John Lydgate, the monk of Bury, may justly claim to have been the most prolific writer for illustration that lived before the invention of printing. His Daunce of Machabre was written to accompany the great paintings set on the north cloister wall of old St. Pauls; his Legend of St. George accompanied paintings going round the Armorers' Hall in London; Bycorne and Chiche∣vache was composed for 'a worthy citizen of London' to accom∣pany the portrayed figures; the Kings of England went with me∣dallion portraits of the sovereigns, as old MSS. still show us; the Pedigree was written around a great genealogical tree; while the Pitys, Prayers and Laments were all composed, as were many others, to hang on the church wall beside a painted image or scene.

The life of Holy Job is a piece composed for the same pur∣pose by an anonymous imitator soon after Lydgate's death. Its stanzas were intended to describe scenes painted in miniature on some fine MS. of vellum, for some well-born person's moral edification. The original MS. has long since disappeared, and the legend alone remains, the first extended notice of Job in English verse.

Readers of folk-tales will be amused at the grotesque anec∣dote of the reward which Job gave the merry minstrels, as they sang for his consolation. It is interesting to note, that while each of the other stanzas is preceded by a brief Latin text of which the stanza is an expansion, stanza 18, which tells this anecdote, has no Latin heading. I incline therefore to believe, unless there is evidence to the contrary, that the scabs which turned to gold must be a late interpolation from some English folk-tale. Other readers will doubtless sigh, as they observe one more proof of the degradation into which English prosody fell, when Chaucer's immediate influence was gone and the sense of rhythm seemed, for the moment, lost. The author of Holy Job was no ignorant rhymester, but a man who enjoyed new terms as much as any poet of the Renaissance. He strove to add a polish to his lines, but strove in vain. As a curiosity, the poem he wrought deserves preservation; but it is little more.

The two poems printed below, I believe for the first time, are so close to the manner of Lydgate as to make their inser∣tion in an edition of Lydgate's works almost necessary. In the absence of direct testimony, however, I have forborne adding them to the already overburdened Lydgate canon, and place them here, as illustrations of the Chaucerian school under Lydgate's influence.

The continual use of final -e as a syllable in the line makes it fairly certain that the poems were composed soon after Chau∣cer's death. The manuscript, indeed, from which I copy the texts, Bodley Tanner 346, is often dated as near to 1400. Pro∣fessor Schick, who employs it as the base of his Temple of Glas, considers it written very soon after that date. The handwriting, however, while undeniably early XV century, is not to so closely limited.

Professor Skeat, in his edition of Chaucer (I, 54) quotes lines 88-9 of Poem I as illustration of the 'extremely rare Chau∣cerian word spelt radevore in the Legend of Good Women'. No other notice, I believe, has been given of the poems.

Poem II seems to me to be a try at a triple ballade, and I have divided its stanzas accordingly, choosing to suppose one stanza of the first set omitted. The carelessness of the general transcription seems to justify such a theory. His carelessness is not confined to MS. T, for MS. F (Univ. Lf. Camb. Ff. 1. 6) also omits a stanza. The latter text is very likely a later copy from the original of T. In doubtful lines, such as I 64, where the reckless T-scribe rushes in and makes nonsense, the F-scribe discreetly omits words he does not understand.

Of the literary merit of these curious pieces there is nothing to say. They furnish most excellent illustrations of that text of Lydgate's, in The cok hath Lowe Shoon, which he himself so often disobeyed,

Some time in the first half of the fifteenth century, per∣haps soon after Lydgate had completed his Legend of St. Edmund (1433), a northern writer was stimulated to set one of the most popular of late mediaeval stories, that of the Three Kings, in the style of the monk of Bury.

Robert Thornton of Lincoln, in his holograph ms. in the British Museum, alone preserved this version, the only poetical treatment of the story in English. A missing folio at the com∣mencement of the tale contained probably the first hundred lines of the poem, in which, if we may judge by the prose versions printed by Horstmann, the prophecy of Balaam was set forth, according to which the kingdoms of the East set a steadfast watch for the rising of the star of Jacob.

The use of rhyme royal for legend had been the fashion, ever since Lydgate, imitating Chaucer's Constance and Cecilie, had produced his Life of Our Lady, for King Henry V. The division of our poem into three books follows Lydgate's division of St. Edmund and St. Albon in a similar way. Like Lydgate, the poet went directly to Latin originals, abridging and expanding at his pleasure. His version of John of Hildesheim is, however, for more condensed than Lydgate's digressive renderings of his originals. The poet, if we may so call him, who translated our version omitted many of the "olde ensaumples" of John of Hildes∣heim, as the reader may see by comparing the list of exempla cited in cap. XII of the Latin text printed in Horstmann. On the other hand, the apostrophes to Herod and the kings which enliven our narrative seem original with our poet.

The exact provenance of the poem on the Three Kings can∣not be determined. The text, we know, was copied by a resident of Lincoln, and therefore we should naturally expect northern forms. But there are signs that the poem came from still further north. It is not impossible, indeed, that the poem comes from the other side of the Tweed; and, if so, it is probably the ear∣liest example of rhyme royal there composed. Such rhymes as was: clerenesse: hightnesse 14, saba: maa: egriscoula 105, knowe∣lage: homage 122, caluery: meny 174, nome: came: hame 210, lawe (n.): schewe (strowe) 230; blode: gude: wollande wode 252, lande: duellande 321; bore: byfore: thore 336, came: dame: hame 350, ansuere: were: are 378, euermore: wore (euermair: war) 410, hare (hair): bare 487,—to name only the rhymes of the first Passus—can be duplicated more easily in Henryson than in the dialect of Lincolnshire. Even more striking are some of the later rhymes, such as appostata: alswa: garte he birne and slaa 777, his: wyse: eyse (verb) 800, lafe (MS. lefe): gafe 842, devise: lyes (verb 3. pl. pr.): wiese 848. Were the poem in the hand of a Scots scribe, indeed, few would question its Scottish origin.

