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Your head-shete shal be of pery pyght",
Wyth dyamondes set and rubys bryght.
Whan you are layd in bed so softe,
A cage of golde shal hange aloft,
Wythe longe peper fayre burning,
And cloves that be swete smellyng,
Frankinsense and olibanum,

That whan ye slepe the taste may come,
And yf ye no rest can take

All nyght mynstrels for you shall wake.

SYR DEGORE is a romance perhaps belonging to the same period. After his education under a hermit, Sir Degore's first adventure is against a dragon. This horrible monster is marked with the hand of a masters."

nuscript MYSTERY, or religious comedy,
of MARY MAGDALENE, written in 1512,
a GALANT, one of the retainers to the
groupe of the Seven Deadly Sins, is in-
troduced with the following speech.
Hof, Hof, Hof, a frysch new galaunt!
Ware of thryft, ley that a doune :
What mene ye, syrrys, that I were a
marchaunt,

Because that I am new com to toun?
With praty.... wold I fayne round,
I have a shert of reyns with sleves pe-
neaunt,

A lase of sylke for my lady ConstantI woll, or even, be shaven for to seme yong, &c.

So also in Skelton's MAGNIFICENCE, a Morality written much about the same time, f. xx. b.

Your skynne, that was wrapped in shertes of raynes,

Nowe must be storm ybeten.

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See what I have observed concerning the number TWELVE, Introd. Diss. i.

f It contains thirty-two pages in quarto. Coloph. "Thus endeth the Tretyse of Syr Degore, imprynted by Willyam Copland.' There is another copy dated 1560. There is a manuscript of it among bishop More's at Cambridge, Bibl. Publ. 690. 36. Syr DE

GARE.

[This romance has been published in a work entitled "Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry, reprinted from the Black Letter," and is analysed by Mr. Ellis in his " Specimens." From a fragment of it preserved in the Auchinleck MSS. it is clear that the poem in its present form is an unskilful rifacimento of an earlier version, since the mode of pronouncing the hero's name. writer was even ignorant of the true Throughout Copland's edition-with one exception-it is a word of two syllables, rhyming with 'before'; but in p. 135 of the reprint we obtain its true accentuation as exhibited in the Auchinleck MSS. As was the yonge knyght Syr Degoré, But none wyst what man was he.

The name is intended to express, as the author tells us (line 230), "a thing (or person) almost lost," Dégaré or L'égaré.-EDIT.]

Sign. B. ii.

Degore went furth his waye,
Through a forest half a daye:
He herd no man, nor sawe none,
Tyll yt past the hygh none,

Then herde he grete strokes falle,
That yt made grete noyse with alle,
Full sone he thoght that to se,

To wete what the strokes myght be:
There was an erle, both stout and gaye,
He was com ther that same daye,

For to hunt for a dere or a do,

But hys houndes were gone hym fro.
Then was ther a dragon grete and grymme,
Full of fyre and also venymme,

Wyth a wyde throte and tuskes grete,
Uppon that knygte fast gan he bete.
And as a lyon then was hys feete,
Hys tayle was long, and full unmeete:
Betwene hys head and hys tayle
Was xxii fote withouten fayle;
Hys body was lyke a wyne tonne,
He shone ful bryght agaynst the sunne:
Hys eyen were bright as any glasse,
His scales were hard any
as brasse;
And therto he was necked lyke a horse,
He bare hys hed up wyth grete force:
The breth of hys mouth that did out blow
As yt had been a fyre on lowe.

He was to loke on, as I you telle,

As yt had bene a fiende of helle.
Many a man he had shent,

And many a horse he had rente.

As the minstrel profession became a science, and the audience grew more civilised, refinements began to be studied, and the romantic poet sought to gain new attention, and to

recommend his story, by giving it the advantage of a plan. Most of the old metrical romances are, from their nature, supposed to be incoherent rhapsodies. Yet many of them have a regular integrity, in which every part contributes to produce an intended end. Through various obstacles and difficulties one point is kept in view, till the final and general catastrophe is brought about by a pleasing and unexpected surprise. As a specimen of the rest, and as it lies in a narrow compass, I will develop the plan of the fable now before us, which preserves at least a coincidence of events, and an uniformity of design.

