Gower, though he had been earlier distinguished in French poetry, began later than Chaucer to cultivate his native tongue. His "Confessio Amantis," the only work by which he is known as an English poet, did not appear till the sixteenth year of Richard II. He must have been a highly accomplished man for his time, and imbued with a studious and mild spirit of reflection. His French sonnets are marked by elegance and sensibility, and his English poetry contains a digest of all that constituted the knowledge of his age. His contemporaries greatly esteemed him; and the Scottish, as well as English writers of the subsequent period, speak of him with unqualified admiration. But though the placid and moral Gower might be a civilising spirit among his contemporaries, his character has none of the bold originality which stamps an influence on the literature of a country. He was not, like Chaucer, a patriarch in the family of genius, the scattered traits of whose resemblance may be seen in such descendants as Shakspeare and Spenser *. The design of his " Confessio Amantis" is peculiarly ill contrived. A lover, whose case has not a particle of interest, applies, according to the Catholic ritual, to a confessor, who, at the same time, whimsically enough, bears the additional character of a pagan priest of Venus. The holy father, it is true, speaks like a good Christian, and communicates more scandal about the intrigues of Venus than pagan author ever told. A pretext is afforded by the ceremony of confession, for the priest not only to initiate his pupil in the duties of a lover, but in a wide range of ethical and physical knowledge; and at the mention of every virtue and vice a tale is introduced by way of illustration. Does the confessor wish to warn the lover against impertinent curiosity? he introduces, apropos to that failing, the history of Acteon, of peeping memory. The confessor inquires if he is addicted to a vain-glorious disposition; because if he is, he can tell him a story about Nebuchadnezzar. Does he wish to | hear of the virtue of conjugal patience? it is aptly inculcated by the anecdote respecting Socrates, who, when he received the contents of Xantippe's pail upon his head, replied to the provocation with only a witticism. Thus, with shrieving, narrations and didactic speeches, the work is extended to thirty thousand lines, in the course of which the virtues and vices are all regularly allegorized. But in allegory Gower is cold and uninventive, and enumerates qualities when he should conjure up visible objects. On the whole, though copiously stored with facts and fables, he is unable either to make truth appear poetical, or to render fiction the graceful vehicle of truth. Fifteenth PART II. WARTON, with great beauty and justice, compares the appearance of Chaucer in our language to a premature day in an century. English spring ; after which the gloom of winter returns, and the buds and blossoms, which have been called forth by a transient sunshine, are nipped by frosts and scattered by storms. The causes of the relapse of our poetry, after Chaucer, seem but too apparent in the annals of English history, which during five reigns of the fifteenth century continue to display but a tissue of conspiracies, pro[* Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and Mr. Waller of Fairfax. Spenser more than once insinuates that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body, and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease.-DRYDEN. Malone, vol. iv. p. 592.] scriptions, and bloodshed. Inferior even to France in literary progress, England displays in the fifteenth century a still more mortifying contrast with Italy. Italy too had her religious schisms and public distractions; but her arts and literature had always a sheltering place. They were even cherished by the rivalship of independent communities, and received encouragement from the opposite sources of commercial and ecclesiastical wealth. But we had no Nicholas the Fifth, nor house of Medicis. In England, the evils of civil war agitated society as one mass. There was no refuge from them-no inclosure to fence in the field of improvement-no mound to stem the torrent of public troubles. Before the death of Henry VI., it is said that one half of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom had perished in the field, or on the scaffold. Whilst in England the public spirit was thus brutalised, whilst the value and security of life were abridged, whilst the wealth of the rich was employed only in war, and the chance of patronage taken from the scholar; in Italy, princes and magistrates vied with each other in calling men of genius around them, as the brightest ornaments of their states and courts. The art of printing came to Italy to record the treasures of its literary attainments; but when it came to England, with a very few exceptions, it could not be said, for the purpose of diffusing native literature, to be a necessary art. A circumstance, additionally hostile to the national genius, may certainly be traced in the executions for religion, which sprung up as a horrible novelty in our country in the fifteenth century. The clergy were determined to indemnify themselves for the exposures which they had met with in the preceding age, and the unhallowed compromise which Henry IV. made with them, in return for supporting his accession, armed them, in an evil hour, with the torch of persecution. In one point of improvement, namely, in the boldness of religious inquiry, the North of Europe might already boast of being superior to the South, with all its learning, wealth, and elegant acquirements. The Scriptures had been opened by Wickliff, but they were again to become "a fountain sealed, and a spring shut up." Amidst the progress of letters in Italy, the fine arts threw enchantment around superstition; and the warm imagination of the South was congenial with the nature of Catholic