GRAY.

The two last verses are admirable.

MASON.

Probably you will think the following account of boys pursuing a squirrel inferior to Warner; but the minute circumstances of the detail are excellently touched. It comes from the Pastorals of William Browne.

Then, as a nimble squirrel from the wood,
Ranging the hedges for his filberd-food,
Sits partly on a bough, his brown nuts cracking,
And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking,
Till (with their crooks and bags,) a sort of boys
(To share with him) come with so great a noise,
That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke,
And for his life, leap to a neighbour oak;
Thence to a beech, thence to a row of ashes;
Whilst thro' the quagmire and red-water plashes,
The boys run dabbling through thick and thin;
One tears his hose, another breaks his shin;
This torn and tattered, hath with much ado
Got by the briers; and that hath lost his shoe ;
This drops his band; that headlong falls for haste;
Another cries behind for being last:

With sticks and stones, and many a sounding hollow,
The little fool, with no small sport, they follow.
Britannia's Pastorals, Song 5.

There is not a school-boy within a hundred miles of Trumpington-street, who would not recognise

this homely sketch. You hear the hedges break down beneath the impetuous rout, and their echoing shouts, and the sobs of that urchin who,—and this is the most graphic touch of all—

Cries behind for being last.

GRAY.

Your learning has led you some distance from the Benedictine monastery. Let us try to find our way back to Lydgate.

MASON.

There is a beautiful passage in May's poem upon Rosamond, of whose charms Daniel speaks in that exquisite line

Framing thine eye the star of thy ill-fate.

It deserves praise for its general merits; but I only mention it now to quote the pleasing lines in which, by a very natural circumstance, he portrays the melancholy of the rustic youth, who chanced to behold the fair recluse of Woodstock

What now, alas, can wake, or fair avail
His love-sick mind? No Whitsun-ale can please,
No jingling Morris-dances give him ease;
The pipe and tabor have no sound at all,
Nor to the May-pole can his measures call;
Although invited by the merriest lasses,
How little for these former joys he passes?
But sits at home with folded arms.

GRAY.

You ought to edit an anthology,-Mason's Garland would sound prettily. But to return to Lydgate. The following scene refers to Carnace, who, having been condemned to death, sends this testimony of her dying love to her guilty brother, Macareus:

Out of her swoonè when she did abbraide,
Knowing no mean but death in her distrèsse,
To her brother full piteouslie she said:

"Cause of my sorrow, roote of

my

heavinesse,

That whilom were source of my gladnesse,
When both our joys by will were so disposed,
Under one key our hearts to be enclosed.

This is mine end, I may it not astart;
O, brother mine, there is no more to say;
Lowly beseeching with all mine whole heart,
For to remember specially I pray,

If it befall my little son to die,

That thou may'st after some mind on us have,
Suffer us both be buried in one grave.

I hold him straitly tween my armès twain,
Thou and Nature laidè on me this charge;
He guiltless, mustè with me suffer paine:
And sith thou art at freedom and at large,
Let kindness our love not so discharge,
But have a mind, wherever that thou be,
Once on a day upon my child and me.

On thee and me dependeth the trespace
Touching our guilt and our great offence;
But, welaway! most àngelik of face,

Our childè, young in his pure innocence,
Shall again right suffer death's violence,
Tender of limb, God wot, full guiltěless,
The goodly fair that lieth here speechless.
A mouth he has, but wordis hath he none;
Cannot complain, alas! for none outrage,
Nor grutcheth not, but lies here all alone,
Still as a lamb, most weak of his visàge;
What heart of steel could do to him damage,
Or suffer him die, beholding the manere
And look benigne of his twain eyen clere.
B. i., fol. 39.

Mark with what consummate art the pathos of the concluding lines is worked up; the look benigne of his twain eyen clere, is deliciously descriptive of infantine innocence and trustfulness. Here, too, you trace a pen of great tenderness. She is writing her letter.

Awhapped all in drede,

In her right hand her pen ygan to quake,
And a sharp sword to make her heartè bleed,
In her left hand her father hath her take,
And most her sorrow was for her child's sake.
Upon whose face in her arm sleepyng

Full many a tear she wept in complǎyning.

It is in these soft touches of pensiveness and simplicity that Lydgate excels; in sublimity, force, and

the distinctness of his bolder images, he follows Chaucer at a great distance. He never glares upon our eyes with those dashes of a tempestuous pencil, that strike gleams of supernatural light over the pictures of the poet of Woodstock. We see no temple

Of Mars Armipotent,

Wrought all of burnished steel.

No statue of the God of War, while

A wolf there stood before him, at his feet,
With eyen red, and of a man he eat.

No banner, unspreading its "glistering folds.”— His greatness is the result of many separate touches; of what we will call the cumulative art of poetry; as in the striking portrait of the Deity.

God hath a thousand handès to chastysè,
A thousand dartès of punicion,

A thousand bowès made in uncouth wyse,
A thousand arblastes bent in his doungeon*,
Ordeind each for castigacion.

Here the magnitude is composed of units,—individually they are nothing; but the effect of the whole is imposing.

MASON.

Did Lydgate influence his age?

* Castle or Palace.