Of Norfolk was this reve, of which I tell, A Sompnour was ther with us in that place, That had a fire-red cherubinnes' face, For sauseflemes he was, with eyen narwe.d As hote he was, and likerous as a sparwe, With scalled browes blake, and pilled berd: Of his visage children were sore aferd. Ther n'as quicksilver, litarge, ne brimston, Boras, ceruse, ne oile of tartre non, Ne oinément that wolde clense or bite, That him might helpen of his whelkes white, Ne of the knobbes sitting on his chekes. Wel loved he garlike, onions, and lekes. And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood. Than wolde he speke, and crie as he were wood. And whan that he wel dronken had the win, Than wold he speken no word but Latin. A fewè termès coude he, two or three, That he had lerned out of som decree; No wonder is, he herd it all the day.. And eke ye knowen wel, how that a jay Can clepen watte, as wel as can the pope. But who so wolde in other thing him grope, Than hadde he spent all his philosophie, Ay, Questio quid juris, wolde he crie. He was a gentil harlot and a kind; A twelve month, and excuse him at the full. In danger hadde he at his owen gise And knew hir conseil, and was of hir rede.s With him ther rode a gentil Pardonere Cherub's face.- Red pimpled face.-d Narrow, close.• Spots. The name harlot was anciently given to men as well as women, and without any bad signification. "When the word harlot," says Gifford, "became (like knave) a term of reproach, it was appropriated solely to males in Jonson's days it was applied indiscriminately to both sexes; though without any determinate import; and it was not till long afterwards that it was restricted to females, and to the sense which it now bears. To derive harlot from Arlotte, the mistress of the Duke of Normandy, is ridicu lous." (BEN JONSON, vol. iii. p. 312.) "The word harlott," This sompnour bare to him a stiff burdoun, But of his craft, fro Berwike unto Ware, He was in chirche a noble ecclesiast. SIMILE. And as the newe-abashed nightingale, Jonson told Drummond, "was taken from Arlotte, who was the mother of William the Conqueror; a Rogue from the Latine, Erro, by putting a G to it." (ARCH. SCOT. vol. iv. p. 100.) This supposition of Jonson's has been discovered since Gifford wrote.-C. Advised. An alehouse sign. Vide note (e) in preceding page. Supposed by Stevens to be Runceval Hall, in Oxford.- Sang the bass. Yellow.-m Ounces.n Shreds. Brimful.- Budget.- Covering of a pillow.r Morsel. Sail.- Assisted, took.-u A mixed metal of the colour of brass.-v Tricks.-w Dupes.- Best.-y Part of the mass.- Polish. JOHN GOWER. [Born about 1325. Died about 1409.] LITTLE is known of Gower's personal history. "The proud tradition in the Marquis of Stafford's family," says Mr. Todd,a" has been, and still is, that he was of Stitenham; and who would not consider the dignity of his genealogy augmented, by enrolling among its worthies the moral Gower?" His effigies in the church of St. Mary Overies is often inaccurately described as having a garland of ivy and roses on the head. It is, in fact, a chaplet of roses, such as, Thynne says, was anciently worn by knights; a circumstance which is favourable to the suspicion that has been suggested, of his having been of the rank of knighthood. If Thynne's assertion, respecting the time of the lawyers first entering the temple be correct, it will be difficult to reconcile it with the tradition of Gower's having been a student there in his youth. By Chaucer's manner of addressing Gower, the latter appears to have been the elder. He was attached to Thomas of Woodstock, as Chaucer was to John of Gaunt. The two poets appear to have been at one time cordial friends, but ultimately to have quarrelled. Gower tells us himself that he was blind in his old age. From his will it appears that he was living in 1408. His bequests to several churches and hospitals, and his legacy to his wife of 100l., of all his valuable goods, and of the rents arising from his manors of Southwell in the county of Nottingham, and of Multon in the county of Suffolk, undeniably prove that he was rich. One of his three great works, the Speculum Meditantis, a poem in French, is erroneously described by Mr. Godwin and others as treating of conjugal fidelity. In an account of its contents in a MS. in Trinity College, Cambridge, we are told that its principal subject is the repentance of a sinner. The Vox Clamantis, in Latin, relates to the insurrection of the commons, in the reign of Richard II. The Confessio Amantis, in English, is a dialogue between a lover and his confessor, who is a priest of Venus, and who explains, by apposite stories, and philosophical illustrations all the evil affections of the heart which impede, or counteract the progress and success of the tender passion. His writings exhibit all the crude erudition and science of his age; a knowledge sufficient to have been the fuel of genius, if Gower had possessed its fire. THE TALE OF THE COFFERS OR CASKETS, &c., IN THE FIFTH BOOK OF THE "CONFESSIO AMANTIS." IN a cronique thus I rede: Some of long time him hadden served, These oldè men upon this thing, Of one semblance, and of one make, So lich,d that no lif thilke throwe. • In Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer by the Rev. J. H. Todd. Themselves.