the French, at the instance of the chapter of St Paul's, who employed it to illustrate the representations with which their cloister was decorated. This was not the only production of his pen undertaken at the special request of his learned brethren. The abbot of St Albans engaged him to translate the life of his patron-saint into English verse, and paid him one hundred shillings for the manuscript and illuminations with which it was ornamented. He was, it appears, always at the call of those whom he esteemed, or from whom he expected a reward, and hence probably the variety and number of his poems, the light occasions on which some of them seem to have been written, and in part, perhaps, the little merit which some of them possess.

With all the faults of diffuseness and want of vigour of which Lydgate has been accused, he exhibits the most decided marks of improved clearness, both in style and versification. In the elegant little poem, entitled the Lyfe of our Lady,' passages occur which breathe an Italian sweetness, and indicate the profit our author had received from having his ear tutored with the mellifluous flow of southern speech. The opening stanzas of this piece have been universally admired for their beauty, both of expression and imagery. Addressing the reader, he says,—

"O thoughtfull herte plonged in distresse

With slombre of slouth, this long wynter's night!

Out of the slepe of mortal hevinesse

Awake anon, and loke upon the light

Of thilke sterre, that with her bemys bright,

And with the shynynge of her stremes meryė,
Is wont to glad all our hemisperie.

This sterre in beautie passith Pleiades,
Bothe of shynynge, and eke of stremes clere,
Bootes, and Arctur, and also lades,
And Esperus, whan that it doth appere:
For this is Spica, with her brightè spere,

That towarde evyn, at midnyght, and at morowe,
Downe from hevyn adawith al our sorowe.-

And dryeth up the bytter terys wete
Of Aurora, after the morowe graye,
That she in wepying dothe on flowres flete,

In lusty Aprill, and in fresshè Maye:
And causeth Phebus, the bryght somers daye,
With his wayve gold-yborned, bryght and fayre,
To enchase the mystes of our cloudy ay re.

Now fayre sterre, O sterre of sterrys all!
Whose lyght to se the angels do delyte,

So let the gold-dewe of thy grace yfall

Into my breste, lyke scalys fayre and whyte,
Me to enspire!"

Numerous passages occur of equal elegance, in other parts of his works. The description given of Fortune in the Fall of Princes,' would bear comparison with the most admired personifications in the classical writers. Of her dress he says:

"Her habyte was of many folde colours,
Watchet blewe of fayned stedfastnesse;
Her gold allayed like sun in watry showres,
Meyxt with grene, for change and doublenesse.

The introduction of Fortune is followed by that of Caius Marius, which gives occasion for another delineation of equal power:

"Blacke was his wede, and his habyte also,
His heed unkempt, his lockis hore and gray,
His loke doune-cast in token of sorowe and wo.
On his chekes the saltè teares lay,

Which bare recorde of his deadly affray.
His robe stayned was with Romayne blode,
His sworde aye redy whet to do vengeance;
Lyke a tyraunt most furyouse and wode,

In slaughter and murdre set at his plesaunce."

Of his skill in description, the following will give a favourable idea. He is speaking of Polymite wandering through a wilderness:

"Holding his way, of herte nothing light,
Wate and weary, till it draweth to night:
And al the day beholding ewirnon,
He neither sawe ne castle, towre, ne town;
The which thing greveth him full sore.
And sodenly the see began to rore,
Winde and tempest hidiously to arise,
The rain doun beten in ful grisly wise;
That many à beast thereof was adrad,
And nigh for ferè gan to waxè mad,
As it seemed by the fuil wofull sownes,
Of tigers, beres, of bores, and of lionnes;
Which to refute, and himself for to save,
Evrich in haste draweth to his cave."

It is, however, in descriptions of morning, or of soft and bowery shades, that the genius of Lydgate chiefly delighted to expatiate, and in these, its favourite subjects, it may challenge equality with Chaucer, or any other poet in the language. Take, for example, the following:

"Tyll at the last, among the bowès glade,
Of adventure, I caught a plesaunt shade;
Ful smothe, and playn, and lusty for to sene,
And soft as velvette was the yonge grene:
Where from my hors I did alight as fast,
And on a bowe aloft his reynè cast.
So faynte and wate of werynesse I was,
That I me layd adoune upon
the gras,
Upon a brinke, shortly for to telle,
Besyde the river of a cristall welie;
And the water, as I rehersẻ can,
Like quicke-silver in his streames yran,
Of which the gravell and the bright stone,
As any golde, agaynst the sun yshone."

