Scotch poets continued. Gawen Douglass. His translation of Scotch poets continued. Sir David Lyndesay. His chief per- formances the Dreme, and Monarchie. His talents for descrip- tion and imagery. His other poems examined. An anonymous Scotch poem, never printed, called Duncane Laider. Its hu- His life. Patronized by Henry fifth earl of Northum- berland. His character, and peculiarity of style. Critical examination of his poems. Macaronic poetry. Skelton's Mo- rality called the Nigramansir. Moralities at their height about A digression on the origin of Mysteries. Various origins assigned. Religious dramas at Constantinople. Plays first acted in the monasteries. This ecclesiastical origin of the drama gives rise to the practice of performing plays in universities, colleges, and schools. Influence of this practice on the vernacular drama. On the same principle, plays acted by singing-boys in choirs. Boy-bishop. Fete de Foux. On the same principle, plays Causes of the increase of vernacular composition in the fifteenth century. View of the revival of classical learning. In Italy. The same subject continued. Reformation of Religion. Its effects on literature in England. Application of this digression to the Petrarch's sonnets. Lord Surrey. His education, travels, mis- tress, life, and poetry. He is the first writer of blank-verse. Italian blank-verse. Surrey the first English classic poet.... 287 Sir Thomas Wyat. Inferior to Surrey as a writer of sonnets. His life. His genius characterised. Excels in moral poetry.... 313 The first printed Miscellany of English poetry. Its contributors. Sir Francis Bryan, Lord Rochford, and Lord Vaulx. The first true pastoral in English. Sonnet-writing cultivated by the Sir Thomas More's English poetry. Tournament of Tottenham. Its age and scope. Laurence Minot. Alliteration. Digression illustrating comparatively the language of the fifteenth century, The Notbrowne Mayde. Not older than the sixteenth century. Artful contrivance of the story. Misrepresented by Prior. Metrical romances, Guy, syr Bevys, and Kynge Apolyn, printed in the reign of Henry. The Scole howse, a satire. Christmas carols. Religious libels in rhyme. Merlin's pro- phesies. Laurence Minot. Occasional disquisition on the late THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY. on SECTION XXVII. THE subsequent reigns of Richard the Third, Edward the Fifth, and Henry the Seventh, abounded in obscure versifiers. A mutilated poem which occurs among the Cotton manuscripts in the British Museum, and principally contains a satire the nuns, who, not less from the nature of their establishment than from the usual degeneracy which attends all institutions, had at length lost their original purity, seems to belong to this period. It is without wit, and almost without numbers. It was written by one Bertram Walton [Waton], whose name now first appears in the catalogue of English poets; and whose life I calmly resign to the researches of some more laborious and patient antiquary. About the year 1480, or rather before, Benedict Burgh, a master of arts of Oxford, among other promotions in the church, archdeacon of Colchester, prebendary of saint Paul's, and canon of saint Stephen's chapel at Westminster", translated Cato's a Disadvantageous suspicions against the chastity of the female religious were pretended in earlier times. About the year 1250, a bishop of Lincoln visited the nunneries of his diocese: on which occasion, says the continuator of Matthew Paris, "ad domos religiosarum veniens, fecit EXPRIMI MAMILLAS earunVOL. III. B dem, ut sic physice, si esset inter eas corruptela, experiretur." Matt. Paris. Hist. p. 789. HENRICUs iii. edit. Tig. 1589. fol. An anecdote, which the historian relates with indignation; not on account of the nuns, but of the bishop. b See Newcourt, Repertor. i. 90. ii. 517. The university sealed his letters MORALS into the royal stanza, for the use of his pupil lord Bourchier son of the earl of Essex. Encouraged by the example and authority of so venerable an ecclesiastic, and tempted probably by the convenient opportunity of pilfering phraseology from a predecessor in the same arduous task, Caxton translated the same Latin work; but from the French version of a Latin paraphrase, and into English prose, which he printed in the year 1483. He calls, in his preface, the measure, used by Burgh, the BALAD ROYAL. Caxton's translation, which superseded Burgh's work, and with which it is confounded, is divided into four books, which comprehend seventy-two heads. I do not mean to affront my readers, when I inform them, without any apology, that the Latin original of this piece was testimonial, jul. 3. A.D. 1433. Registr. Univ. Oxon. supr. citat. T. f. 27. b. He died A.D. 1483. [In the British Museum there is a Doctour of gentiles, a perfite Paule, In commonly signified the octave stanza. All those pieces in Chaucer, called Certaine Ballads, are in this measure. Chaucer's LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN, written in long verse, a song of three octave stanzas is introduced; beginning, Hide Absolon thy gilte tressis clere. v. 249. p. 340. Urr. Afterwards, Cupid says, v. 537. p. 342. a ful grete negligence Was it to thee, that ilke time thou made, Hide Absolon thy tressis, IN BALADE. In the British Museum there is a Kalandre in Englysshe, made in BALADE by Dann John Lydgate monke of Bury. That is, in this stanza. MSS. Harl. 1706. 2. fol. 10. b. The reader will observe, that whether there are eight or seven lines, I have called it the octave stanza. Lydgate has, most commonly, only seven lines. As in his poem on Guy earl of Warwick, MSS. Laud. D. 31. fol. 64. Here ginneth the lyff of Guy of Warwyk. [Pr. From Criste's birth compleat nine 100 yere.] He is speaking of Guy's combat with the Danish giant Colbrand, at Winchester. Without the gate remembered as I rede, The place callyd of antiquytye In Inglysh tonge named hyde mede, Or ellis denmarch nat far from the cyte: Meeting to gedre, there men myght see Terryble strokys, lyk the dent of thonder; Sparklys owt of thar harnyss, &c. |