'fixed our tongue once for all.' His style was as purely English as More's, and of what kind it was may be read in our Bibles, for our authorized version is still in great part his translation. In this work, Tyndale was assisted by WILLIAM ROY, a runaway friar; his friend ROGERS, the first martyr in Mary's reign, added to it a translation of the Apocrypha, and made up what was wanting in Tyndale's translation from Chronicles to Malachi, out of COVERDALE'S translation. It was this Bible which, revised by Coverdale and edited and re-edited as Cromwell's Bible, 1539, and again as Cranmer's Bible, 1540, was set up in every parish church in England. It got north into Scotland and made the Lowland English more like the London English, and, after its revisal in 1611, went with the Puritan fathers to New England, and fixed the standard of English in America. There is no other book which has had so great an influence on the style of English literature. In Edward VI.'s reign CRANMER edited the English Prayer Book, 1549-52. Its English is a good deal mixed with Latin words, and its style is sometimes weak and heavy, but, on the whole, it is a fine example of stately prose. LATIMER, on the contrary, whose Sermon on the Ploughers and other sermons were delivered in 1549 and in 1552, wrote in a plain, shrewd style, which by its humor and rude directness made him the first preacher of his day." BIBLIOGRAPHY. CAXTON AND MORE.-I. Disraeli's Amenities of Lit.; C. Knight's Old Printer and Mod. Press; Mackintosh's Life of More; J. Campbell's Lord Chan. of Eng.; F. Myers' Lectures on Great Men; E. Lodge's Portraits; Froude's Hist. of Eng.; Fort. Rev., v. 9, 1868, and v. 14, 1870; N. Br. Rev., v. 30, 1859. LESSON 14. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY POETRY.-"The only literature which reached any strength was poetical, but even that is almost wholly confined to the reign of Henry VI. The new day of poetry still went on, but its noon in Chaucer was now succeeded by the grey afternoon of Lydgate, and the dull 6 twilight of Occleve. JOHN LYDGATE, a monk of Bury, who was thirty years of age when Chaucer died, wrote nothing of importance till Henry VI.'s reign. Though a long-winded and third-rate poet, he was a delightful man; fresh, natural, and happy even to his old age, when he recalls himself as a boy weeping for nought, and anon after glad.' There was scarcely any literary work he could not do. He rhymed history, ballads, and legends till the monastery was delighted. He made pageants for Henry VI., masks and May-games for aldermen, mummeries for the Lord Mayor, and satirical ballads on the follies of the day. Educated at Oxford, a traveller in France and Italy, he knew the literature of his time, and he even dabbled in the sciences. He enjoyed everything, but had not the power of adequately expressing his enjoyment. He was as much a lover of nature as was Chaucer, but he cannot make us feel the beauty of nature as Chaucer does. It is his story-telling which brings him closest to Chaucer. His three chief poems are the Falls of Princes, The Storie of Thebes, and the Troye Book. The first is a translation of a book of Boccaccio's. It tells the tragic fates of great men from the time of Adam to the capture of King John of France, at Poitiers. There is a touch of the drama in the plan, which was suggested by the pageants of the time. The dead princes appear before Boccaccio pensive in his library, and each relates his downfall. The Storie of Thebes is an additional Canterbury Tale, and the Troye Book is a version from the French of the prose romance of Guido della Colonna, a Sicilian poet, if the book be not in truth originally French. The Complaint of the Black Knight, usually given to Chaucer, is stated to be Lydgate's by Shirley, the contemporary of him and of Chaucer. I should like to be able to call him the author of the pretty little poem called the Cuckoo and the Nightingale, included in Chaucer's works. But its authorship is unknown. THOMAS OCCLEVE, who wrote chiefly in Henry V.'s reign, about 1420, was nothing but a bad versifier. His one merit is that he loved Chaucer. With his loss the whole land smartith,' he says, and he breaks out into a kind of rapture once: ‘Thou wert acquainted with Chaucer! Pardie, The first finder of our faire langage.' And it is in the MS. of his longest poem, The Governail of Princes, that he caused to be drawn, with 'fond idolatry,' the portrait of his master. With this long piece of verse we mark the decay of the poetry of England. Romances and lays were still translated; there were verses written on such subjects as hunting and alchemy. Caxton himself produced a poem; but the only thing here worth noticing is, that at the end of the century some of our ballads were printed. Ballads, lays, and fragments of romances had been sung in England from the earliest times, and popular tales and jokes took form in short lyric pieces to be accompanied by music and dancing. We have seen war celebrated in Minot's songs, and the political ballad is represented by the lampoon made by some follower of Simon de Montfort on the day of the battle of Lewes, and by the Elegy on Edward I.'s Death. But the ballad went over the whole land among the people. The trader, the apprentices, the poor of the cities, and the peasantry had their own songs. They tended to collect them-selves round some legendary name, like Robin Hood, or some historical character made legendary, like Randolf, Earl of Chester. Sloth, in Piers Plowman's Vision, does not know his paternoster, but he does know the rhymes of these heroes. A crowd of minstrels sang them through city and village. The very friar sang them, and made his Englissch swete upon his tunge.' A collection of Robin Hood ballads was soon printed under the title of A Lytel Geste of Robin Hood, by Wynken de Worde. The Nut Brown Maid, The Battle of Otterburn, and Chevy Chase may belong to the end of the century, though probably not in the form we possess them. It was not, however, till much later that any collection of ballads was made; and few, as we possess them, can be dated farther back than the reign of Elizabeth." From Chevy Chase. (Prof. Child's edition.) And a vowe to God mayd he, The fattiste hartes in all Cheviat He sayd he wold kill, and cary them away: Then the Persè owt of Banborowe cam, With him a myghteè meany;4 With fifteen hondrith archares bold off blood and bone, He sayd, "It was the Duglas promys But I wyste" he wold faylle, verament:" At the laste a squyar of Northombelonde He was war a" the doughetie Doglas comynge, The dougheti Dogglas on a stede He rode att his men beforne; His armor glytteryde as dyd a glede;8 "Tell me whos men ye ar," he says, Who gave youe leave to hunte in this Chyviat chays, The first mane that ever him an answear mayd, 66 We wyll not tell the whoys men we ar," he says, 64 But we wyll hount hear in this chays, The fattiste hartes in all Chyviat We have kyld, and cast to carry them a-way:" "Be my troth," sayd the doughtè Dogglas agayn, "Ther-for the ton3 of us shall de1 this day." Then sayd the doughtè Doglas Unto the lord Persè: "To kyll all thes giltles men, But, Persè, thowe art a lord of lande, I am a yerle callyd within my contrè; And do the battell off the and of me." Then bespayke a squyar off Northombarlonde, "It shall never be told in Sothe-Ynglonde," he says, 66 |