Upon the whole, the translation while not inspired, is straight∣forward and efficient. A student of metres would detect syllable∣counting rather than the natural flow of accented syllables as in line 145, "Theire trauelle þaym causede noo werynesse." But in general the lines run smoothly enough, and we must thank the author for avoiding what James I called "the rokkes of prolixite", on which so many fifteenth century workers were wrecked and cast away.

The present offering of Lydgatiana contains the texts of poems in a MS. of Edward IV's time, left anonymous by the scribe, but wrongly ascribed by John Stow, the Elizabethan anti∣quary, to Lydgate. His reason for this ascription must be that many genuine poems by Lydgate are found in the same codex. The Trinity MS., as may be inferred from a colophon, was in the possession of Roger Thorney, a citizen of London, and the patron who furthered the printing by Wynkyn de Worde of Tre∣visa's version of the De Proprietatibus Rerum. So de Worde tells us in his preface. It no doubt came originally from London. The ownership of the MS. by Thorney raises an interesting question as to the authorship of the two little childlike Prayers at bed and at uprising which are given below. They markedly resemble in metrical form and in tone the little God me Speed Printed by the editor, 'The Nation', N. Y., July 30, 1908. which Trevisa inserted at the beginning of his translation from Bartholomew. Thorney's interest in this work by Trevisa makes it possible that he had access to some other MS. by that author, from which he had the prayers copied.

Among the other poems printed here, that on the Battle of Barnet is the most interesting. It presents the popular London view of Edward IV, who had endeared himself to the citizens by knightly displays and by other means hardly so honourable. Of the religious poems little can be said. The Lament of Mary is a late attempt to rival the beautiful earlier lyrics in this manner, and does not bear the comparison well. The Life of St. Anne and the Psalms of the Passion seem to be the work of the author of Magnificentia Ecclesia, printed by me from this MS. some time ago. Publications of the Mod. Lang. Ass. of Am., Dec., 1909. The Birds' Matins, printed from MS. Harley 2251 as Lydgate's in Halliwell's edition of the Minor Poems, may also be by the same hand. Of all the poems, that on the Seven Deadly Sins approaches most closely in its imitation to the genuine work of Lydgate.

1. Hoc Factum Est a Domino. 2. A Prayer to Christ's Name. 3. Haue Mercy on me! 4. Salve Regina! 5. All Hayle, Mary! 6. Prayers to Mary and the Saints. 7. Lenvoy to Mary. 8. Regina Celi Letare. 9. The Five Joys of the Virgin. 10. Maria Virgo Assumpta Est! 11. An Acrostic on Maria. 12. John Marion's ABC to the Virgin. 13. An ABC to the Virgin, from a Leyden MS. 14. O Flos Pulcherrime!

The present instalment of fifteenth-century poems, written under apparent Lydgatian influence, contains some pieces of interest. The first of these, Hoc Factum est a Domino, rehearses an amusing list of typical scholastic questions, the answers to which are even now matters of debate. The mediaeval poet, however, bids man 'hoo' in such matters, and meekly turn to his creed. Why is pesti∣lence? Where was God ere there was aught? Why hath not every man alike? How did Henry V win Agincourt? Why did Duke Philip of Burgundy flee from Calais, and the Scots from Roxburghe (1436)? To all this there is but one answer, Hoc Factum est a Domino.

Of the poems which follow, the prayer to Christ's Name be∣longs with part I of Lydgate's Testament, in its adoration of the Sacred Name. The macaronic Salve Regina has many com∣panions in the century, closest of which in comparison is perhaps the Monk's Te Deum. The Prayers to Mary and the Saints, how∣ever, in rhythm and style are even closer to Lydgate's litany.

The Lenvoy and the three following poems, of unequal merit, resemble his Valentine and his Ballade in Commendation. One of them, the Regina Celi, has the same line, stanza, and refrain as the monk's piece of the same name; while all these pieces imitate more or less clearly the school of the Quia Amore Langueo. The Acrostic on Maria recalls the triple acrostic on the same name in Lydgate's poem Ave Jesse Virgula.

Of all these poems the authors are anonymous; though The Five Joys is ascribed by John Shirley in his Ashmole MS. 59 to 'an holy ankaresse of Mansfeld'. The only signed poem is John Marion's ABC to the Virgin, which is here printed with a com∣panion-piece of the same type. Both no doubt are due to Chau∣cer's ABC, the opening lines of which are unblushingly employed by Marion. But the feeble literary quality of the imitations makes one credit the theory that Chaucer's ABC came to them by way of Lydgate's Pilgrimage, in which, as is well known, his master's poem was inserted, like a gem in a ring.

The fourteenth poem is a rhapsody upon the Virgin, unequalled perhaps in the century. No sonnet-sequence of the '90s in Eliza∣beth's time could anatomize the lady of the poet's love more zest∣fully than this unknown waif of the mid-fifteenth century, preser∣ved in Thornton's manuscript. It is a far cry from the Love Rune to this debased style; and, like the closing of the theaters in 1642, one feels that a ban upon such poems would have been a benefit, rather than a restraint, to the poetry of Henry VI's day.