- Them. d Like bish. Saw.-f Jewels, or precious stones.- RubMingled.-i Early.- Fetched. Those. Both of his chambre, and of his halle, There shall no man his hap despise : Of that ye unavanced be, Ye shall be richè men for ever: Now chese' and take which you is lever, They knelen all, and with one vois Tho toke this knyght a yerd" on honde, And seith' the king how thilke same What good they have as they suppose, Which was fulfild with straw and stones: This king than in the same stede, Anon that other cofre undede, Where as they sihen gret richesse, Wel more than they couthen gesse. Lo! seith the king, now may ye see I Choose.-m Go.-n At last. Their.-p Lose.- Then. A rod. Every one.- Sayeth to the king. That ther is no defalte in me; OF THE GRATIFICATION WHICH THE LOVER'S PASSION RECEIVES FROM THE SENSE OF HEARING. IN THE SIXTII BOOK. RIGHT as mine eye with his loke Right so myn eare in his estate, I may heare of my lady price: So fair that no wher is none so: Ne so far forth restauratif, (I say as for myn ownè lif,) And if it so befalle among, Whan I heare of her voice the steven, Me thinketh it is a blisse of heven. And eke in other wise also, Full oftè time it falleth so, For whan I of her loves rede, Myn eare with the tale I fede, And with the lust of her histoire Sometime I draw into memoire, How sorrow may not ever last; And so hope cometh in at last. Loved. c Born. JOHN LYDGATE. [Born, 1375. Died, 1461.] Was born at a place of that name in Suffolk, about the year 1375. His translation (taken through the medium of Laurence's version) of Boccaccio's Fall of Princes, was begun while Henry VI. was in France, where that king never was, but when he went to be crowned at Paris, in 1432. Lydgate was then above threescore. He was a monk of the Benedictine order, at St. Edmund's Bury, and in 1423 was elected prior of Hatfield Brodhook, but the following year had license to return to his convent again. His condition, one would imagine, should have supplied him with the necessaries of life, yet he more than once complains to his patron, Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, of his wants; and he shows distinctly in one passage, that he did not dislike a little more wine than his convent allowed him. He was full thirty years of age when Chaucer died, whom he calls his master, and who probably was so in a literal sense. His Fall of Princes is rather a paraphrase than a translation of his original. He disclaims the idea of writing "a stile briefe and compendious." A great story he compares to a great oak, which is not to be attacked with a single stroke, but by "a long processe." Gray has pointed out beauties in this writer which had eluded the research, or the taste, of former critics. "I pretend not," says Gray, "to set him on a level with Chaucer, but he certainly comes the nearest to him of any contemporary writer I am acquainted with. His choice of expression and the smoothness of his verse far surpass both Gower and Occleve. He wanted not art in raising the more tender emotions of the mind." Of these he gives several examples. The finest of these, perhaps, is the following passage, descriptive of maternal agony and tender ness. CANACE, CONDEMNED TO DEATH BY HER FATHER ÆOLUS, SENDS TO HER GUILTY BROTHER MACAREUS THE LAST TESTIMONY OF HER UNHAPPY PASSION. BOOK I. FOLIO 39. Out of her swoone when she did abbraide, Shall agayn right suffer death's violence, Tender of limbes, God wote, full guiltělesse The goodly faire, that lieth here speechless. A mouth he has, but wordis hath he none; SCOTTISH POETRY. THE origin of the Lowland Scottish language has been a fruitful subject of controversy. Like the English, it is of Gothic materials; and, at a certain distance of time from the Norman conquest, is found to contain, as well as its sister dialect of the South, a considerable mixture of French. According to one theory, those Gothic elements of Scotch existed in the Lowlands, anterior to the Anglo-Saxon settlements in England, among the Picts, a Scandinavian race: the subsequent mixture of French words arose from the French connections of Scotland, and the settlement of Normans among her people; and