The morning is thus described :—

"When that the rowes and the rayes redde
Eastward to us full early ginnen spredde,
Even at the twylyght in the dawneynge,
Whan that the larke of custom ginneth synge,
For to salue in her heavenly laye,
The lusty goddesse of the morowe graye,
I meane Aurora, which afore the sunne
Is wont t'enchase the blacke skyès dunne,
And al the darknesse of the dimmy night:
And freshe Phebùs, with comforte of his light,

And with the brightnes of his bemes shene,

Hath overgylt the huge hylles grene;

And flowres eke, agayn the morowe-tide,

Upon their stalkes gan playn their leaves wide."

It is from such passages as these that the opinions which Winstanley and others have expressed on the comparative merits of Lydgate, seem worthy of attention. According to their notion, "He was the best poet of his age, for if Chaucer's coin were of greater weight for deeper learning, Lydgate's was of a more refined standard for purer language.* Of the value which was set upon his writings in his own age, some idea may be formed from the expense bestowed in binding and illustrating them, and from their being regarded as a fit present to the most exalted personages. Thus the abbot of St Albans spent no less than three pounds a large sum for that period-on the binding of the poem which Lydgate wrote at his desire; and the manuscript of that which he composed in commemoration of St Edmund, and which was presented to Henry the Sixth on his visit to Bury, is one of the most splendidly ornamented in existence. Not only are the initial letters executed in colours of the greatest brilliancy, but the poetry itself is illustrated with no less than a hundred and twenty designs, exquisitely painted, and among which are portraits of Lydgate himself, of the abbot of St Edmund's monastery, and two of the king, in one of which he is seen on his throne with the abbot kneeling before him, and presenting the manuscript. In the other he is represented under the figure of a child praying prostrate on a carpet before the shrine of the patron saint.

From these circumstances, and from the intrinsic merit of his poems, there can be little doubt but that Lydgate deserves a conspicuous place among the fathers of English poetry. He is, by turns, forcible and tender; and though his genius was far less inventive than that of Chaucer, and his productions, in consequence, are greatly inferior in all those points which regard delineation of character, or narration, he was not unworthy to succeed him in the simpler walks of the muse. In them he followed his great master with a faithful, though a mild and gentle spirit, nor ought it ever to be forgotten that he was the first of our poets to infuse into the language the sweetness and amenity o` Italian.

Richard of Chichester.

FLOR. CIRC. A. D. 1360.

THE earliest date which occurs in the scanty memorials of this writer's life, is that of 1350, when he joined the fraternity of the Benedictine monastery of Saint Peter's, Westminster. Nothing is known of his parentage, or of the place of his education, but it is inferred from the erudition he displayed in subsequent years, that he must have enjoyed the advantages which were at that time only open to the more respectable classes of the community. The greater part of his life appears to have been spent in the monastery, to which he attached himself at the time above mentioned, his name occurring in the abbey rolls, as late as the year 1399, that is nearly fifty years after his uniting himself to

the society. During this long period, however, the monotony of conventual seclusion was broken by his active application to the study of the old British and Anglo-Saxon antiquities. In this pursuit, he made such important advances, that he received the honourable appellation of the Historiographer, and one of his biographers asserts, that he was allowed to make a tour for the purpose of inspecting the principal libraries of the kingdom. We can scarcely imagine any undertaking more likely to prove useful to the age in which he lived than this. Many valuable manuscripts must have by that time become unintelligible, and almost forgotten, in the several depositaries where they had been hoarded up. But the fact rests on the single testimony of Pits, who has given no clue for the discovery of the source whence he derived his information. Some probability is added to his statement from the krown fact of Richard of Chichester's extensive acquaintance with matters of ancient British history, and it would scarcely seem likely that an author devoted to such a branch of learning, could remain contented without examining the stores of information to be found in various parts of the kingdom. It is also reasonable to suppose, that a writer whose chief object it was to elucidate the antiquities of his own country, would not fail to employ the advantages he possessed for travelling to explore its treasures, before turning his attention to those of foreign countries. The well-accredited fact, that in the latter part of his life, he visited Italy, and spent some time at Rome, thus tends to confirm the tradition of his having collected the materials of his works. from an actual examination of the great libraries belonging to the eccle siastical establishments of England. The period fixed for his Italian journey is that which occurred between the years 1391 and 1397. He is said to have lived but four or five years after his return, and to have been interred in the abbey cloisters.

