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,* "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 100%., 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 Eng

* In 'Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer,' by the Rev. H. J. Todd.

lish, 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.

JOHN LYDGATE

[Born, 1379. Died, 1461.]

WAS born at a place of that name in Suffolk, about the year 1379. 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 1 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 licence 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 a passage descriptive of maternal agony and tenderness.*

JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND.

[Born, 1394. Died, Feb. 1436-7.]

JAMES I. of Scotland was born in the year 1394, and became heir apparent to the Scottish crown by the death of his brother, prince David. Taken prisoner at sea by the English at ten years of age, he received some compensation for his cruel detention by an excellent education. It appears that he accompanied Henry V. into France, and there distinguished himself by his skill and bravery. On his return to his native country he endeavoured during too short a reign to strengthen the rights of the crown and people against a tyrannical aristocracy. He was the first who convoked commissioners from the shires in place of the numerous lesser barons, and he endeavoured to create a house of commons in Scotland by separating the representatives of the people from the peers; but his nobility foresaw the effects of his scheme, and too successfully resisted it. After clearing the lowlands of Scotland from feudal oppression, he visited the highlands, and crushed several refractory chieftains. Some instances of his justice are recorded which rather resemble the cruelty of the times in which he lived than his own personal character; but in such times Justice herself wears a horrible aspect. One Macdonald, a petty chieftain of the north, displeased with a widow on his estate for threatening to appeal to the king, had ordered her feet to be shod with iron plates nailed to the soles, and then insultingly told her that she was thus armed against the rough roads. The widow, however, found means to send her story to James, who seized the savage, with twelve of his associates, whom he shod with iron in a similar manner, and, having exposed

* [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.]

them for several days in Edinburgh, gave them over to the exe

cutioner.

While a prisoner in Windsor Castle James had seen and admired the beautiful Lady Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset. Few royal attachments have been so romantic and so happy. His poem entitled 'The Quair,'* in which he pathetically laments his captivity, was devoted to the celebration of this lady, whom he obtained at last in marriage, together with his liberty, as Henry conceived that his union with the granddaughter of the Duke of Lancaster might bind the Scottish monarch to the interests of England.

James perished by assassination in the 42nd year of his age, leaving behind him the example of a patriot king, and of a man of genius universally accomplished.

ROBERT HENRYSONE.

[Born, 1425. Died, 1495.]

NOTHING is known of the life of Henrysone but that he was a schoolmaster at Dunfermline. Lord Hailes supposes his office to have been preceptor of youth in the Benedictine convent of that place. Besides a continuation of Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cresseide,' he wrote a number of fables, of which MS. copies are preserved in the Scotch Advocates' Library.

WILLIAM DUNBAR.

[Born, 1460? Died, 1520?]

THE little that is known of Dunbar has been gleaned from the complaints in his own poetry, and from the abuse of his contemporary Kennedy, which is chiefly directed against his poverty. From the colophon of one of his poems, dated at Oxford, it has been suggested, as a conjecture, that he studied at that university.† * Quair is the old Scotch word for a book.

t[Dunbar in 1477 was entered among the Determinantes, or Bachelors of Arts, at Salvator's College, St. Andrew's, and in 1479 he took his degree there of Master of Arts. (See Laing's Dunbar,' vol. i. p. 9.) That he studied at Oxford at any time is highly improbable.]

By his own account, he travelled through France and England as a novice of the Franciscan order; and, in that capacity, confesses that he was guilty of sins, probably professional frauds, from the stain of which the holy water could not cleanse him. On his return to Scotland he commemorated the nuptials of James IV. with Margaret Tudor, in his poem of 'The Thistle and Rose; but we find that James turned a deaf ear to his remonstrances for a benefice, and that the queen exerted her influence in his behalf ineffectually.* Yet, from the verses on his dancing in the queen's chamber, it appears that he was received at court on familiar terms.

SIR DAVID LYNDSAY.

[Born, 1490? Died, 1557.]

DAVID LYNDSAY, according to the conjecture of his latest editor,† was born in 1490. He was educated at St. Andrew's, and, leaving that university, probably about the age of nineteen, became the page and companion of James V. during the prince's childhood, not his tutor, as has been sometimes inaccurately stated. When the young king burst from the faction which had oppressed himself and his people, Lyndsay published his 'Dream,' a poem on the miseries which Scotland had suffered during the minority. In 1530 the king appointed him Lyon King at Arms, and a grant of knighthood, as usual, accompanied the office. In that capacity he went several times abroad, and was one of those who were sent to demand a princess of the Imperial line for the Scottish sovereign. James having, however, changed his mind to a connexion with France, and having at length fixed his choice on the Princess Magdalene, Lyndsay was sent to attend upon her to Scotland; but her death, happening six weeks after her arrival, occasioned another poem from our author, entitled 'The Deploracion.' On the arrival of Mary of Guise, to supply her

* [In 1500 he received a yearly pension of ten pounds from King James, "to be pait to him for al the dais of his life, or quhil he be promovit be our Souerane Lord to a benefice of xl li. or aboue." The pension was raised to xx li. in 1507, and to lxxx li. in 1510, the latter to be paid till such time as he should receive a benefice of one hundred pounds or upwards.]

Mr. G. Chalmers.