latter assertion by saying, "Hoccleve in this poem (De Regimine Principum), and in others, often celebrates Humphrey duke of Gloucester." As to these others, Warton probably had grounds for what he advanced; but the poem De Regimine Principum makes no mention of Humphrey, nor was it at all likely that it should; since, at the time of Hoccleve's promulgating that work, Humphrey was neither duke of Gloucester nor of an age to be a patron. There are passages of the poems to Prince John which almost imply his being then under a tutor; and Humphrey was the youngest of the princes. In all the seventeen pieces published by Mr. Mason there is certainly not a word of Humphrey. One of the dates assigned as his era in Tanner's Bibliotheca is 1454, which is very likely to have been the year of his decease.

Bale tells us "that Hoccleve had imbibed the religious tenets of Wicliff and Berengarius," and seemingly quotes a passage from Walsingham to prove it. As the passage stands in the printed copies of Walsingham, it has been grievously misquoted by Bale. The historian is speaking of Wicliff in the year 1381, and says of him: 66 re-assumens damnatas opiniones Berengarii et Ocklefe." This passage would make Wicliff an Ocklesian, instead of Ocklefe a Wicliffian, and could never relate to our Hoccleve, then a boy not twelve years old. Indeed, from comparing Walsingham with himself in his Ypodeigma Neustria, and with the Monk of Evesham's Life of Richard II., the words "et Ocklefe" seem rather some blundering interpolation. Our author had so little imbibed the tenets of that early reformer, that he frequently shows himself much too violent against Wicliff's followers.

Many circumstances of Hoccleve's private life are displayed in his poems. Private anecdotes in the least degree characteristic are always amusing; and when they bring us acquainted with peculiar habits and manners after the intervention of centuries, can hardly fail to interest readers of curiosity. The subject of one of his poems is the poet's own dissipated life. Nor is his propensity to extravagance unaccountable, since the example of the second Richard's courts was always before his eyes in his youth.

The poetical merit of our author has been variously estimated by those who have treated of it. It would be idle to refer to Pitts or Bale as arbiters in this way; but William Browne, who had an easy vein of harmonious poetry, and cannot well be supposed an incompetent judge on the subject, has incorporated into his Shepheard's Pipe a whole poem written by Hoccleve, translated from the Gesta Romanorum, and entitled The Story of Jonathas. Browne soon after says:

"Well I wot, the man that first

Sung this lay did quench his thirst
Deeply as did ever one

In the Muses' Helicon."

Mr. Warton, in his dissertation on the Gesta Romanorum, directly dissents from the writer of these praises; yet his chief reason for doing so seems not to be warranted by the real state of the fact. His words are: "He (Hoccleve) has given no sort of embellishment to his original." Now, though Hoccleve adheres closely to the substance of the story, yet he embellishes it in various places by judicious insertions of his own, and of which there are no traces at all in his original. The tale would absolutely appear in certain parts of it as if it had been mutilated, were it not for these additional touches. In some of them there is a strain of pleasantry similar to that of Prior. In his earlier volume of the History of English Poetry, Mr. Warton speaks unfavourably of the talents of Hoccleve, calling him " a feeble writer as a poet;" and goes so far as to say, "the titles of his pieces indicate coldness of genius." And may not such a remark be said to indicate some degree of prejudice? Many an admirable poem would stand in danger of being consigned to oblivion, if an index expurgatorius should be framed from the bare construction of titles. The very person here stigmatised for coldness of genius is (a few pages after) deservedly commended by his censurer for expressing great warmth of sensibility in some lines to the memory of Chaucer.

Mr. Warton's final sentence against Hoccleve is grounded on supposing in him a total want of "invention and fancy." But there are strong reasons for believing that none of Hoccleve's poems published by Mr. Mason, except two of the shortest, could ever have been seen by Mr. Warton. Of the remaining fifteen, the title only of one is to be seen in Tanner, who could give no intimation as to where the poem itself existed. Mr. Tyrwhitt knew of no other мs. in which any of these fifteen pieces were to be met with. Had some of these been seen by Mr. Warton, it is highly probable that he would have perceived more originality in Hoccleve than he deemed him possessed of, and consequently have held him in a somewhat higher degree of estimation. There is at least through the whole of the poems of Hoccleve printed by Mr. Mason a negative merit, which Mr. Warton must have accounted singular in a poet of so early a period, since this very merit is alleged by himself against allowing the authenticity of the poems called Rowley's, the merit that there are no anachronisms, no incongruous combinations. It is not meant to be asserted that Hoccleve was always free from any defect of this sort;

but certainly the 2000 verses on different subjects published by Mr. Mason are entirely clear of that absurdity which Mr. Warton deemed inseparable from the productions of Hoccleve's era. Hoccleve's chief productions are: The Tale of Jonathas and of a wicked Woman; Fable of a certain Emperess; A Prologue of the Nine Lessons that are read over All-Hallow Day; The most profitable and holsomest Craft, that is to cunne (know) and lerne to dye; Consolation offered by an Old Man; Pentasticcon to the King; Mercy, as defined by Saint Austin; Dialogue to a Friend; Dialogue between Occleef and a Beggar; The Letter of Cupid; Verses to an Empty Purse. But Hoccleve's most considerable poem is his translation of Ægidius De Regimine Principum, or the Art of Government; a work highly esteemed in the middle ages, and translated early into Hebrew, French, Spanish, and English. In those days ecclesiastics and schoolmen presumed to dictate to kings, and to give rules for administering states, drawn from the narrow circle of speculation, and conceived amid the pedantries of a cloister. Hoccleve's paraphrase was never printed. It was from a drawing by Hoccleve, on a manuscript of this poem, now in the British Museum (мss. Reg. 17 D. vi. 1), that the artist employed by Nicholas Brigham derived the materials for his portrait of Chaucer on his monument in Westminster Abbey. Hoccleve, then, was an artist as well as an author.

JOHN LYDGATE.

(1375-1460.)

Among the immediate successors of Chaucer in the series of English poets, John, surnamed, from the place of his birth in Suffolk, Lydgate, is confessedly the most tolerable. The time of his birth is not exactly known; but as he was ordained a subdeacon of Bury 1389, a deacon in 1393, and a priest in 1397, even if we suppose him to have received the first ordination at fourteen years of age, he cannot have been born later than 1375, that is to say twenty-five years before the death of Chaucer. This date naturally assigns him to the reign of Henry V., at whose command he undertook his metrical history of the siege of Troy, the best and most popular of his almost innumerable productions.

After a short education at Oxford, Lydgate travelled into France and Italy, and returned a complete master of the language and literature of both countries. He chiefly studied the Italian and French poets, particularly Dante, Boccaccio, and Alain Chartier ;