From the catalogue of his works, Richard of Chichester appears to have been a man of general ability and learning, and there is reason for considering him one of the most useful scholars of his age. Besides his principal treatise, that 'De Situ Britanniæ,' he wrote a tract on the Greater and Lesser Creed, and another on Ecclesiastical Offices, and a History of England from the time of Hengist to the year 1348. Of this work, however, Dr Whittaker gives but a poor character. "The hope," says he, "of meeting with discoveries as great in the Roman, British, and Saxon history, as he has given us concerning the preceding period, induced me to examine the work. But my expectations were greatly disappointed. The learned scholar and the deep antiquarian, I found sunk into an ignorant novice, sometimes the copier of Huntingdon, but generally the transcriber of Geoffrey. Deprived of his Roman guides, Richard showed himself as ignorant and as injudicious as any of his illiterate contemporaries about him in Italy."

Notwithstanding the license he obtained to travel, and the tour which he is supposed to have taken in search of British antiquities, the superiors of his monastery appear at one time to have regarded the pursuits in which he was engaged with no favourable eye. In one part of his work De Situ Britanniæ, he represents himself as arguing with some one in defence of his studies; "Of what service," asked his opponent, "are these things but to delude the world with unmeaning trifles?' To which he replies, "Do not such narratives exhibit proofs of divine

providence? Does it not hence appear, that an evangelical sermon concerning the death and merits of Christ enlightened and subdued a world overrun with Gentile superstitions? In the remark that such things are properly treated of in systems of chronology, I rejoin: nor is it too much to know that our ancestors were not, as some assert, autocthones, sprung from the earth; but that God opened the book of nature to display his omnipotence, such as it is described in the book of Moses." But from what follows, he seems to have felt dissatisfied with his own reasoning, for he says, "When the abbot answered, that works which were intended merely to acquire reputation for their authors from posterity, should be committed to the flames, I confess with gratitude that I repented of this undertaking. The remainder of the work is therefore only a chronological abridgment, which I present to the reader, whom I commend to the goodness and protection of God; and at the same time request that he will pray for me to our Holy Father, who is merciful and inclined to forgiveness." This passage is curious and valuable as enabling us to judge in some degree of the personal character of the author. He was evidently a man of enlightened mind, or he would not have thought of leaving the circle of monastic study; but it is equally clear that he was conscientiously alive to the duties of his profession, or he would never have so readily yielded to the suggestions of his opponents.

John Harding.

BORN CIRC. A. D. 1378.-died a. d. 1461.

THE date of this writer's birth is uncertain; but the best authent:cated accounts fix it about the year 1378. He is also supposed on the same authority to have been a native of one of the northern counties, and to have sprung from a family of distinction in that part of the kingdom. As was the custom of the age, his parents placed him, in his twelfth year, in the household of Percy, earl of Northumberland, in whose service he continued till he was twenty-five. By this time he was accomplished in all the acquirements requisite to the rank he held in life, and in the famous battle of Shrewsbury, which took place in 1403, he distinguished himself so well, as ever after to enjoy the reputation of being an excellent soldier. Some confusion of dates has puzzled his biographers in this part of his memoirs, and he has been said to have won his first laurels in the defence of Roxburgh castle against the Scots. This statement, however, has been proved incorrect, and the battle of Shrewsbury was, without doubt, the occasion of his earliest display of military talent.

Courage, patriotism, and sagacity, were exhibited in the next adventure, of which mention is made in the few notices that remain of his life. It had been long the desire of the English monarchs to prove that the kings of Scotland were legally bound to do them homage for their crowns. But this could not be effected without documents, and no political ingenuity had as yet been able to discover the means by which such vouchers were to be procured. But Harding at length undertook to make his way into Scotland for the express purpose of ob