institutions. But the English mind had already shown, even amidst its comparative barbarism, a stern independent spirit of religion; and from this single proud and elevated point of its character, it was now to be crushed and beaten down. Sometimes a baffled struggle against oppression is more depressing to the human faculties than continued submission. Our natural hatred of tyranny, and we may safely add, the general test of history and experience, would dispose us to believe religious persecution to be necessarily and essentially baneful to the elegant arts, no less than to the intellectual pursuits of mankind. It is natural to think, that when punishments are let loose upon men's opinions, they will spread a contagious alarm from the understanding to the imagination. They will make the heart grow close and insensible to generous feelings, where it is unaccustomed to express them freely; and the graces and gaiety of fancy will be dejected and appalled. In an age of persecution, even the living study of his own species must be comparatively darkened to the poet. He looks round on the characters and countenances of his fellow-creatures; and instead of the naturally cheerful and eccentric variety of their || humours, he reads only a sullen and oppressed uniformity. To the spirit of poetry we should conceive such a period to be an impassable Avernus, where she would drop her wings and expire. Undoubtedly this inference will be found warranted by a general survey of the history of Genius. It is, at the same time, impossible to deny, that wit and poetry have in some instances flourished coeval with ferocious bigotry, on the same spot, and under the same government. The literary glory of Spain was posterior to the establishment of the Inquisition. The fancy of Cervantes sported in its neighbourhood, though he declared that he could have made his writings still more entertaining, if he had not dreaded the Holy Office. But the growth of Spanish genius, in spite of the co-existence of religious tyranny, was fostered by uncommon and glorious advantages in the circumstances of the nation. Spain (for we are comparing Spain in the sixteenth with England in the fifteenth century) was, at the period alluded to, great and proud in an empire, on which it was boasted that the sun never set. Her language was widely diffused. The wealth of America for a while animated all her arts. Robertson says, that the Spaniards discovered at that time an extent of political knowledge, which the English themselves did not attain for more than a century afterwards. Religious persecutions began in England, at a time when she was comparatively poor and barbarous; yet after she had been awakened to so much intelligence on the subject of religion, as to make one half of the people indignantly impatient of priestly tyranny. If we add to the political troubles of the age, the circumstance of religious opinions being silenced and stifled by penal horrors, it will seem and Lydgate were the nearest successors to Chaucer. Occleve speaks of himself as Chaucer's scholar. He has, at least, the merit of expressing the sincerest enthusiasm for his master. But it is difficult to controvert the character which has been generally assigned to him, that of a flat and feeble writer. Excepting the adoption of his story of Fortunatus, by William Browne, in his pastorals, and the modern republication of a few of his pieces, I know not of any public compliment which has ever been paid to his poetical memory. more wonderful that the spark of literature was kept alive, than that it did not spread more widely. Yet the fifteenth century had its redeeming traits of refinement, the more wonderful for appearing in the midst of such unfavourable circumstances. It had a Fortescue, although he wandered in exile, unprotected by the constitution which he explained and extolled in his writings. It had a noble patron and lover of letters in Tiptoft *, although he died by the hands of the executioner. It witnessed the founding of many colleges, in both of the universities, although they were still the haunts of scholastic quibbling; and it produced, in the venerable Pecock, one conscientious dignitary of the church, who wished to have converted the protestants by appeals to reason, though for so doing he had his books, and, if he had not recanted in good time, would have had his body also, committed to the flames. To these causes may be ascribed the backwardness of our poetry between the dates of Chaucer and Spenser. I speak of the chasm extending to, or nearly to Spenser; for, without undervaluing the elegant talents of Lord Surrey, I think we cannot consider the national genius as completely emancipated from oppressive circumstances, till the time of Elizabeth. There was indeed a commencement of our poetry under Henry VIII. It was a fine, but a feeble one. English genius seems then to have come forth, but half assured that her day of emancipation was at hand. There is something melancholy even in Lord Surrey's strains of gallantry. The succession of Henry VIII. gave stability to the government, and some degree of magnificence to the state of society. But tyranny was not yet at an end; and to judge, from the French and Latin. His principal poems are not by the gross buffoons, but by the few minds entitled to be called poetical, which appear in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, we may say that the English Muse had still a diffident aspect and a faltering tone. There is a species of talent, however, which may continue to endite what is called poetry, without having its sensibilities deeply affected by the circumstances of society; and of luminaries of this description our fifteenth century was not destitute. Ritson has enumerated about seventy of them t. Of these, Occleve Earl of Worcester. + In his Bibliographia Poetica. Lydgate is altogether the most respectable versifier of the fifteenth century. A list