writers, would by the means of his prefs have been circulated in the English tongue, fo early as the close of the fifteenth century'. the fame, 1512. 4to. [Again, 1533. 4to.] TULLY'S OFFICES, Latin and English, the tranflation by Whittington, 1533. 4to. The university of Oxford, during this period, produced only the firft Book of TULLY'S EPISTLES, at the charge of cardinal Wolfey, without date, or printer's name. Cambridge not a fingle claffic. No Greek book, of any kind, had yet appeared from an English prefs. I believe the first Greek characters used in any work printed in England, are in Linacer's tranlation of Galen de Temperamentis, printed at Cambridge in 1521, 4to. A few Greek words, and abbreviatures, are here and there introduced. The printer was John Siberch, a German, a friend of Erafmus, who styles himself primus UTRIUSQUE lingue in Anglia impreffor. There are Greek characters in fome of his other books of this date. But he printed no entire Greek book. In Linacer's treatise De emendata Stru&ura Latini fermonis, printed by PinTon in 1524, many Greek characters are intermixed. In the fixth book are seven Greek lines together. But the printer apologifes for his imperfections and unfkillfulness in the Greek types; which, he fays, were but recently caft, and not in a fufficient quantity for fuch a work. The paffage is curious. "Equo animo feras fiquæ literæ, in exemplis Hellenismi, "vel tonis vel fpiritibus careant. His "enim non fatis inftructus erat typogra phus, videlicet recens ab eo fufis cha"racteribus Græcis, nec parata ei copia 86 qua ad hoc agendum opus eft." About the fame period of the English prefs, the. fame embarraffments appear to have happened with regard to Hebrew types; which yet were more likely, as that language was fo much lefs known. In the year 1524, doctor Robert Wakefield, chaplain to Henry the eighth, published his Oratio de laudibus et utilitate trium linguarum Arabica, Chaldaica, et Hebraica, &c. 4to. The printer was Wynkyn de Worde; and the author complains, that he was obliged to omit his whole third part, because the printer had no Hebrew types. Some few Hebrew and Arabic characters, however, are introduced; but extremely rude, and evidently cut in wood. They are the first of the fort used in England. This learned orientalist was inftrumental in preferving, at the diffolution of monafteries, the Hebrew manufcripts of Ramsey abbey, collected by Holbech one of the monks, together with Holbech's Hebrew Dictionary. Wood, Hift. Ant. Univ. Oxon. ii. 251. Leland. Scriptor. v. HOLBECCUS. It was a circumftance favourable at leaft to English literature, owing indeed to the general illiteracy of the times, that our firft printers were fo little employed on books written in the learned languages. Almost all Caxton's books are English. The multiplication of English copies multiplied English readers, and these again produced new vernacular writers. The exiftence of a prefs induced many persons to turn authors, who were only qualified to write in their native tongue. SECT.. T SECT. VII. HE firft poet that occurs in the reign of king Edward the fourth is John Harding'. He was of northern This To the preceding reign of Henry the fixth, belongs a poem written by James the firft, king of Scotland, who was atrociously murthered at Perth in the year 1436. It it entitled the KING'S COMPLAINT, is allegorical, and in the feven-lined ftanza. The fubject was fuggefted to the poet by. his own misfortunes, and the mode of compofition by reading Boethius. At the close, he mentions Gower and Chaucer as feated on the feppys of rhetoryke. Bibl. Bodl. MSS. Selden. Archiv. B. 24. chart. fol. [With many pieces of Chaucer.] unfortunate monarch was educated while a prifoner in England, at the command of our Henry the fourth, and the poem was written during his captivity there. The Scotch hiftorians reprefent him as a prodigy of erudition. He civilifed the Scotch nation. Among other accomplishments, he was an admirable mufician, and particularly skilled in playing on the harp. See Lefley, DE REB. GEST. SCOT. lib. vii. p. 257. 266. 267. edit. 1675. 4to. The fame hiftorian fays, "ita orator erat, ut ejus "dictione nihil fuerit artificiofius: ita POETA, ut carmina non tam arte ftrin"xiffe, quam natura fponte fudiffe videreCui rei fidem faciunt carmina di"verfi generis, quæ in rhythmum Scotice << tur. illigavit, eo artificio, &c." Ibid. p. 267. See also Buchanan, RER. Scot. lib. x. p. 186.-196. Opp. tom. i. Edingb. 1715. Among other pieces, which I have never feen, Bale mentions his CANTILENE SCOTICE, and RHYTHMI LATINI. Bale, paral. poft. Cent. xiv. 56. pag. 217. It is not the plan of this work to comprehend and examine in form pieces of Scotch poetry, except fuch only as are of fingular merit. Otherwife, our royal bard would have been confidered at large, and at his proper period, in the text. I will, how ever, add here, two flanzas of the poem contained in the Selden manuscript, which seems to be the moft diftinguished of his compofitions, and was never printed. In ver that full of vertue is and gude, Paffit bot mydday foure grees evyn That for gladnefs and confort of the fight, This piece is not specified by Bale, Dempfter, or Mackenzie. See Bale, ubi fupr. Dempfter, SCOT. SCRIPTOR. ix. 714. pag. 380. edit. 1622. Mackenzie, vol. i. p. 318. Edingb. 