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LAURENCE MINOT.-This writer, who flourished under Edward III., is called by Dr. Craik the earliest writer of English verse, who deserves the name of a poet. We have his ten poems, describing the martial achievements of Edward, such as the battles of Halidon Hill, and Nevil's Cross, The Sieges of Tournay and Calais, and The Taking of Guisnes; written, no doubt, between the years 1333 and 1353, and thrown off under the fresh impression of the great events they record. They have all the fine warlike ring of the older minstrelsy, combined with a polish to which the balladsingers of former days were strangers.

ROBERT or WILLIAM LONGLANDE.-The author of the Vision of Piers (Peter) Ploughman was born in Shropshire about 1300. A secular priest and a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, he had many opportunities of knowing thoroughly those abuses which he lashes with an unsparing hand. The time was indeed a terrible one,—the nobles and the clergy were alike corrupt to the very

core.

The poet supposes himself to have fallen asleep after a long ramble over the Malvern Hills on a May morning. As he sleeps, he dreams a series of twenty dreams. The general subject of the poem has been described as similar to that of "The Pilgrim's Progress." The gaudy, changeful scenes of "Vanity Fair," are much the same, in spirit at least, on the canvas of Longlande as in the later pictures of Bunyan and of Thackeray. Losing no

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66 THE BRUCE" OF BARBOUR.

opportunity of tearing the cloak from the ignorant and vicious churchmen of his day, this old poet may be said to have struck the first great blow in the battle of the English Reformation.

"Piers Ploughman" is unrhymed, having, as its distinctive feature, a kind of alliteration; probably borrowed, as Dr. Percy shows in his "Reliques," from the Icelandic. The following lines will show the nature of this alliteration :

Ac on a May Morwening

On Malvern hills
Me beFel a Ferly,

Of Fairy me thought.

I was Weary for-Wandered,
And Went me to rest
Under a Brood Bank,
By a Burn's side;
And as I Lay and Leaned,
And Looked on the waters,
I Slombered into a Sleeping,
It Swayed so mury.

Land [wonder

worn out with wandering

[broad [stream's

[sounded-pleasant

JOHN BARBOUR.-Two dates, 1316 and 1330, are assigned for the birth of Barbour, and Aberdeen is named as his native place. He was made Archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1356. Next year we find him acting as one of the commissioners that met at Edinburgh to deliberate upon the ransom of the king, and also receiving a passport from Edward III. that he might visit Oxford for purposes of study. Three other passports were also granted to him by the English king at various times.

Barbour's great poem is The Bruce, an epic, written probably about 1376, in that eight-syllabled verse which Scott has made so famous. The work embraces the events of about forty years, from the death of the Maid of Norway in 1290 to the death of Lord James Douglas in 1330; and though styled by the poet himself a Romaunt, its main narrative has been accepted as true history by all the leading writers upon Scottish affairs. Another poem, called The Stewart, is said to have been written by Barbour; but it has been lost. Two pensions, one of £10 Scots, the other of 20 shillings, were granted to the poet, both pro

LYDGATE, THE MONK OF BURY.

69

bably by Robert II. The language in which Barbour wrote does not differ much from the English of Chaucer, the chief distinction consisting in the broader vowel-sounds of the Scottish poem. Barbour is thought to have died in 1395.

ANDREW WYNTOUN.-This priest, supposed to have been born about 1350, was Prior of St. Serf's at Lochleven, a house under the rule of the great Priory of St. Andrews. In ruder strains than Barbour, he wrote about 1420 an Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, extending from the creation to 1408. This work, part of which was the composition of another poet, is, when we make allowance for the fabulous legends interwoven with it, a clear, trustworthy historical record. It is divided into nine books, and written in eight-syllabled rhymes.

THOMAS OCCLEVE.-This writer of verses, for poet we can scarcely call him, is thought to have lived and written about the beginning of the fifteenth century. We learn from his works that he was a lawyer; that he held a government situation under the Privy Seal; and that he led a wild, extravagant life. His chief poem is founded on a Latin work, De Regimine Principum, written by Egidius, an Italian monk of the thirteenth century. On the whole, Occleve's verse must be judged rather by its quantity than its quality. His admission into the ranks of our English writers of note is owing to the circumstance of his writing in a barren age, when every versifier was a man of mark.

JOHN LYDGATE.-Lydgate, the monk of Bury, flourished in the reigns of Henry V. and Henry VI. Educated at Oxford, he added to his college training a wider view of life by travelling in France and Italy. On his return home he opened a school for the instruction of the young in verse-making and polite composition. His ready pen, kept unceasingly busy, supplied verses of every style and sentiment, producing ballads and hymns with equal ease. He wrote for masks and mummings, coronations and saints' days, for king, citizen, and monk; and no doubt found the fruit of his work multiplying in the solid shape of gold and silver coin. The chief works of Lydgate, whose forte lay in flowing and diffuse description, were the History of Thebes, the Fall of

70

PROSE WRITERS OF THE FIRST ERA.

Princes, and the History of the Siege of Troy-the last named being borrowed from Colonna's prose.

BLIND HARRY.-A poor man, so named, wandered about Scotland during the third quarter of the fifteenth century, reciting poems for bread. This was the author of The Wallace, a companion work to Barbour's "Bruce," but rougher in the grain and less trustworthy, owing to its being chiefly woven from the popular legends afloat concerning the tall hero of Elderslie. Wallace" contains about twelve thousand lines.

"The

PROSE WRITERS.

JOHN DE TREVISA.-A Latin work, the Polychronicon of Higden, a monk of Chester, was translated into English prose about 1387 by Trevisa, who was vicar of Berkeley in Gloucestershire. Many other translations were executed by the same pen.

SIR JOHN FORTESCUE.-Born, it is supposed, in Devonshire, this eminent lawyer became in 1442 the Chief-Justice of the King's Bench. Remaining faithful to the Red Rose through every change, he followed Queen Margaret into France, where he lived in exile for some time. Out of evil came good. We owe to this banishment one of the finest of our early English lawbooks, De Laudibus Legum Angliae, written in the form of a conversation between himself and his young pupil Prince Edward. Much more interesting, however, to us is an English work from his pen entitled, Of the Difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, in which he compares the French and the English in regard to liberty, much to the disadvantage of the former people.

CAXTON'S PRINTING OFFICE.

71

SECOND ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING IN 1474 A.D. TO THE ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH IN 1558 A.D.

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IN one of the most squalid recesses of Westminster there stood, until 1845, a crazy building of wood and plaster, three stories high. Its pointed roof and wooden balcony were seldom free from poor fluttering rags of clothing, hung out to dry by the wretched tenants. The very sunlight grew sickly when it fell into the poverty-stricken street, where slipshod women, unshaven lounging men, and pale stunted children slunk hopelessly about. Foulness, gloom, and wretchedness were the prominent features of the place around the frail timbers of the house in which the first English printer is said to have lived and wrought. It was almost a mercy when a new street was driven through the poor old house and its tottering neighbours. Not far from this, in the Almonry or Eleemosynary of the Abbey, where the monks of Westminster used to distribute alms to the poor, that London merchant, whose name has grown to be a household word, set up, most probably in 1474, the first printing-press whose types were inked on English ground.

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