comparing this incomparable achievement with the defeat of fifty men by the hardy son of Tydeus. With what energy he recounts the discomfiture of the three gigantic Macindrossans, who attempted to take Robert alive! How thoroughly he enjoys the feat of the king in bringing the giant who has leapt on his horse behind him round from the crupper within reach of his deadly sword! Our archdeacon had a most admiring eye for a strong arm. When the patriots, in the beginning of the enterprise, are rowing towards Cantyre as a safe winter retreat, he imagines crowds of spectators on the shore looking at them as they rise on the rowing-benches, and admiring the stalwart hands that were more familiar with the spear than with the oar. Sir Walter Scott must have envied his description of the doughty Douglas— "But he was not so fair that we, Should speak greatly of his beauty. In visage was he somedeal grey, And had black hair as I heard say; But of limbes he was well made, With bones great and shoulders braid;1 When he was blithe he was lovely, This trim carpet-knight and grim champion had the noblest attribute of strength-generosity. When Bruce sent him to help outnumbered Randolph at Bannockburn, he halted when he saw the enemy begin to give way, that he might not rob his friend of any part of the honour of success. But courage was not the only chivalrous virtue that the Scottish poet of chivalry held in admiration. There are other elements in his portrait of Douglas "He was in all his deedës leal,2 That all him loved that were him near. 1 This disdain of falsehood Barbour was prepared to practise as well as to admire. He held it to be his duty to give impartial praise to brave achievements 1 Broad. "But whether so he be friend or foe That winnës prize of chivalry, Men should speak thereof lealely." 2 Faithful-loyal. We And he scrupulously fulfilled the obligation in his own case. may be certain that he added only the attractions of rhyme to the traditional glory of his hero; and he does not fail to recognise and honour a valiant enemy. He duly records and extols the magnanimity of Sir Giles de Argentine in raising his battle-cry and rushing to certain death rather than leave the field of Bannockburn alive. Nor is Barbour deficient in apprehending the chivalrous respect for women. He particularly commends the sturdy Douglas for his assiduity in hunting and fishing for the ladies of the party when their fortunes were at the lowest. And Bruce himself is almost Quixotic in his devotion to the tender sex. On a critical occasion he delays the march of his army rather than imperil the safety of a poor laundress in his train. No act on record of any knight of romance can exceed that: it is as incomparable a proof of his tenderness as the combat with two hundred is of his courage and strength. The enthusiastic Pinkerton preferred Barbour, "taking the total merits of the work together, to the melancholy sublimity of Dante, and the amorous quaintness of Petrarca; and every Scotchman whose patriotism would be above suspicion must wish that he could agree with Pinkerton. There is, indeed, a certain epic swing and momentum about the romance of the Bruce; its vigorous opening picture of the prostration of Scotland under the English, and its passionate aspiration after freedom, place a powerful arrest on the wandering attention, and summon us with no small cogency to hear the story of enfranchisement through its ups and downs of hope and danger to the triumphant end. If he had stopped with the battle of Bannockburn, Barbour's Bruce might have been called a historical epic, bearing to the epic proper the same relation that the chronicle history bears to the regular drama. But by carrying his story on to the death of Bruce, he conforms it to the laws of the metrical romance, which, doubtless, were the laws that he set himself to observe, and very likely the only laws known to him. The manners and sentiments, as we have seen, are those of chivalry. Barbour was a distinct observer, and he had the consistent, pure, defined sentiments of a clear-headed man, careful always to establish a harmony between the sentiment and the object. There is not much embellishment in his style. He presents us with but few studies of natural scenery, and those bare and meagre; and he draws no extended portraits of the beautiful women that moved among and commanded the homage of his brave men. His diction rises considerably above the rude doggerel of rhyming chronicles; he is superior to the necessities of make-rhymes. Undoubtedly, however, the main charm of Barbour's Bruce lies in the cordial energy of its battles and rencounters. 2. HENRY THE MINSTREL," BLIND HARRY." The champion of the fame of William Wallace, was born at least half a century later than Barbour. One does not like to say severe things about a poor old wandering minstrel. Like many other bygones that were interesting to bygones, he and his heroic verse, once an acceptable arrival at many a lively feast and proud residence, would be considered a terrible visitation in modern society. Blind Harry has not the elements of perennial interest. Only strong patriotism could have composed, and only strong patriotism could have listened to, his strains. Till very recently, however, he was popular among the Scottish peasantry, circulating no longer in oral recitation,1 but in printed copies, often boardless and well-thumbed. Of late he has been superseded by Miss Porter's 'Scottish Chiefs.' III.