Chaucer's - During a large part of the fifteenth century, imitation of Chaucer was a prevailing fashion. This would be an evidence of excellent literary taste, if it were not English Fol for the fact that Gower was commonly ranked lowers with him and imitated in only a less degree. It is well to note, too, that Chaucer was imitated least where he was most original and masterful that he was imitated most where he was chiefly medieval, French, allegorical, a child of his age. Among his English followers, two call for special mention. The first of these is Thomas Occleve. His principal work is a poem called Gouvernail of Princes. It deals with the duties of rulers, and was dedicated to the Prince of Wales, Shakespeare's Prince Hal, afterward Henry V. The best thing about the poem is its revelation of Occleve's love and admiration for his friend and master, Chaucer. Among other praises, he writes: Occleve O maister dere and fader reverent, My maister Chaucer! floure of eloquence, O universal fadir in science, Allas! that thou thyne excellent prudence In thy bedde mortel myghtest not bequethe; What eyled Dethe? allas, why wold he sle thee? A better poet and much more voluminous writer was John Lydgate, "the Monk of Bury." His Storie of Thebes is represented as a new Canterbury Tale Lydgate told by him after joining the pilgrims on their journey. His other chief poems are the Troye Book and the Falles of Princes, both of which titles sufficiently suggest the subjects of the poems. He seems to have been. able to turn his hand to almost any kind of literary work, and produced more writings than anybody has yet been found willing to publish. One of his best known minor pieces is his ballad of London Lickpenny, which gives vivid and realistic pictures of the London life of his time. Followers James I of The best Chaucerian tradition was carried on, not by English, but by Scotch poets. Theirs is about the only vigorous and inspired poetical work of the fif- Chaucer's teenth century. First and personally most inter- Scotch esting of these is James I of Scotland. Captured at the age of eleven, the young prince spent nineteen years as a prisoner in England. Poetry became one of the diversions of his captivity; and he wrote among other things The King's Quair (Book). From the win- Scotland dows of his prison- possibly Windsor Castle - the king sees a beautiful lady walking in the garden and falls in love with her. The poem proceeds, in the customary allegorical manner, to tell the story of this love. It is supposed to be based upon the real experience of the prince's love for Lady Jane Beaufort, whom he married at the close of his captivity in 1424. The incident of the lady in the garden reminds us of Emelye seen by the prisoners Palamon and Arcite, in Chaucer's Knight's Tale. Probably later than the middle of the century, Robert Henryson produced a number of excellent poems. He was a follower of Chaucer, but did not lack originality. His Testament of Creseide undertakes to complete Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and is in the old romantic manner. Robyne and Makyne has been called "the earliest English pastoral." Probably his most vigorous and interesting work is in his Fables, where he is lively, imaginative, and humorous. Not the least of his good qualities is his sincere and direct feeling for nature. Henryson Two other Scotch poets carry us along toward the end of the fifteenth century and over into the sixteenth; but as they, too, represent the Chaucerian tradition, it is perhaps best to consider them here. The first of these, and the best poet of the Scotch group, was William Dun- Dunbar bar. His poems are too numerous for detailed mention, but a few may be cited as typical. The Thistle and the Rose is an allegory commemorating the marriage of James IV of Scotland with the Princess Margaret of England. The Golden Targe is another allegory, full of picturesque description. The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins is a grotesque ballad, realistic, forcible, and imaginative. In the Lament for the Makers (Poets), he utters a moving complaint on the death of the poets, known and unknown, from Chaucer to Maister Walter Kennedy. These poems represent a body of work both forcible and poetical, ranging from pathos to satire, from coarse realism to pure fancy, from allegorical moralizing to fine natural description. The last Scotch poet to be mentioned is Douglas Gawain Douglas, son of the Earl of Angus and Bishop of Dunkeld. Poetry belonged to his earlier life, and was later abandoned for politics. His Palice of Honour and King Hart (Heart) are moral allegories, the latter dealing with the heart of man. His best work is in his translation of Virgil's Æneid. Like the other Scotch poets, he has an eye for the poetical aspects of nature. During the fifteenth century many romances were written, both in verse and in prose. Romantic literature was thus carried forward, sometimes with a large infusion of the moral or religious element. Through the prose romances and various other works of more or less importance, prose style was considerably advanced in its development. The greatest romance and the greatest prose of the century are to be found together in Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, written about 1470. By its addition of a moral and religious tone, it becomes As one of the Malory's Morte d'Arthur perhaps the most typical work of the age. earliest works to be printed (in 1485) at Caxton's new press, it reminds us that the introduction of printing is bringing about new conditions of immense importance to literature. Malory's work is a great collection of Arthurian legends, brought into a fair degree of unity about the central conceptions of King Arthur and the Round Table. It may in a sense be said to gather up into a single book the whole spirit of medieval romance. For Malory is not a great inventor, but only a moderately skilful compiler. He gathers his materials from the best of the old French romancers, arranges them in rather confusing fashion, and thus reproduces for us the long labor of the Middle Ages on the great subject-matter of Arthurian story. What Malory had above all things was the power of lively and interesting narrative clothed in vivid style. He did not invent his story, but he knew how to tell it. His credit, however, does not end here. To have caught the spirit of Arthurian legend, to have seized and held its features of greatest and most enduring interest, to have embalmed forever the fast-fading charm of the Middle Ages, is to have done much for modern literature and for the modern world; and this, when all proper deductions have been made, Malory may be justly said to have accomplished. It is to him, rather than to his French or English predecessors, that our modern poets of Arthurian legend have gone for their inspiration and their materials. Alongside of their work, his still stands and keeps its attraction. It is one of the great romances of literature, a book that men will not willingly let die. The Ballads It is a little difficult to determine the precise point in literary history at which the Ballads should be taken up for consideration. It seems probable that ballads were made and sung as early as the thirteenth century, and that they continued to prevail throughout the Middle English Period. On the other hand, many ballads of undoubtedly medieval origin exist to-day in a form of English as late as that of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. While it is impossible to date most of the individual ballads, and while they probably belong to widely separated periods, it seems probable that most of the older and more genuine ballads were produced in or before the fifteenth century, and that they took on their present form at about that time. Few, if any, are in a language of earlier date. It has even been asserted with much plausibility that the fifteenth century was the great time of balladmaking in England and that many of the ballads on older subjects were written at that period. So far as the ballads may be associated with fifteenth-century literature, they distinctly help to raise its tone and to better its average quality. Many of them are finely poetical, and most of them are quaint and charming in effect. The ballads are the poetry of the common people. Individual authors are unknown; and in a very true sense the poems may be regarded as the product of popular feeling and imagination. Whoever gave them their first form, they have been resung, retouched, reshaped, until they bear the stamp of the people rather than of any individual poets. English literature is comparatively poor in genuine folk-poetry; and so far as the ballads are really popular, they are for that reason all the more precious. Ballad subjects cover a wide field. Many of them are Character of either historical or romantic or supernatural, the Ballads while the ballads of the Scottish border and those associated with Robin Hood form special groups of great interest. Most true ballads combine narrative substance with a lyric form; they are stories to be sung. Some are more purely lyric, and they shade off gradually into the strict lyric type. The verse is often crude, the tone is often coarse, but not seldom they have a genuine music and a high degree of poetic beauty. Some of the best and oldest deal with themes common to many lands and to many peoples. This is an evidence of the wide and unaccountable diffusion of popular legends and beliefs, but not at all an evidence of foreign influence or of imita |