A king's daughter of England, extremely beautiful, is solicited in marriage by numerous potentates of various kingdoms. The king her father vows, that of all these suitors, that champion alone shall win his daughter who can unhorse him at a tournament. This they all attempt, but in vain. The king every year assisted at an anniversary mass for the soul of his deceased queen, who was interred in an abbey at some distance from his castle. In the journey thither, the princess strays from her damsels in a solitary forest: she is discovered by a knight in rich armour, who by many solicitations prevails over her chastity, and, at parting, gives her a sword without a point, which he charges her to keep safe; together with a pair of gloves, which will fit no hands but her own%. At length she finds the road to her father's castle, where, after some time, to avoid discovery, she is secretly delivered of a boy. Soon after the delivery, the princess having carefully placed the child in a cradle, with twenty pounds in gold, ten pounds in silver, the gloves given her by the strange knight, and a letter, consigns him to one of her maidens, who carries him by night, and leaves him in a wood, near a hermitage, which she discerned by the light of the moon. The hermit in the morn

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ing discovers the child; reads the letter, by which it appears that the gloves will fit no lady but the boy's mother, educates him till he is twenty years of age, and at parting gives him the gloves found with him in the cradle, telling him that they will fit no lady but his own mother. The youth, who is called Degore, sets forward to seek adventures, and saves an earl from a terrible dragon, which he kills. The earl invites him to his palace, dubs him a knight, gives him a horse and armour, and offers him half his territory. Sir Degore refuses to accept this offer, unless the gloves, which he had received from his foster-father the hermit, will fit any lady of his court. All the ladies of the earl's court are called before him, and among the rest the earl's daughter, but upon trial the gloves will fit none of them. He therefore takes leave of the earl, proceeds on his adventures, and meets with a large train of knights; he is informed that they were going to tourney with the king of England, who had promised his daughter to that knight who could conquer him in single combat. They tell him of the many barons and earls whom the king had foiled in several trials. Sir Degore, however, enters the lists, overthrows the king, and obtains the princess. As the knight is a perfect stranger, she submits to her father's commands with much reluctance. He marries her; but in the midst of the solemnities which preceded the consummation, recollects the gloves which the hermit had given him, and proposes to make an experiment with them on the hands of his bride. The princess, on seeing the gloves, changed colour, claimed them for her own, and drew them on with the greatest ease. She declares to Sir Degore that she was his mother, and gives him an account of his birth: she told him that the knight his father gave her a pointless sword, which was to be delivered to no person but the son that should be born of their stolen embraces. Sir Degore draws the sword, and contemplates its breadth and length with wonder: is suddenly seized with a desire of finding out his father. He sets forward on this search, and on his way enters a castle, where he is entertained at supper by fifteen beautiful damsels. The

lady of the castle invites him to her bed, but in vain; and he is lulled asleep by the sound of a harp. Various artifices are used to divert him from his pursuit, and the lady even engages him to encounter a giant in her cause. But Sir Degore rejects all her temptations, and pursues his journey. In a forest he meets a knight richly accoutred, who demands the reason why Sir Degore presumed to enter his forest without permission. A combat ensues. In the midst of the contest, the combatants being both unhorsed, the strange knight observing the sword of his adversary not only to be remarkably long and broad, but without a point, begs a truce for a moment. He fits the sword to a point which he had always kept, and which had formerly broken off in an encounter with a giant; and by this circumstance discovers Sir Degore to be his son. They both return into England, and Sir Degore's father is married to the princess his mother.

The romance of Kyng Robert oF SICILY begins and proceeds thus.

[Here is of kyng Robert of Cicyle,

Hou pride dude him beguile.]
Princis proude that bene in preesse,

A thing I wull yow tell that is no lees.
In Cesill was a nobill kyng,

Fayre and strong and sumdel yongk;
He had a broder in grete Rome
Pope of all Cristyndome ;

h All the romances have such an obstacle as this. They have all an enchantress, who detains the knight from his quest by objects of pleasure; and who is nothing more than the Calypso of Homer, the Dido of Virgil, and the Armida of Tasso.

i MS. Vernon, ut supr. Bibl. Bodl. f. 299. It is also in Caius College Camb. MSS. Class. E 174. 4. and Bibl. Publ. Cambr. MSS. More, 690. 35. and Brit. Mus. MSS. Harl. 525. 2. f. 35. Cod. membran. Never printed. [The extracts in this edition have been VOL. II.

C

copied from the Harl. MS. 525, with
the exception of the passages in brackets,
which have been taken from Warton's
transcript of the Vernon MS. Mr. Ellis,
who has analysed it, concurs with War-
ton in opinion "that the history of the
Emperor Jovinian in the 59th chapter
of the Gesta Romanorum is nearly iden-
tical with this romance.' "He further
adds: "The incidents, however, are not
exactly similar; and in some of these the
Latin prose has a manifest advantage
over the minstrel poem."-EDIT.]
zyng, MS. Vernon.

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