of 250 of the productions ascribed to him (which is given in Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica) attests, at least, the fluency of his pen; and he seems to have ranged with the same facility through the gravest and the lightest subjects of composition. Ballads, hymns, ludicrous stories, legends, romances, and allegories, were equally at his command. Verbose and diffuse as Dan John of Bury must be allowed to have been, he is not without occasional touches of pathos. The poet Gray was the first in modern times who did him the justice to observe them. His "Fall of Princes" may also deserve notice, in tracing back the thread of our national poetry, as it is more likely than any other English production to have suggested to Lord Sackville the idea of his "Mirror for Magistrates." The "Mirror for Magistrates” again gave hints to Spenser in allegory, and may also have possibly suggested to Shakspeare the idea of his historical plays. Vide p. 15 of these Selections. He translated largely "The fall of Princes," "The siege of Thebes," and "The Destruction of Troy." The first of these is from Laurent's French version of Boccaccio's book " De Casibus virorum et feminarum illustrium." His "Siege of Thebes," which was intended as an additional Canterbury Tale, and in the introduction to which he feigns himself in company with "the host of the Tabard and the Pilgrims," is compiled from Guido Colonna, Statius, and Seneca. His "Destruction of Troy" is from the work of Guido Colonna, or from a French translation of it. His "London Lickpenny" is curious, for the minute picture of the metropolis, which it exhibits, in the fifteenth century. A specimen of Lydgate's humour may be seen in his tale of "The Prioress and her three Wooers," which Mr. Jamieson has given in his "Popular Ballads and Songs " [vol. i. p. 249–266]. 1 had transcribed it from a manuscript in the British Museum [Harl. MS. 78], thinking that it was not in print, but found that Mr. Jamieson had anticipated me. I know not if Hardynge *, who belonged to the reign of Edward IV., be worth mentioning, as one of the obscure luminaries of this benighted age. He left a Chronicle of the History of England, which possesses an incidental interest from his having been himself a witness to some of the scenes which he records; for he lived in the family of the Percys, and fought under the banners of Hotspur; but from the style of his versified Chronicle, his head would appear to have been much better furnished for sustaining the blows of the battle, than for contriving its poetical celebration. End of the fifteenth ning of the 66 The Scottish poets of the fifteenth, and of a part of the sixteenth century, would also justly demand a place in any history of our and begin poetry that meant to be copious and sixteenth minute; as the northern "makers," century. notwithstanding the difference of dialect, generally denominate their language 'Inglis." Scotland produced an entire poetical version of the Eneid, before Lord Surrey had translated a single book of it; indeed before there was an English version of any classic, excepting Boëthius, if he can be called a classic. Virgil was only known in the English language through a romance on the Siege of Troy, published by Caxton, which, as Bishop Douglas observes, in the prologue to his Scottish Æneid, is no more like Virgil, than the devil is like St. Austin +. Perhaps the resemblance may not even be so great. But the Scottish poets, after all that has been said of them, form nothing like a brilliant revival of poetry. They are on the whole superior, indeed, in spirit and originality to their English cotemporaries, which is not saying much; but their style is, for the most part, cast, if possible, in a worse taste. The prevailing fault of English diction, in the fifteenth century, is redundant ornament, and an affectation of anglicising Latin words. In this pedantry and use of "aureate terms," the Scottish versifiers went even beyond their brethren of the south. Some exceptions to the remark, I am aware, may be found in Dunbar, who sometimes exhibits simplicity and lyrical terseness; but even his style has frequent deformities of quaintness, [* A kind of Robert of Gloucester redivivus.—SIR WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Pr. Works, vol. xvii. p. 13.] [ Warton, vol. iii. p. 112. Douglas is said to have written his translation in the short space of sixteen months, and to have finished it in 1513.-This was before Surrey was born!] false ornament, and alliteration. The rest of them, when they meant to be most eloquent, tore up words from the Latin, which never took root in the language, like children making a mock garden with flowers and branches stuck in the ground, which speedily wither. From Lydgate down to Wyat and Surrey, there seem to be no southern writers deserving attention, unless for the purposes of the antiquary, excepting Hawes, Barklay, and Skelton; and even their names might perhaps be omitted, without treason to the cause of taste ‡. Stephen Hawes §, who was groom of the chamber to Henry VII., is said to have been accomplished in the literature of France and Italy, and to have travelled into those countries. His most important production is the "Pastyme of Pleasure," an allegorical romance, the hero of which is Grandamour or Gallantry, and the heroine La Belle Pucelle, or Perfect Beauty. In this work the personified characters have all the capriciousness and vague moral meaning of the old French allegorical romance; but the puerility of the school remains, while the zest of its novelty is gone. There is also in his foolish personage of Godfrey Gobelive, something of the burlesque of the worst taste of Italian poetry. It is certainly very tiresome to follow Hawes's hero, Grandamour, through all his adventures, studying grammar, rhetoric, and arithmetic, in the tower of Doctrine; afterwards slaughtering giants, who have each two or three emblematic heads; sacrificing to heathen gods; then marrying according to the Catholic rites; and, finally, relating his own death and burial, to which he is so obliging as to add his epitaph. Yet, as the story seems to be of Hawes's invention, it ranks him above the mere chroniclers and translators of the age. Warton To the reign of Henry VI. belongs Henry Lonelich, who plied the unpoetical trade of a skinner, and who translated the French romance of St. Graal; Thomas Chestre, who made a free and enlarged version of the Lai de Lanval, of the French poetess Marie; and Robert Thornton, who versified the "Morte Arthur" in the alliterative measure of Langlande. [§ A bad imitator of Lydgate, ten times more tedious than his original.