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Scleight or engyne, fors or felonye,
Arn to feble to holden chanpartye1
Ageyns trouth, who that list take hede;
For at the end falshede may not spede
Tendure long; ye shul fynde it thus.

A fugitive poem of Lydgate, called The London Lyckpenny, is curious for the particulars it gives respecting the city of London in the early part of the fifteenth century. The poet has come to town in search of legal redress for some wrong, and visits, in succession, the King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, the Court of Chancery, and Westminster Hall.

The London Lyckpenny.

Within this hall, neither rich nor yet poor

Would do for me ought, although I should die : Which seeing, I gat me out of the door,

Where Flemings began on me for to cry: 'Master, what will you copen or buy? Fine felt hats? or spectacles to read?

Lay down your silver, and here you may speed.'

Then to Westminster gate I presently went,
When the sun was at high prime :
Cooks to me they took good intent,3

And proffered me bread, with ale and wine,
Ribs of beef, both fat and full fine;
A fair cloth they gan for to spread,

But, wanting money, I might not then speed.

Then unto London I did me hie,

Of all the land it beareth the prize; 'Hot peascods!' one began to cry;

Strawberry ripe, and cherries in the rise !'4
One bade me come near and buy some spice;
Pepper and saffron they gan me beed;"
But, for lack of money, I might not speed.

Then to the Cheap I gan me drawn,
Where much people I saw for to stand;
One offered me velvet, silk, and lawn;
Another he taketh me by the hand,

'Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land!'
I never was used to such things, indeed;
And, wanting money, I might not speed.

Then went I forth by London Stone,
Throughout all Canwick Street:

Drapers much cloth me offered anon;

Then comes me one cried 'Hot sheep's feet;'
One cried mackerel, rushes green, another gan
greet ;7

One bade me buy a hood to cover my head;
But, for want of money, I might not be sped.

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That I had lost among the throng;

To buy my own hood I thought it wrong: I knew it well, as I did my creed; But, for lack of money, I could not speed.

The taverner took me by the sleeve,

'Sir,' sith he, 'will you our wine assay?' I answered: "That can not much me grieve, A penny can do no more than it may ;' I drank a pint, and for it did pay; Yet, sore a-hungered from thence I yede, And, wanting money, I could not speed; &c.

ALEXANDER BARCLAY AND STEPHEN HAWES.

The Ship of Fools and the Pastime of Pleasure are the only poetical works of any importance in the reign of Henry VII. ALEXANDER BARCLAY (who was in orders, and survived till 1552) wrote several allegorical pieces and some eclogues-the latter supposed to be the first compositions of the kind attempted in the English language. But his greatest work is his Ship of Fools, printed in 1509. It is a translation from the German of Brandt, with additions from various quarters, including satirical portraits and sketches by Barclay of his own countrymen. His ship is freighted with fools of all kinds, but their folly is somewhat dull and tedious. Barclay, however, was an improver of the English language.

The Book-collector, or Bibliomaniac. From Barclay's Ship of Fools. That in this ship the chief place I govern, By this wide sea with fools wandering, The cause is plain and easy to discernStill am I busy book assembling; For to have plenty it is a pleasant thing In my conceit, and to have them aye in hand, But what they mean, do I not understand.

But yet I have them in great reverence

And honour, saving them from filth and ordure,
By often brushing and much diligence;
Full goodly bound in pleasant coverture
Of damask, satin, or else of velvet pure;

I keep them sure, fearing lest they should be lost,
For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.

STEPHEN HAWES was an allegorical poet of much more power. His Pastime of Pleasure, or the Historie of Grande Amour and La Bel Pucel, was written in 1506, dedicated to King Henryin whose court the poet held the office of groom of the privy-chamber-and printed in 1517 by Wynkyn de Worde. Two more editions were called for during the same century, in 1554 and 1555, and from this time it was known only to black-letter readers until, in 1846, it was reprinted by Mr Wright for the Percy Society; but even the convenience of easy access and modern type has not made Hawes much better known. His poem is long, and little interest is felt in his personified virtues. The Pastime of Pleasure, however, is a work of no ordinary poetical talent. It is full of thought, of ingenious analogy, and Occasionally of striking allegory. A few stanzas, stripped of the disused spelling, will shew the state of the language after Lydgate, of whom Hawes was a great admirer.