1708. fol. John Major mentions the beginning of fome of his other poems, viz. "Yas "fen, &c." And At Beltayn, &c." Both these poems feem to be written on his wife, Joan daughter of the dutchess of Clarence, with whom he fell in love while a prifoner in England. Major mentions befides, a libellus artificiofus, whether verse or profe I know not, which he wrote on this lady in England, before his marriage; and which Bale entitles, Super Uxore futura. This hiftorian, who flourished about the year 1520, adds, that our monarch's CANTILENE were commonly fung by the Scotch as the moft favorite compofitions and that he played better on the harp, than extraction, and educated in the family of lord Henry Percy": and, at twenty-five years of age, hazarded his fortunes as a volunteer at the decifive battle of Shrewsbury, fought against the Scots in the year 1403. He appears to have been indefatigable in examining original records, chiefly with a defign of afcertaining the fealty due from the Scottish kings to the crown of England: and he carried many inftruments from Scotland, for the elucidation of this important enquiry, at the hazard of his life, which he delivered at different times to the fifth and fixth Henry, and to Edward the fourth". These investigations feem to have fixed his mind on the study of our national antiquities and history. At length he cloathed his researches in rhyme, which he dedicated under that form to king Edward the fourth, and with the title of The Chronicle of England unto the reigne of king Edward the fourth in verfe. The copy probably presented to the king, although it exhibits at the end the arms of Henry Percy earl of Northumberland, moft elegantly transcribed on vellum, and adorned with fuperb illuminations, is preserved than the most skillful Irish or highland harper. Major does not enumerate the poem I have here cited. Major, GEST. SCOT. lib. vi. cap. xiv. fol. 135. edit. 1521. 4to. Doctor Percy has one of James's CANTILENE, in which there is much merit. " One William Peeris, a prieft, and fecretary to the fifth earl of Northumberland, wrote in verfe, William Peeris's difcente of the Lord Percis. Pr. Prol. "Cronykills "and annuel books of kyngs." Brit. Muf. MSS. Reg, 18 D. 9. Then immediately follows (10.) in the fame manufcript, perhaps written by the fame author, a collection of metrical proverbs painted in feveral chambers of Lekingfield and Wrefille, antient feats of the Percy family. Henry the fixth granted immunities to Harding in feveral patents for procuring the Scottish evidences. The earliest is dated an. reg. xviii, [1440.] There is a me among Selden's manufcripts in the Bodleian library. Our author is concise and compendious in his narrative of events from Brutus to the reign of king Henry the fourth: he is much more minute and diffuse in relating those affairs of which, for more than the space of fixty years, he was a living witness, and which occurred from that period to the reign of Edward the fourth. The poem seems to have been completed about the year 1470. In his final chapter he exhorts the king, to recall his rival king Henry the fixth, and to restore the partifans of that unhappy prince. This work is almost beneath criticism, and fit only for the attention of an antiquary. Harding may be pronounced to be the most impotent of our metrical historians, especially when we recollect the great improvements which English poetry had now received. I will not even except Robert of Gloucester, who lived in the infancy of taste and versification. The chronicle of this authentic and laborious annalist has hardly those more modest graces, which could properly recommend and adorn a detail of the British story in profe. He has left fome pieces in profe: and Winstanly fays, "his profe was very usefull, fo was his poetry as much delightfull." I am of opinion, that both his profe and poetry are equally useful and delightful. What can be more frigid and unanimated than these lines? Kyng Arthur then in Avalon fo dyed, y MSS. Archiv. Seld. B. 26. It is richly bound and ftudded. At the end is a curious map of Scotland; together with many profe pieces by Harding of the hiftorical kind. The Ashmolean manufcript is, en 、 as titled, The CHRONICLE OF JOHN HARDING in metre from the beginning of England unto the reign of Edward the fourth. MSS. Afhmol. Oxon. 34. membran. Where Where Geryn earle of Chartres then abode For which with hym to abyde he hyght ful fure. Fuller affirms our author to have "drunk as deep a "draught of Helicon as any of his age." An affertion partly true: it is certain, however, that the diction and imagery of our poetic compofition would have remained in just the fame state had Harding never wrote. In this reign, the first mention of the king's poet, under the appellation of LAUREATE, occurs. John Kay was appointed poet laureate to Edward the fourth. It is extraordinary, that he should have left no pieces of poetry to prove his pretenfions in fome degree to this office, with which he is faid to have been invested by the king, at his return from Italy. The only compofition he has tranfmitted to posterity is a prose English translation of a Latin history of the Siege of Rhodes: in the dedication addreffed to king Edward, or rather in the title, he styles himself bys humble poete laureate. Although this our laureate furnishes us with no materials as a poet, yet his office, which here occurs for the first time under this denomination, must not pass unnoticed z Ch. lxxxiv. fol. lxxvii. edit. Graft. 1543. MSS. Cotton. Brit. Muf. VITELL. D. xii. 10. It was printed at London, 1506. This impreffion was in Henry Worley's library, Cat. MSS. Angl. etc. tom. ii. p. 212. N. 6873. 25. I know nothing of the Latin; except that Gulielmus Caorfinus, vice-chancellor for forty years of the knights of Malta, wrote an OBSIDIO RHODI URBIS, when it was in vain attempted to be taken by the Turks in 1480. Separately printed without date or place in quarto. It was also printed in German, Argentorat. 1513- The works of this Gulielmus, which are numerous, were printed together, at Ulm, 1496. fol. with rude wooden prints. See an exact account of this writer, Diar. Eruditor. Ital. tom. xxi. p. 412. One John Caius a poet of Cambridge is mentioned in fir T. More's WORKS, p. 204. And in Parker's Def. of Pr. Marr. against Martin, p. 99. in |