sitting gravely down to a discussion of the morals and metaphysics of love. Nowadays if poor Cupid ever dare come into serious learned society, he is fain to fold his arms, hang his head, tuck his abhorred quiver under his wing, and entering with Paul Pry's lowest bow, "hope he don't intrude;' happy if indeed he be not altogether driven out and forced to take shelter between ignoble "yellow covers," where, mutilated by false description, false sentiment, bad manners, and bad morals, from a winged god he dwindles to a vile grub-worm. The age of mechanics is not the age of chivalry; and we read with incredulous wonder of the ridiculous but systematic solemnity with which the passion of love was treated in those days of splendid gallantry. Chaucer's "Court of Love" contained the twenty statutes which that court observed under the severest penalties, and from which there seems to have been no appeal; and we find in Warton's History this singular account of a Society of the Penitents of Love, established in Languedoc, where enthusiasm was carried to as high a pitch as it ever was in religion. This society presents a curious picture of the times. It was a contention of ladies and gentlemen who should best sustain the honor of their amorous fanaticism." Their object was to prove the excess of their love by showing with an invincible fortitude and consistency of conduct, with no less obstinacy of opinion, that they could bear extremes of heat and cold. 66 Accordingly, the resolute knights and esquires, the dames and damsels who had the hardiness to embrace this severe institution, dressed themselves during the heat of summer in the thickest mantles lined with the warmest furs. In this they demonstrated, according to the ancient poets, that love works the most wonderful and extraordinary changes. In winter their love again perverted the nature of the seasons; they then clothed themselves in the lightest and thinnest stuffs which could be procured. It was a crime to wear furs on a day of the most piercing cold, or to appear with a hood, cloak, gloves, or muff. The flame of love kept them sufficiently warm. Fires by this most economical fanaticism were all the winter utterly banished from their houses, and they dressed their apartments with evergreens. In the most intense frost their beds were covered only with a piece of canvas. In the mean time they passed the greater part of the day abroad in wandering about from castle to castle; "insomuch that many of these devotees, during so desperate a pilgrimage, perished by the inclemency of the weather, and died martyrs to their profession." The solemn sententiousness of Gower's "Confessio Amantis" caused Chaucer to call him the "moral Gower," and he retained the title ever after. Gower's education was liberal, his course of reading extensive, and his severer studies were tempered with a knowledge of life. By a critical cultivation of his native language, he labored to reform its irregularities, and to establish an English style. His grave and sententious verses lack spirit and imagination; yet his language is tolerably perspicuous, his versification often harmonious, and he has much good sense, solid reflection, and useful observation. Warton affirms that "no poet before Gower had treated the passion of love with equal delicacy of sentiment and elegance of composition." Gower was the friend of Chaucer, though in later life it is supposed that they became alienated. The affliction fell upon him in of Milton and of Homer- blindness John Lydgate, the poet who follows Chaucer and Gower at the shortest interval, in the reign of Henry VI., and about the year 1430, arrived at his highest eminence. Lydgate was a monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury, in Suffolk; but his genius was so lively, and his accomplishments so numerous, that the holy father, St. Benedict, it has been hinted, would hardly have acknowledged him for a genuine disciple. He had travelled in France and Italy, studying the poetry, and returning a complete master of the language and literature, of both countries; and though his own writings contain only a few good passages, he is said to have amplified our language and to have been the first of our writers whose style is clothed with that perspicuity in which the English phraseology appears at this day to an English reader. The fact that he opened a school in his monastery for the instruction of young persons of the upper ranks in the art of versification, is cited as a proof that poetry had become a favorite study among the tincture of letters in that age. Warton, "was not only the of the world in general, his the same degree of merit." few who acquired any "Lydgate," observes poet of the monastery, but hymns and ballads having A fugitive poem of his is curious for the particulars it gives respecting the city of London in the early part of the fifteenth century. The poet has come to town in search of legal redress for some wrong, and visits in succession the Court of Common Pleas, the King's Bench, the Court of Chancery, and Westminster Hall. He says, "Within the hall, neither rich, nor yet poor Would do for me aught, although I should die; Which seeing, I gat me out of the door, Lay down your silver, and here you may speed.' "Then to Westminster gate I presently went, When the sun was at high prime. Cooks to me they took good intent, And proffered me bread, with ale and wine, "Then unto London I did me hie; Of all the land it beareth the prize. 'Hot peascods!' one began to cry; 'Strawberry ripe, and cherries in the rise!' One bade me come near and buy some spice; Pepper and saffron they 'gan me feed; But for lack of money, I might not speed. "Then to the Cheap I 'gan me drawn, Where much people I saw for to stand. "Then went I forth by London Stone, Throughout all Canwick Street; Drapers much cloth me offered loane; Then comes me one cries' Hot sheep's feet!' One cried mackerel, rushes green, another 'gan greet. One bade me buy a hood to cover my head; But for want of money, I might not be sped. "Then I hied me unto East-Cheap. One cries ribs of beef, and many a pie; Pewter pots they clattered on a heap; There was harp, pipe, and minstrelsy, 'Yea, by cock! nay, by cock!' some began cry, Some sung of Jenkin and Julian for their meed; But for lack of money, I might not speed. "Then into Cornhill anon I yode, Where was much stolen gear among. I saw where hung mine own hood But for lack of money, I could not speed." "The rise of such men as Chaucer," it has been happily observed, "is the accident of Nature, and whole centuries may pass without producing them." From his death, in 1400, two centuries in the life of England followed, which, though more enlightened than the times of Chaucer, produced no poet comparable to him. In this long period poets arose who displayed the grace and elevation, if not the creative energy, of true poetry. Eminent among these was Thomas Howard, eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk, and usually denominated the Earl of Surrey. This nobleman, born in 1516, was educated at Windsor in company with a natural son of Henry VIII., and in early life became accomplished in the learning of the time, and in all kinds of courtly and chivalrous exercise. About the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the reign of Henry VIII., the sonnets of Petrarch were the great models of composition; it has been said of Surrey that with a mistress as beautiful as Laura, and with Petrarch's passion, if not his taste, he led the way to great improvements in English poetry, by a happy imitation of this great master and other Italian poets, of whom he became a devoted student during his travels in Italy. His poetry is chiefly amorous, and in praise of |