convent again. His condition, one would imagine, should have supplied him with the necessaries of life, yet he more than once complains to his patron, Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, of his wants; and he shews distinctly in one passage, that he did not dislike a little more wine than his convent allowed him. He was full thirty years of age when Chaucer died, whom he calls his master, and who probably was so in a literal sense. His Fall of Princes is rather a paraphrase than a translation of his original. He disclaims the idea of writing “a stile briefe and compendious." A great story he compares to a great oak, which is not to be attacked with a single stroke, but by "a long processe."

Gray has pointed out beauties in this writer which had eluded the research, or the taste, of former critics.

"I pretend not," says Gray, "to set him on a level with Chaucer, but he certainly comes the nearest to him of any contemporary writer I am acquainted with. His choice of expression and the smoothness of his verse, far surpass both Gower and Occleve. He wanted not art in raising the more tender emotions of the mind." Of these he gives several examples. The finest of these, perhaps, is the following passage, descriptive of maternal agony and tenderness.

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

BOOK I. FOLIO 39.

OUT of her swoone when she did abbraide,
Knowing no mean but death in her distrèsse,
To her brother full piteouslie she said,
"Cause of my sorrowe, roote of my heavinesse,
That whilom were the sourse of my gladnèsse,
When both our joyes by wille were so disposed,
Under one key our hearts to be enclosed.-

This is mine end, I may it not astarte;

O brother mine, there is no more to saye;
Lowly beseeching with mine whole heart
For to remember specially, I praye,

If it befall my littel sonne to dye,

*

That thou mayst after some mynd on us have,
Suffer us both be buried in one grave.

I hold him strictly twene my armès twein,
Thou and Nature laidè on me this charge;
He, guiltlesse, mustè with me suffer paine,
And, sìth thou art at freedom and at large,
Let kindnesse ourè love not so discharge,
But have a minde, wherever that thou be,
Once on a day upon my child and me.

On thee and me dependeth the trespace
Touching our guilt and our great offence,
But, welaway! most àngelik of face

Our childè, young in his pure innocence,
Shall agayn right suffer death's violence,
Tender of limbes, God wote, full guiltělesse
The goodly faire, that lieth here speechless.

A mouth he has, but wordis hath he none;
Cannot complaine alas! for none outrage:
Nor grutcheth not, but lies here all alone
Still as a lambe, most meke of his visage.
What heart of stèle could do to him damage,
Or suffer him dye, beholding the manère
And looke benigne of his twein eyen clere.—

Writing her letter, awhapped all in drede,
In her right hand her pen ygan to quake,
And a sharp sword to make her heartè blede,
In her left hand her father hath her take,
And most her sorrowe was for her childes sake,

Upon whose facè in her barme sleepynge
Full many a tere she wept in complǎyning.
After all this so as she stoode and quoke,
Her child beholding mid of her peines smart,
Without abode the sharpè sword she tooke,
And rove herselfè even to the hearte;
Her child fell down, which mightè not astert,
Having no help to succour him nor save,
But in her blood theselfe began to bathe.

SCOTTISH POETRY.

THE Origin of the Lowland Scottish language has been a fruitful subject of controversy. Like the English, it is of Gothic materials; and, at a certain distance of time from the Norman conquest, is found to contain, as well as its sister dialect of the South, a considerable mixture of French. According to one theory, those Gothic elements of Scotch existed in the Lowlands, anterior to the Anglo-Saxon settlements in England, among the Picts, a Scandinavian race: the subsequent mixture of French words arose from the French connexions of Scotland, and the settlement of Normans among her people; and thus, by the Pictish and Saxon dialects meeting, and an infusion of French being afterwards superadded, the Scottish language arose, independent of modern English, though necessarily similar, from the similarity of its materials. According to another theory, the Picts were not Goths, but Cambro-British, a Celtic race, like the Western Scots who subdued and blended with the Picts, under Kenneth Mac Alpine. Of the same Celtic race were also the Britons of Strathclyde, and the antient people of Galloway. In Galloway, though the Saxons overran that peninsula, they are affirmed to have left but little of their blood,