I.

In the autumn of the year 1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, the son of the Thames Street vintner, universally acknowledged the greatest poet of England, had been borne to his tomb in the transept of Westminster Abbey. Not far from him sleep the Plantagenet kings, his patrons, Edward III. and Richard II. wrapped in their golden robes. With them an epoch has drawn to its close; a new century begins, and this century is, for English thought, a century of decline, of repose, and of preparation.

So evident is the decline that even contemporaries perceive it; for a hundred years poets unceasingly mourn the death of Chaucer. They are no longer able to discover new ways; instead of looking forward as their master did, they turn, and stand with eyes fixed on him, and hands outstretched towards his tomb. An age seeking its ideal in the epoch that has just preceded it is an age of decline; so had been in past times the age of Statius, who had professed such a deep veneration for Virgil.

For a century thus the poets of England remain with their gaze fastened on the image of the singer they last heard, and at each generation their voice becomes weaker, like an echo that repeats another echo. Lydgate imitates Chaucer, and Stephen Hawes imitates Lydgate.[826]

Around and below them countless rhymers persist in following the old paths, not knowing that these paths have ceased to lead anywhere, and that the time has come to search for new ones. The most skilful add to the series of English fabliaux, borrowed from France; others put into rhyme, disfiguring them as they go along, romances of chivalry, lives of the saints, or chronicles of England and Scotland. Very numerous, nearly all devoid of talent, these patient, indefatigable word-joiners write in reality, they too, as M. Jourdain, "de la prose sans le savoir."[827]

These poets of the decline write for a society itself on the decline, and all move along, lulled by the same melody to a common death, out of which will come a new life that they can never know. The old feudal and clerical aristocracy changes, disappears, and decays; many of the great houses become extinct in the wars with France, or in the fierce battles of the Two Roses; the people gain by what the aristocracy lose. The clergy who keep aloof from military conflicts are also torn by internecine quarrels; they live in luxury; abuses publicly pointed out are not reformed; they are an object of envy to the prince and of scorn to the lower classes; they find themselves in the most dangerous situation, and do nothing to escape from it. Of warnings they have no lack; they receive no new endowments; they slumber; at the close of the century nothing will remain to them but an immense and frail dwelling, built on the sand, that a storm can blow over.

How innovate when versifying for a society about to end? Chaucer's successors do not innovate; they fasten their work to his works, and patch them together; they build in the shadow of his palace. They dream the same dreams on a May morning; they erect new Houses of Fame; they add a story to the "Canterbury Tales."[828]

A gift bestowed on them by a spiteful fairy makes the matter worse: they are incredibly prolific. All they write is poor, and the spiteful fairy, spiteful to us, has granted them the faculty to write thus, without any trouble, for ever. Up to this day Lydgate's works have baffled the attempts of the most enterprising literary societies; the Early English Text Society has some time ago begun to publish them; if it carries out the undertaking, it will be a proof of unparalleled endurance.

Lydgate and Hoccleve are the two principal successors of Chaucer. Lydgate, a monk of the monastery of Bury St. Edmund's,[829] a worthy man, it seems, if ever there was one, and industrious, and prolific, above all prolific, writes according to established standards, tales, lays,[830] fabliaux satires,[831] romances of chivalry, poetical debates, ballads of former times,[832] allegories, lives of the saints, love poems, fables[833]; five thousand verses a year on an average, and being precocious as well as prolific, leaves behind him at his death a hundred and thirty thousand verses, merely counting his longer works. Virgil had only written fourteen thousand.

He copies Latin, French, and English models, but especially Chaucer,[834] he adds his "Story of Thebes"[835] to the series of the "Canterbury Tales," he has met, he says, the pilgrims on their homeward journey; the host asked him who he was:

I answerde my name was Lydgate, Monk of Bery, nygh fyfty yere of age.

Admitted into the little community, he contributes to the entertainment by telling a tale of war, of love, and of valorous deeds, in which the Greeks wear knightly armour, are blessed by bishops, and batter town walls with cannon. His "Temple of Glas"[836] is an imitation of the "Hous of Fame"; his "Complaint of the Black Knight" resembles the "Book of the Duchesse"; his "Falle of Princes"[837] is imitated from Boccaccio and from the tale of the Monk in Chaucer. The "litel hevynesse" which the knight noticed in the monk's stories is particularly well imitated, so much so that Lydgate himself stops sometimes with uplifted pen to yawn at his ease in the face of his reader.[838] But his pen goes down again on the paper, and starts off with fresh energy. From it proceeds a "Troy Book, or Historie of the Warres betwixte the Grecians and the Troyans," of thirty thousand lines, where pasteboard warriors hew each other to pieces without suffering much pain or causing us much sorrow[839]; a translation of that same "Pelerinage" of Deguileville, which had inspired Langland; a Guy of Warwick[840]; Lives of Our Lady, of St. Margaret, St. Edmund, St. Alban; a "pageant" for the entry of Queen Margaret into London in 1445; a version of the "Secretum Secretorum," and a multitude of other writings.[841] Nothing but death could stop him; and, his last poem being of 1446, his biographers have unanimously concluded that he must have died in that year.

The rules of his prosody were rather lax. No one will be surprised at it; he could say like Ovid, but for other reasons: "I had but to write, and it was verses." He is ready for everything; order them, and you will have at once verses to order. These verses are slightly deformed, maybe, and halt somewhat; he does not deny it:

I toke none hede nouther of shorte nor longe.[842]

But let us not blame him; Chaucer, his good master, would, he assures us, have excused his faulty prosody, and what right have we to be more severe than Chaucer?[843] To this there is, of course, nothing to answer, but then if we cannot answer, at least we can leave. We can go and visit the other chief poet of the time, Thomas Hoccleve; he does not live far off, the journey will be a short one; we have but to call at the next door.

This other poet is a public functionary; he is a clerk of the Privy Seal[844]; his duties consist in copying documents; an occupation he finds at length somewhat tiresome.[845] By way of diversion he frequents taverns; women wait on him there, and he kisses them; a wicked deed, he admits; but he goes no further; at least so he assures us, being doubtless held back by a remembrance of officialdom and promotion.[846] At all events this little was even too much, for we soon find him sick unto death, rhyming supplications to the god of health, and to Lord Fournivall, another kind of god, very useful to propitiate, for he was Lord Treasurer. He writes a good many detached pieces in which, thanks to his mania for talking about himself, he makes us acquainted with the nooks and corners of the old city, thus supplying rare and curious information, treasured by the historian. He composes, in order to make himself noticed by the king, a lengthy poem on the Government of Princes, "De Regimine Principum," which is nothing but a compilation taken from three or four previous treatises; he adds a prologue, and in it, following the example of Gower, he abuses all classes of society. He does not fail to begin his confession over again: from which we gather that he is something of a drunkard and of a coward, that he is vain withal and somewhat ill-natured.

He had, however, one merit, and, in spite of his defects, all lovers of literature ought to be grateful to him; the best of his works is not his Government of Princes; it is a drawing. He not only, like Lydgate, loved and mourned Chaucer, but wished to keep the memory of his features, and he caused to be painted on the margin of a manuscript the portrait mentioned above, which agrees so well with the descriptions contained in the writings of the master that there is no doubt as to the likeness.[847]