tedious winter, fill our hearts with the visionary prospect of a speedy summer; and we fondly anticipate a long continuance of gentle gales and vernal serenity. But winter returns with redoubled horrors: the clouds condense more formidably than before; and those tender buds and early blossoms which were called forth by the transient gleam of a temporary sunshine are nipped by frosts, and torn by tempests."

Thus, "most of the poets,” he adds, “ that immediately succeeded Chaucer, seem rather relapsing into barbarism, than availing themselves of those striking ornaments which his judgment and imagination had disclosed. They appear to have been insensible to his vigour of versification, and his flights of fancy. It was not, indeed, likely that a poet should soon arise equal to Chaucer: and it must be remembered that the national distractions which ensued had no small share in obstructing the exercise of those studies which delight in peace and repose. His successors, however, approach him in no degree of proportion *."

This exquisite illustration is one amongst a series from the pen of the same critic, which has con

* Vol. ii. 4to. edit. p. 51.

tributed to place the genius and character of the writings of Chaucer in their proper point of view. It had previously been supposed, from a too partial acquaintance with the works of our bard, that humour and delineation of character were the departments in which he could alone establish a claim to excellence; but it has been amply proved by the nistorian of our poetry, that to these provinces of his art were added the more peculiarly poetical ones which originate in a display not only of inventive and descriptive powers, but occasionally of those which unfold the emotions of pity and terror.

It will, therefore, be barely sufficient in this place to remind the reader, that whilst a vast majority of the Canterbury Tales and their Prologues exhibit the richest vein of humorous characterization, an equal opulency is discoverable both in these and other parts of his works, in the serious and more elevated flights of fancy and of feeling. Thus, as faithful delineations of the beauties of nature, what can be more fresh and distinct than many of the landscapes which he has given us in the Flower and Leaf, the Romaunt of the Rose, and the Complaint of the Black Knight? How splendid, and, at the same time, how frequently terrific and sublime is

the imagery, and even the incidents, in the wild but powerfully written tales of Palamon and Arcite, and Cambuscan, and with what deep and commiserating sympathy do we hang over the pathetic narratives of Troilus and Creseda and Patient Griseldis!

It is evident that a union of talents of this wide range must necessarily be of rare occurrence; nor can we wonder that a century should elapse before a poet in any high degree approaching the genius of Chaucer made his appearance in our island *.

Amongst those who may be reckoned the immediate successors of Chaucer, Lydgate is without doubt entitled, on the score at least of descriptive and pathetic powers, to more notice than he has yet obtained. In universality of genius, and especially in the departments of humour and characterpainting, he is immeasurably below his great predecessor; but there is a perspicuity in his diction, and a circumstantiality in his narration, which are sometimes truly pleasing, and he has given us several proofs of the exquisite tenderness of his heart. He has experienced, therefore, hard measure from Warton, when he declares him to have been "seldom pathetic," (Hist. of English Poetry, vol. ii. p 58); and still harder from Percy, Ritson, and Pinkerton, who have absolutely loaded him with contempt. It was reserved for Gray to do justice to this forgotten bard, who, though buried, as it were, beneath an immense mass of occasional, and therefore, in general, uninteresting verses, has every now and then a

Not, indeed, until DUNBAR arose in the sister kingdom, had we another instance of the combination

passage of truly redeeming power. Two instances of this kind are quoted by our great lyric poet, of which the second is beyond all praise, and shows how deeply the Monk of Bury could enter into the distresses of love and maternal fondness.

"Canace, condemned to death by Eolus her father, sends to her guilty brother Macareus the last testimony of her unhappy passion:

"Out of her swoonè when she did abbraide,

Knowing no mean but death in her distresse,
To her brother full piteouslie she said,

'Cause of my sorrowe, roote of my heavinesse,
That whilom were the sourse of my gladnesse;
When both our joys by wille were so disposed,
Under one key our hearts to be inclosed

"This is mine end, I may it not astarte;
O brother mine! there is no more to saye;
Lowly beseeching with all mine whole hearte,
For to remember specially, I praye;

If it befall my littel sonne to dye,

That thou mayst after some mynd on us have,
Suffer us both be buried in one grave.

“I hold him strictly twene my armè's twein,
Thou and nature laidè on me this charge;
He, guiltlesse, mustè with me suffer paine :
And sith thou art at freedome, and at large,
Let kindness oure love not so discharge,

of first-rate abilities for humour and comic painting,

with an equally powerful command over the higher

But have a minde, 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 angelik of face,
Oure childè, young in his pure innocence,
Shall agayn right suffer death's violence,
Tender of limbes, God wote, full guiltèless,
The goodly faire, that lieth here speechless.

"A mouth he has, but wordès hath he none;
Cannot complaine, alas! for none outrage,
Nor grutcheth not, but lies here all alone,
Still as a lambe, most meke of his visage.
What heart of stele could do to him damage,
Or suffer him dye, beholding the manere,
And looke benigne of his twein eyen clere ?'

"I stop here," says Gray, “not because there are not great beauties in the remainder of this epistle, but because Lydgate, in the three last stanzas of this extract, has touched the very heart-strings of compassion with so masterly a hand, as to merit a place among the greatest poets. The learned reader will see the resemblance they bear to one of the most admirable remnants of all antiquity, I mean the fragment of Simonides (unhappily it is but a fragment), preserved to us by Dionysius Halicarnassensis; and yet, I believe that no one will imagine that Lydgate had ever seen or heard of it. As to Ovid, from