31

The Temple of Mars.

Beside this tower of old foundation,
There was a temple strongly edified,
To the high honour and reputation
Of the mighty Mars it was so fortified;
And for to know what it signified
I entered in, and saw of gold so pure
Of worthy Mars, the marvellous picture.

There was depainted all about the wall
The great destruction of the siege of Troy,
And the noble acts to reign memorial

Of the worthy Hector that was all their joy,
His dolorous death was hard to occoye;
And so when Hector was cast all down,
The hardy Troilus was most high of renown.

And as I cast my sight so aside,
Beholding Mars how wonderfully he stood
On a wheel top, with a lady of pride,
Haunced about, I thought nothing but good
But that she had two faces in one hood;
Yet I knelt down, and made my orison
To doughty Mars with great devotion.

Saying: 'O Mars! O god of the war!
The gentle load-star of an hardy heart,
Distil adown thy grace from so far,
To cause all fear from me to start,
That in the field I may right well subvert
The hideous monsters, and win the victory
Of the sturdy giants with famous chivalry.

'O prince of honour and of worthy fame!
O noble knights of old antiquity!

O redoubted courage, the causer of their name,
Whose worthy acts Fame caused to be
In books written, as ye well may see-
So give me grace right well to recure

The power of fame that shall so long endure.'

JOHN SKELTON.

Barclay, in his Ship of Fools, alludes to JOHN SKELTON, who was decked as poet-laureate at Oxford:

If they have smelled the arts trivial,

They count them poets high and heroical.

Skelton is certainly more of a trivial than a heroical poet. He was a satirist of great volubility, fearlessness, and scurrility. In attacking Cardinal Wolsey, for example, he alludes to his 'greasy genealogy.' The clergy were the special objects of his abuse, as with most of the old satirists. So early as 1483, Skelton appeared as a satirist; he was laureated in Oxford in 1489; and to escape from the vengeance of Wolsey, he took shelter in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, where he resided till his death in 1529. Skelton is a sort of rhyming Rabelais-as indelicate and gross, which with both was to some extent necessary as a cover to their satire. The copiousness of Skelton's language, and his command of rhyme in short rattling verses, prove the advance of the language. The works of Skelton were edited by the Rev. A. Dyce, and printed in 1843. The most poetical of his productions is entitled Philip Sparrow, an elegy on the death of a pet bird. A few lines from his Colin Clout will shew the torrent-like flow of his doggerel rhymes:

A Satire on the Clergy.
Thus I, Colin Clout,
As I go about,
And wandering as I walk,
I hear the people talk:
Men say for silver and gold
Mitres are bought and sold.
There shall no clergy oppose
A mitre nor a croze,
But a full purse—

A straw for God's curse!
What are they the worse?
For a simoniac

Is but a hermoniac,
And no more ye may make
Of simony, men say,
But a child's play;
Over this the foresaid lay
Report how the pope may
A holy anchorite call
Out of the stony wall,
And him a bishop make,
If he on him dare take
To keep so hard a rule
To ride upon a mule,
With gold all be-trapped,
In purple and pall be-lapped,
Some hatted and some capped,
Richly be-wrapped

(God wot to their great pains)
In rochets of fine reins,
White as morrow's milk
Their taberts of fine silk,

Their stirrups of mixed gold begared,

There may no cost be spared.

Their moils gold doth eat,

Their neighbours die for meat

What care they though Gill sweat,

Or Jack of the Noke?

The poor people they yoke
With summons and citations
And excommunications,

About churches and market:

The bishop on his carpet
Full soft doth sit-
This is a fearful fit

To hear the people jangle
How warily they wrangle!

Cardinal Wolsey.

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Our barons are so bold,
Into a mouse-hole they would
Run away and creep,
Like as many sheep,
Dare not look out a door,
For dread of the mastiff cur,
For dread of the butcher's dog
Would worry them like a hog.
For all their noble blood,
He plucks them by the hood,
And shakes them by the ear,
And brings them in such fear,
He baiteth them like a bear...
And beneath him they're so stout
That no man of them dare rout,
Duke, earl, baron, nor lord,
But to his sentence must accord;
Whether he be knight or squire,
All must follow his desire.

Skelton's serious poetry is greatly inferior to his ludicrous and satirical; but the following effusion of gallantry is not unworthy the pen of a laureate:

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