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Part the Third,

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS,

ANECDOTES,

AND CHARACTERS.

"Come join with me, and listen to the tale,

"Which bids NEGLECTED WORTH no more bewail

"Her fate obscure :

"O listen to the lore, and fan the flame,

"That consecrates long-buried WORTH to fame."

CENS. LIT. Vol. 3.

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John Lydgate was a monk of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Edmund's Bury, and an uncommon ornament of his profession. The few dates that have been recovered of his history are, that he was ordained a sub-deacon in 1389; a deacon in 1393; and a priest in 1397; from these it has been surmised that he was born about 1375 at Lydgate, in this county.

Few writers have been more admired by their contemporaries, yet none have been treated with more severity by modern critics. The learned Editor of the Reliques of Ancient Poetry mentions him with compassionate contempt: Mr. Ritson ridicules his "cartloads" of poetical rubbish: Mr. Pinkerton considers him as positively stupid and Mr. Ellis with the caution of a man of correct taste and judgment. But Warton alone has thought it worth while to study with

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attention, or to attempt a general discussion of his literary character; and his opinion is well worth transcribing. " After a short education at Oxford," says he, "Lydgate travelled into France and Italy, and "returned a complete master of the language and "literature of both countries. So distinguished a proficient was he in polite learning, that he opened a school in his monastery for teaching the sons of the nobility the arts of versification, and the elegancies of composition. Yet although philology was the object, he was not unfamiliar with the fashionable philosophy he was not only a poet and a rhetorician, "but a geometrician, an astronomer, a theologist, and a disputant. He is 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. To enumerate Lydgate's pieces would "be to write a catalogue of a little library. No poet "seems to have possessed a greater versatility of talents. "He moves with equal ease in every mode of composi"tion. His hymns and his ballads have the same "degree of merit: and whether his subject be the life of a hermit or a hero, of St. Austin or Guy Earl of Warwick, ludicrous or legendary, religious or "romantic, a history or an allegory, he writes with "facility. His transitions were rapid from works of "the most serious and laborious kind to sallies of levity, "and pieces of popular entertainment. His muse nas of universal access; and he was not only the poet of "his monastery, but of the world in general. If a "disguising was intended by the company of goldsmiths, a mask before his majesty at Eltham, a may-game for the sheriff's and aldermen of London, a mumming before the lord-mayor, a procession of pageants from "the creation for the festival of Corpus Christi, or a "carol for the coronation, Lydgate was consulted, and

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gave the poetry.-His manner is naturally verbose "and diffuse. This circumstance contributed, in no "small degree, to give a clearness and a fluency to "his phraseology. For the same reason he is often "tedious and languid. His chief excellence is in

"description, especially where the subject admits a "flowery diction. He is seldom pathetic or animated." The following description of his writings is extracted from his "History of the Life and Death of Hector."

I am a monk by my profession,

In Berry, call'd John Lydgate by my name,
And wear a habit of perfection;

(Although my life agrees not with the same)
That meddle should with things spiritual,
As I must needs confess unto you all.
But seeing that I did herein proceed,
At his command,* whom I could not refuse,
I humbly do beseech all those that read,
Or leasure have this story to peruse,
If any fault therein they find to be
Or error, that committed is by me;
That they will of their gentleness take pain,
The rather to correct and mend the same
Then rashly to condemn it with disdain ;
For well I wot it is not without blame,

Because I know the verse therein is wrong,
As being some too short and some too long.
For Chaucer that my master was, and knew
What did belong to writing verse and prose,
Ne're stumbled at small faults, nor yet did view
With scornful eye the works and books of those
That in his time did write, nor yet would taunt
At any man, to fear him or to daunt.

He died about the year 1641, and was buried in the Abbey Church at Bury. His tomb, which was destroyed at the dissolution, is said to have had this inscription:

• King Henry IV.

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