thus, by the Pictish and Saxon dialects meeting, and an infusion of French being afterwards superadded, the Scottish language arose, independent of modern English, though necessarily similar, from the similarity of its materials. According to another theory, the Picts were not Goths, but Cambro-British, a Celtic race, like the Western Scots who subdued and blended with the Picts, under Kenneth Mac Alpine. Of the same Celtic race were also the Britons of Strathclyde, and the ancient people of Galloway. In Galloway, though the Saxons overran that peninsula, they are affirmed to have left but little of their blood, and little of their language. In the ninth century, Galloway was new-peopled by the Irish Cruithne, and at the end of the eleventh century was universally inhabited by a Gaelic people. At this latter period, the common language of all Scotland, with the exception of Lothian, and a corner of Caithness, was the Gaelic; and in the twelfth century commenced the progress of the English language into Scotland Proper:* so that Scotch is only migrated English. In support of the opposite system, an assertor, better known than trusted, namely Pinkerton, has maintained, that "there is not a shadow of proof that the Gaelic language was ever at all spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland." Yet the author of Caledonia has given not mere shadows of proof, but very strong grounds, for concluding that, in the first place, to the north of the Forth and Clyde, with the exception of Scandinavian settlements admitted to have been made in Orkney, Caithness, a strip of Sutherland, and partially in the Hebrides, a Gothic dialect was unknown in ancient Scotland. Amidst the arguments to this effect deduced from the topography of (the supposed Gothic) Pictland, in which, Mr. Chalmers affirms, that not a Saxon name is to be found older than the twelfth century; and amidst the evidences accumulated from the laws, religion, Lothian, now containing the Scottish metropolis, was, after several fluctuations of possession, annexed to the territory of Scotland in 1020; but even in the time of antiquities, and manners of North Britain, one recorded fact appears sufficiently striking. When the assembled clergy of Scotland met Malcolm Caenmore and Queen Margaret, the Saxon princess was unable to understand their language. Her husband, who had learnt English, was obliged to be their interpreter. All the clergy of Pictland, we are told, were at that time Irish; but among a people with a Gaelic king, and a Gaelic clergy, is it conceivable that the Gaelic language should not have been commonly spoken? With regard to Galloway, or south-western Scotland, the paucity of Saxon names in that peninsula (keeping apart pure or modern English ones) are pronounced, by Mr. G. Chalmers, to show the establishments of the Saxons to have been few and temporary, and their language to have been thinly scattered, in comparison with the Celtic. As we turn to the south-east of Scotland, it is inferred from topography, that the Saxons of Lothian never permanently settled to the westward of the Avon; while the numerous Celtic names which reach as far as the Tweed, evince that the Gaelic language not only prevailed in proper Scotland, but overflowed her boundaries, and, like her arms, made inroads on the Saxon soil. Mr. Ellis, in discussing this subject, seems to have been startled by the difficulty of supposing the language of England to have superseded the native Gaelic in Scotland, solely in consequence of Saxon migrations to the north, in the reign of Malcolm Caenmore. Malcolm undoubtedly married a Saxon princess, who brought to Scotland her relations and domestics. Many Saxons also fled into Scotland from the violences of the Norman conquest. Malcolm gave them an asylum, and during his incursions into Cumberland and Northumberland, carried off so many young captives, that English persons were to be seen in every house and village of his dominions, in the reign of David I. But, on the death of Malcolm, the Saxon followers, both of Edgar Atheling and Margaret, were driven away by the enmity of the Gaelic people. Those expelled Saxons must have been the gentry, while the captives, since they were seen in a subsequent age, must have been retained, as being servile, or vileyns. The fact of the expulsion of Margaret and Edgar Atheling's followers, is recorded in the Saxon Chronicle. It speaks pretty clearly for the general Gaelicism of the Scotch at that period; and it also prepares us for what is afterwards so fully illustrated by the author of Caledonia, viz. that it was the new David I. is spoken of as not a part of Scotland. David addresses his "faithful subjects of all Scotland and of Lothian." |