-ENGLISH SUCCESSORS. It does no great violence to fact to treat all the English poets of the fifteenth century as the disciples of Chaucer. Almost everything of value in the poetry of that century-and not much has been preserved, if there was much to preserve- -was due to the impulse given by Chaucer. A great deal of versification went on out of the reach of that impulse, in the shape of chronicles, lives of saints, translations from the French, and other miscellaneous lines. Prose romances also were translated. But the two or three poets that rise above the herd had, or professed to have, an acquaintance with Chaucer, and acknowledged allegiance to him, though all of them were far from catching any tincture of the charm of his verse. It is, indeed, significant of the general dulness of ear, as well as poverty of execution, that Skelton places Gower and Lydgate on the same level with the master from whose greatness to their littleness is such a fathomless sheer descent. The extraordinary collapse of English poetry after the death of Chaucer is one of the most curious phenomena in literary history. When he died he carried his mantle with him; or at least it fell upon no worthy successor in England. We have to look to the Scottish Court for any memorable traces of his influence. A Chaucerian school was established in Scotland, and flourished there for nearly two centuries, decaying only with the transference of the Stuart dynasty to London. But in England itself his example fell dead, and there was no stirring of poetical vitality till 1 I remember, however, a sturdy beggar of the name of Wallace, who was much revered by schoolboys as a lineal descendant from the national hero, and who used to recite from "Blind Harry" violent incidents, such as the breaking of the churl's back, with appropriate gesticulation. poetry came under new influences. The wide literary desert corresponds with an inglorious political interval, and it is usual to connect the two as effect and cause. The Wars of the Roses, more particularly, are commonly held responsible for the decadence of English poetry in the fifteenth century. But this current explanation will not bear looking at, even if we give a wide meaning to the Wars of the Roses, so as to include all the long-protracted struggle of the House of Lancaster to keep itself in power. The state of affairs was disturbed, but not more so than it had been in Chaucer's time. A poet's audience, before the invention of printing, was necessarily limited, but a poet of genius would have found an audience even in the reign of Henry VI. Abundant patronage was given to inferior artificers; the poet was in no danger of having his genius chilled by indifference. Men's minds are never wholly engrossed even by such national calamities as unsettled succession and civil war. Some of the sweetest and lightest love-poetry in our language was published during the heat of the Great Rebellion. Tottel's Miscellany,' with its songs and sonnets fragrant of sweet marjoram, as the publisher put it, found eager purchasers in the reign of Bloody Mary. The reign of Richard II. was one of the darkest periods in English history, yet it was in this reign that Chaucer wrote his 'Canterbury Tales.' The immense expansion of England in the eighteenth century has no counterpart in its literature. Instances might be multiplied to show that the connection between poetry and public affairs is by no means so close as it is the fashion to assert. The influence of social conditions and political events is accidental rather than essential. It may convey germs of poetic life to virgin soil, but it cannot originate new forms; it may fertilise and foster, but it can neither generate nor prevent decay. The main causes of literary developments and literary degenerations must be sought for in literature itself, and in the individual characters of men of letters. I. THOMAS OCCLEVE (1370-1430 ?). Of the immediate successors of Chaucer, the most celebrated is Lydgate; but Occleve, or Hoccleve, comes first in order of time. It is to Occleve that we owe our standard portrait of Chaucer. He was a most ardent and admiring disciple of the great poet, and more than once lamented him in such strains as these, extolling his knowledge in rhetoric, philosophy, and poetry, and inveighing against the indiscriminate ravages of death "O master dear and father reverent, My master Chaucer, flower of eloquence, And again O universal father in science, Alas, that thou thine excellent prudence In thy bed mortal mightest not bequeathë! O Death, thou didest not harm singular In slaughter of him, but all this land it smarteth! His name to slay: his high virtue astarteth That is to all this land enlumining.” "She might have tarried her vengeance a while God bade her do so, I trust for the best. In Thynne's edition of Chaucer, in 1532, there was printed, among other miscellaneous pieces, a Letter of Cupid," written in 1402. No other production ascribed to Occleve appeared in print for more than two hundred years; and after Warton characterised him as a feeble poet of cold genius, the very titles of whose poems were chilling to the searchers after invention and fancy, the unfortunate poet ran a considerable risk of extinction. In 1796, however, George Mason printed various poems from an MS. that Warton had not seen, and pleaded for a more favourable verdict. Occleve is certainly an interesting character, if not an interesting poet. "Cold" was a singularly inappropriate word to apply to him. He seems to have been a fellow of infinite warmth and geniality. He is supposed to have been born in 1370, and he emerges at the Court of Richard II. in 1387. The luxurious extravagance of that Court found in him a congenial spirit. He could never pass the sign of Bacchus, with its invitation to thirsty passengers to moisten their clay, so long, at least, as he had anything in his purse; and he spent much money in the temples of a goddess of still more questionable character. He was a favourite among cooks and taverners, from the circumstance that he always paid them what they asked. Only two men of his acquaintance could equal him in drinking at night and lying in bed in the morning. The only thing that preserved his life from the brawls incident to such habits was an invincible cowardice: he never traduced men except in a whisper. All this we know from his own humorous confessions. He tells us also that his excesses |