LYDGATE, the monk of Bury, was also the scholar of Chaucer: our monk had
not passed a whole sequestered life in his Benedictine monastery; he had
journeyed through France and Italy, and was familiar with the writings
of Dante, and Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and of Alain Chartier. The
delectable catalogue of his writings, great and small, exceeds two
hundred and fifty, and may not yet be complete, for they lie scattered
in their manuscript state. A great multitude of writings, the incessant
movements of a single mind, will at first convey to us a sense of
magnitude; and in this magnitude, if we observe the greatest possible
diversity of parts, and, if we may use the term, the flashings of the
most changeable contrasts, we must place such a universal talent among
the phenomena of literature.
LYDGATE composed epics, which were the lasting favourites of two whole
centuries--so long were classical repetitions of "Troy" and of "Thebes"
not found irksome.[1] In his graver hours he instructed the world by
ethical descants, Aesopian fables, and quaint proverbs; fixed their
wonder by saintly legends and veracious chronicles; and disported in
amorous ditties, and many a merrie tale: translating or inventing,
labour or levity, rounded the unconscious day of the versifying monk. We
descend from the "Siege of Troy," a romance of nearly thirty thousand
lines, which long graced the oriel window, to the freer vein of humour
of "London Lick-penny," which opens the street scenery of London in the
fourteenth century, and "The Prioresse and her Three Wooers," that
exquisitely ludicrous narrative ballad for the people.[2]
Ritson, whose rabid hostility to the clerical character was part of his
constitutional malady, whether it related to "a mendacious prelate" or
"a stinking monk," after having expended twenty pages in the mere
enumeration of the titles of Lydgate's writings, heartlessly hints at
the "cart-loads of rubbish of a voluminous poetaster; a prosaic and
drivelling monk." And this is greedily seized on by the hand of the
bibliographer. Percy and Ellis, too, mention DAN LYDGATE with contempt.
Critics often find it convenient to resemble dogs, by barking one after
the other, without any other cause than the first bark of a brother, who
had only bayed the moon. It now seemed concluded that the rhyming monk
was to be dismissed for ever. A very credible witness, however, at last
deposed that "Lydgate has been oftener abused than read."[3] And now Mr.
Hallam tells us that "GRAY, no light authority, speaks more favourably
of Lydgate than either Warton or Ellis;" and this nervous writer, with
his accustomed correct discernment, has alleged a valid reason why Gray
excelled them in this criticism; for "great poets have often the taste
to discern, and the candour to acknowledge, those beauties which are
latent amidst the tedious dulness of their humbler brethren."
Warton has, however, afforded three copious chapters on Lydgate, which
are half as much as his enthusiasm bestowed on Chaucer. A Gothic monk,
composing ancient romances, was a subject too congenial to have been
neglected by the historian of our poetry, and he has limned and
illuminated the feudal priest with the love of the votary, who deemed,
in his "lone-hours,"
Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways
Of hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers.
His miniature is exquisitely touched. "He was not only the poet of his
monastery, but of the world in general. If a _disguising_ was intended
by the company of goldsmiths, a _mask_ before his majesty, a _may-game_
for the sheriffs and aldermen of London, a _mumming_ before the
lord-mayor, a procession of _pageants_ for the festival of Corpus
Christi, or a _carol_ for the coronation, Lydgate was consulted, and
gave the poetry."[4]
Mr. HALLAM objects that "the attention fails in the school-boy stories
of Thebes and Troy; but it seems probable that Lydgate would have been a
better poet in satire upon his own times, or delineation of their
manners--themes which would have gratified us much more than the fate of
princes."
This is relatively true--true as regards some of us, but not at all as
respects Lydgate, nor the people of his age, nor the king and the
princes who commanded themes congenial with their military character,
and their simple tastes, romantically charming the readers of two
centuries. If our critic, in the exercise of his energetic faculties,
lives out of the necromancy of the old Romaunt, afar from Thebes and
Troy, Thomas Warton was cradled among the children of fancy, and in his
rovings had tasted their wild honey. The only works of Lydgate which
attracted his attention were precisely these tedious "Fate of Princes"
and "The Troy Book."
The other modern critics--Ritson, Percy, and Ellis--had but a slight
knowledge of DAN[5] LYDGATE. They have generally acted on the pressure
of the moment, to get up a hasty court of _Pie-poudre_--that fugitive
tribunal held at fairs--to determine on the case of a culprit even
before they could shake the dust off their feet. But time calls for an
arrest of hasty judgments, or brings forward some illustrious advocate
to reverse the judicial decision, or set forth the misfortunes of the
accused. Two, most eminent in genius, stand by the side of the monk of
Bury--COLERIDGE and GRAY. Coleridge has left us his protest in favour of
Lydgate, for he deeply regrets that in the general collection of our
poets, the unpoetic editor "had not substituted _the whole of Lydgate's
works from the manuscript extant_, for the almost worthless Gower."[6]
Gray alone has taken an enlarged view of the state of our poetry and our
language at this period. When that master-spirit abandoned the history
of our poetry from his fastidious delicacy or from his learned
indolence, because Warton had projected it, English literature sustained
an irreparable loss.[7] In Gray surely we have lost a literary historian
such as the world has not yet had; so rare is that genius who happily
combines qualities apparently incompatible. In his superior learning,
his subtle taste, his deeper thought, and his more vigorous sense, we
should have found the elements of a more philosophical criticism, with a
more searching and comprehensive intellect, than can be awarded to our
old favourite, THOMAS WARTON. In the neglected quartos of GRAY we
discover that the poet had set earnestly to work on the archaeology of
our poetry; we also find in his works those noble versions of the
northern Scalds, and the Welsh bards, which he designed to have
introduced into his history; thus to have impressed on us a perfect
notion of a national poetry, by poetry itself; a rare good fortune
which does not enliven the toil of prosaic critics or verbal
interpreters. Gray had found the manuscripts of Lydgate at Cambridge,
and has made them a vehicle for the most beautiful disquisitions. On a
passage in Lydgate, the poet-critic developes a curious occurrence in
the history of the poetic art--namely, that proneness to minute
circumstances which lengthens the strains of our elder poets, and which
the impatience of modern taste rejects as tediousness; yet this will be
found to be "the essence of poetry and oratory." This topic is
important; and as I can neither add nor dare to take away from this
perfect criticism, I submit to the task of transcribing what I am sure
will come to most of my readers in all its freshness and novelty.
Our ancient poet seems to be apologising for telling long stories, which
he asserts cannot be told "in wordes few"--
For a storye which is not plainly told,
But constreyned under _wordes few_
For lack of truth, wher they ben new or olde,
Men by reporte cannot the matter shewe;
These oakes greate be not down yhewe
First at a stroke, but by a _long processe_;
Nor long stories a word may not expresse.