For they must take in hand
To preach and to withstand
All manner of objections;
For bishops have protections,
They say, to do corrections,
But they have no affections
To take the said directions.
In such manner of cases,
Men say, they bear no faces
To occupy such places,

To sow the seed of graces;
Their hearts are so fainted
And they be so attainted
With covetise and ambition
And other superstition
That they be deaf and dumb
And play silence and glum,

Can say nothing but Mum.
They occupy them so
With singing Placebo

They will no farther go.

They had liever to please

And take their worldly ease Than to take on hand

FLINCHING FROM DUTY. (Brandt.)

Worshipfully to withstand Such temporal war and bate As now is made of late

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With all solemnitie

For their indemnitie.

For they will have no loss
Of a penny nor of a cross 3
Of their predial lands
That cometh to their hands,
And as far as they dare set
All is fish that cometh to net.

VAIN CARE. (Brandt.)

Building royally

Their mansions curiously

With turrets and with towers With halls and with bowers,

Stretching to the stars

With glass windows and bars;

Hanging about the walls
Cloths of gold and palls,

Arras of rich array

Fresh as flowers in May,

With Dame Diana naked,
How lusty Venus quaked
And how Cupid shaked
His dart and bent his bow
For to shoot a crow,
And how Paris of Troy
Danced a lege de moy,

Made lusty sport and joy

With Dame Helen the queen.

With such stories bidene

Their chambers well beseen;

With triumphs of Cæsar

And of Pompeius war,

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3 The cross on pieces of money led to a saying of an empty purse tha

the devil might dance in it.

Or of the temporaltie,

That doth think or ween

That his conscience be not clean,

And feeleth himself sick
Or touched on the quick,

Such grace God them send
Themself to amend,
For I will not pretend
Any man to offend.
Wherefore as thinketh me
Great idiots they be,
And little grace they have
This treatise to deprave;
Nor will hear no preaching
Nor no virtuous teaching,
Nor will have no reciting
Of any virtuous writing,
Will know none intelligence
To reform their negligence,

But live still out of fashion

To their own damnation.

To do shame they have no shame,

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That nothing is availing.

"The preachers with evil hailing

Shall they daunt us prelates

That be their primates?

Not so hardy on their pates! 3

Hark, how the losel prates

With a wide weasand!

Avaunt, Sir Guy of Gaunt!?

Have no cause to say

That I speak out of the way. Of no good bishop speak I,

Prate of thy matins and thy mass,

And let our matters pass!

Good monk nor good clerk,

Nor yet of no good werk.

But my recounting is

Of them that do amis

How darest thou, dawcock, mell!

How darest thou, losel,

Allegate the Gospel

Against us of the Counsel?

8 Not so bold, on pain of their heads.

9 Mr. Dyce has pointed out that the Sir Guy referred to once or twice by Dunbar, in reference to "the spreit of Gy," once also by Sir David Lindsay, when he tells James V. how he played with him in his childhood, and appeared "sumtime like the grislie gaist of Gy," 1a not the Sir Guy of romance, but a Guy of Alost, who, in the year 1423, much troubled his widow by appearing to her eight days after his death, whereupon she took counsel with the friars of her city. &c. Dyce adds: "As Gaunt is the old name of Ghent, and as Alost is about thirteen miles from that city, perhaps the reader may be inclined to think-what I should greatly doubt-that Skelton also alludes to the same story." In one of the flyting poems against Garnische, Skelton refers to the same ghost in the lines

"She callyd yow Sir Gy of Gaunt, Nosyd lyke an olyfaunt."

10 Deuyas, deuce-ace.

11 Little Ease, a term for the pillory or stocks, or an ingenious un of both.

Toward the Port Salu

Of our Saviour Jesu,

Sach grace that He us send

To rectify and amend

Thingés that are amis

When that His pleasure is.

Amen.

Clout." Let us hear a little song of Skelton's before parting from him, and let it be written without change of its old spelling. He was laureated as poet by his university-that being a kind of graduation common in his time-and at court answered with these lines the question, "Why wear ye CALLIOPE embroidered with letters of gold?"

Calliope

As ye may se
Regent is she

Of poetes al,

Which gave to me
The high degre
Laureat to be

Of fame royall;

Whose name enrolde
With silke and golde

I dare be bolde

Thus for to were.
Of her I holde
And her housholde;
Though I wax olde

And somdele sere,
Yet is she fayne,
Voyde of disdayn,
Me to retayne

Her serviture.

With her certayne

I wyll remayne,

As my souerayne

Moost of pleasure,

Maulgre tous malheureux.

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FAC-SIMILE OF WOODCUT FROM THE LAST PAGE OF R. KELE'S EDITION OF "COLIN CLOUT."

There are charming passages in Skelton's book of "Philip Sparrow," written in the person of a simplehearted nun, who laments the death of a pet bird; but that poem is too long to be added to "Colin

Well-chosen extracts from "Philip Sparrow" and from "Why come ye nat to Court?" will be found in "Specimens of English Literature, from 1394 to 1579," with introduction, notes, and glossarial index, by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat. This LIBRARY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE is not meant to supply students with text-books, but to bring, if it may be, into many thousand homes a sense of the delightfulness and helpfulness of the best English writing in all times. I seek, as far as I can, to bring the soul of England near even to the poorest handicraftsman who can read, and am not afraid to ask any sensible boy or girl to take so much trouble as the notes show to be necessary for a reasonable understanding of each piece. Some readers who have here had their first taste of our old literature, and desire closer acquaintance with it, may be glad now to be told where they can get the necessary help. In 1867 Dr. Richard Morris published a volume of "Specimens of Early English selected from the Chief English Authors, A.D. 1250-A.D. 1400, with Grammatical Introduction, Notes and Glossary." The work next appeared in two volumes or parts, under the joint editorship of Dr. Morris and the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, our two foremost workers at old English; Part I. containing specimens of the earliest literature of England to the end of the thirteenth century; Part II. illustrating the literature of the fourteenth century, A.D. 1298-A.D. 1393. Mr. Skeat has added to these the book just cited, forming practically a Part III., as "Specimens of English Literature from A.D. 1394 to A.D. 1579." These three books give a series of specimens of Early English Literature taken, without change of spelling, from the old MSS. and books, and furnished with due aids to a full study of their language. By thorough use of them any one may go far on the way to an exact knowledge of Early English.

The Scottish poet William Dunbar served James IV. of Scotland. The career of the Scottish poet David Lindsay-called sometimes the poet of the Scottish Reformation-is associated with the life of James V. When, in August, 1513, James IV. fell at Flodden, Lindsay, second son of Lord Lindsay of Byres, was a young man of about three-and-twenty. page in immediate attendance upon the one-year-old son of the fallen king. He remained in attendance on the child, who had become King James V. In the spring of 1514, the mother of the infant king married again. She was sister to King Henry VIII., being that Margaret of England whose Scottish marriage William Dunbar had celebrated in his poem of "The Thistle and the Rose." She took in second marriage the young Archibald, Earl of Angus, nephew to Gavin Douglas, the poet. As Regent, in the interests of England, she was superseded in May. 1515, by the Duke of Albany, who was of royal Scottish blood and of French training. Feuds followed. The Douglases, into whose family the Queen Dowager had married, were identified with the English or unpatriotic party. The Duke of Albany. more Frenchman than Scot in training, escaped when he could to Paris. In April, 1520, there was a battle in the streets of Edinburgh between Douglases and Hamiltons; the encounter known as "Cleanse the Causeway," in which seventy-two were killed. Archibald Angus then held Edinburgh with an