in London, to collate the numerous manuscripts, purify the poet's text, and bring out into bold relief the father of English letters.

A FAMOUS PERIOD.

Richard's reign lasted only twenty-two years, but it produced the three great names of early English genius. Longland, grave, sad, stern, uncompromising, founded a new school of political thought, and expressed the sorrows and the hopes of the people. He lived, probably, in poverty and neglect, a wandering Homer; he died, perhaps, the death of the reformer. Yet it is not likely that his stirring song was ever forgotten in England. Chaucer was the gallant courtier, the friend of nobles and princes. His fertile fancy was full of the gay and the fair; his life was a succession of triumphs. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in that peaceful cloister, the Poet's Corner, where, at his side, the genius of England sleeps; and here, after the flight of five centuries, the pilgrims from every land where the language he almost created is spoken come to muse reverently over his ashes. Wycliffe is known as the first of the reformers.

OCCLEVE; LYDGATE; PECOCK. 53

DECLINE OF THE INTELLECT. 1400-1509.

The brief vigor of the English intellect was followed by a sudden decay. From the death of Chaucer until the reign of Henry VIII. for more than a century-the barren land produced only a few dull authors. The savage cruelty of Henry V., the Wars of the Roses, the vices or the rigor of Edward IV., Richard III., Henry VII., left no room for the finer powers, and the chief business of Englishmen was the bitterest pains of civil war. The poets who follow Chaucer are poor imitators, dull scholars; English prose was nearly lost. In the century that followed his death nearly all that Chaucer had done for English literature was forgotten. It seemed scarcely possible that Chaucer's earlier poems-far less the inimitable Tales-should ever be emulated in England.

Occleve; Lydgate; Pecock. - Occleve is remembered chiefly for the love he bore for Chaucer. He imitated, he remembered him; he had his portrait drawn upon his manuscript of the Tales. He sings:

Thou wert acquainted with Chaucer, Pardie,
God save his soul!

The first founder of our fair language.

Occleve wrote his Governail of Princes in Henry V.'s time, and was a profuse writer. Bishop Pecock, about the same period, wrote against the Lollards in tolerable prose. Lydgate, in the reign of Henry VI., produced his masks, pageants, an infinite number of poems. He was one of the most prolific and the most diffuse of writers. He was a monk of Bury, and wrote the Tale of Princes, the Storie of Thebes, and the Troy Book. He died about 1461.

The Fifteenth Century; the Printingpress. In the close of the fifteenth century the ceaseless disorders of the times still weighed heavily upon the English intellect. A few poets sung some stirring ballads; Chevy Chase or Robin Hood sprung from the suffering people. Hawes, late in the century, wrote his Pastime of Pleasure; Barklay prepared, perhaps, his translation of Brandt's Ship of Fools, and, with liberal additions, published it in 1508. But one priceless gift the century brought to England, that contained within itself the germs of many wonderful changes. In 1477, Caxton, clerk, merchant, ambassador, author, set up his printing-press at Westminster. It is humiliating to the pride of the human intellect to remember how much of its prog

THE NEW PERIOD.

55

ress is due to the rude, imperfect machine that was brought over from the Continent, and to the labors of the learned and industrious printer and author who governed it with such patient skill. Caxton printed more than eighty works. His rivals and successors, who settled in St. Paul's Churchyard, and afterward in Paternoster Row, enlarged the number; but for nearly a century the printer was chiefly employed upon editions of Chaucer and Gower, Lydgate, Barklay, Hawes; and Troilus and Creseide, the Canterbury Tales, and the Flower and the Leaf, were the only real poetry that issued from the early English press.

THE NEW PERIOD.

But from 1509 to 1558-from Henry VIII. to Elizabeth-the mysterious machine which Caxton had brought to England began to produce a startling change. Books multiplied; the classics were translated or read in the original; Grocyn taught Greek at Oxford; Henry himself, a learned and cultivated savage, loved the new literature intensely. Ascham dedicates to him his Toxophilus. He knows, in his better mood, how to value Sir Thomas More. A passion for learning spread through all England; young

women studied Greek; Mary and Elizabeth were excellent scholars; and the wonderful boy, Edward VI., at ten years old read Latin, and at twelve kept a valuable journal. The only poet of the age was the learned, careless, satirical Skelton; its literature chiefly theological. Cranmer produced bis Bible and Prayer-book, and the animated sermons of Ridley and Latimer startled and informed the national conscience. Yet English prose and poetry were almost forgotten or despised. Ascham, in 1545, expresses his contempt for his own tongue and those who wrote in it, but admits that he who would write well must use the language of the people. The only resource the literary men of the age found was to study Chaucer, their early model. So poor was English literature that its cultivators were forced to turn back one hundred and fifty years, and follow the great master of the days of Richard II.*

A Sudden Change.-Suddenly there fell upon England such a rain of rare and priceless intellects-such an abundance of poets,

Even Gascoigne, in 1576, founds his Certayne notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English upon Chaucer. It is "our father Chaucer" whose example is his authority.