-SIR WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Pr. Works, vol. xvii. p. 13.] He also wrote the "Temple of Glass," the substance of which is taken from Chaucer's "House of Fame." [The Temple of Glass is now, as Mr. Hallam observes, by general consent restored to Lydgate-Lit. Hist. vol. i. p. 432; and Price's Warton, vol. iii. p. 46—7.] praises him for improving on the style of Lydgate ⚫. His language may be somewhat more modern, but in vigour or harmony, I am at a loss to perceive in it any superiority. The indulgent historian of our poetry has, however, quoted one fine line from him, describing the fiery breath of a dragon, which guarded the island of beauty: "The fire was great; it made the island light." Every romantic poem in his own language is likely to have interested Spenser ; and if there were many such glimpses of magnificence in Hawes, we might suppose the author of "The Fairy Queen" to have cherished his youthful genius by contemplating them; but his beauties are too few and faint to have afforded any inspiring example to Spenser. Alexander Barklay was a priest of St. Mary Otterburne, in Devonshire, and died at a great age at Croydon, in the year 1552. His principal work was a free translation of Sebastian Brandt's + "Navis Stultifera," enlarged with some satirical strictures of his own upon the manners of his English cotemporaries. His "Ship of Fools" has been as often quoted as most obsolete English poems; but if it were not obsolete it would not be quoted. He also wrote Eclogues, which are curious as the earliest pieces of that kind in our language. From their title we might be led to expect some interesting delineations of English rural customs at that period. But Barklay intended to be a moralist, and not a painter of nature; and the chief, though insipid, moral which he inculcates is, that it is better to be a clown than a courtier 1. The few scenes of country life which he exhibits for that purpose are singularly ill fitted to illustrate his doctrine, and present rustic existence under a miserable [* Hist. vol. iii. p. 54. "Hawes has added new graces to Lydgate's manner."] + Sebastian Brandt was a civilian of Basil. Barklay gives some sketches of manners; but they are those of the town, not the country. Warton is partial to his black-letter eclogues, because they contain allusions to the customs of the age. They certainly inform us at what hour our ancestors usually dined, supped, and went to bed; that they were fond of good eating; and that it was advisable, in the poet's opinion, for any one who attempted to help himself to a favourite dish at their banquets to wear a gauntlet of mail. Quin the player, who probably never had heard of Barklay, delivered at a much later period a similar observation on city feasts; namely, that the candidate for a good dish of turtle ought never to be without a basket-hilted knife and fork. aspect, more resembling the caricature of Scotland in Churchill's "Prophecy of Famine," than anything which we can imagine to have ever been the general condition of English peasants. The speakers, in one of his eclogues, lie littered among straw, for want of a fire to keep themselves warm; and one of them expresses a wish that the milk for dinner may be curdled, to save them the consumption of bread. As the writer's object was not to make us pity but esteem the rustic lot, this picture of English poverty can only be accounted for by supposing it to have been drawn from partial observation, or the result of a bad taste, that naturally delighted in squalid subjects of description. Barklay, indeed, though he has some stanzas which might be quoted for their strength of thought and felicity of expression, is, upon the whole, the least ambitious of all writers to adorn his conceptions of familiar life with either dignity or beauty. An amusing instance of this occurs in one of his moral apologues: Adam, he tells us in verse, was one day abroad at his work— Eve was at the door of the house, with her children playing about her; some of them she was "kembing," says the poet, prefixing another participle not of the most delicate kind, to describe the usefulness of the comb. Her Maker having deigned to pay her a visit, she was ashamed to be found with so many illdressed children about her, and hastened to stow a number of them out of sight; some of them she concealed under hay and straw, others she put up the chimney, and one or two into a "tub of draff." Having produced, however, the best looking and best dressed of them, she was delighted to hear their Divine Visitor bless them, and destine some of them to be kings and emperors, some dukes and barons, and others sheriffs, mayors, and aldermen. Unwilling that any of her family should forfeit blessings whilst they were going, she immediately drew out the remainder from their concealment; but when they came forth they were so covered with dust and cobwebs, and had so many bits of chaff and straw sticking to their hair, that instead of receiving benedictions and promotion, they were doomed to vocations of toil and poverty, suitable to their dirty appearance. John Skelton, who was the rival and contemporary of Barklay, was laureate to the |