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Makend many a wofull mone.
Whan all was slain but she al-one,
This olde fend, this Sarazin,

Let take anone this Constantin,
With all the good she thider brought,
And hath ordeigned as she thought
A naked ship withoutë stere,

In which the good and her infere1
Vitailled full for yerës five,
Where that the wind it wolde drive,
She put upon the wawes wilde.

But he, which alle thing may shilde,
Thre yeer til that she cam to londe,
Her ship to stere hath take on honde,
And in Northumberlond arriveth,

And happeth thannë that she driveth
Under a castell with the flood,
Whiche upon Humber bankë stood:
And was the kingës owne also,
The whiche Allee was cleped tho,
A Saxon and a worthy knight,
But he beleveth nought aright.
Of this castell was castellaine
Elda, the kingës chamberlaine,
A knightly man after his lawe.
And when he sigh upon the wawe,
The ship drivend alonë so,

He badde anon men shulden go

To se, what it betoken may.

This was upon a somer day,

The ship was loked, and she founde.

Elda within a litel stounde

It wist, and with his wife anon
Toward this yongë lady gon,

Where that they foundë gret richesse
But she her wolde nought confesse,
Whan they her axen what she was.
And netheles, upon the cas,

together.

2 taken in hand.

8 Constance was found.

Out of the ship with great worship
They toke her into felaship,

As they that weren of her glade.
But she no maner joië made,

But sorweth sore of that she fonde
No Cristendome in thilkë londe.

But elles she hath all her will,

And thus with hem she dwelleth still.

Dame Hermegild, which was the wife
Of Elda, liche her owen life
Constance loveth; and fell so,

Spekend all day betwene hem two,
Through grace of Goddës purveiaunce,
This maiden taughtë the creaunce1
Unto this wif so parfitly,

Upon a day that, faste by,

In presence of her husbonde,

Wher they go walkend on the stronde,
A blindë man, which cam ther ladde,
Unto this wife criend he badde
With bothe his hondes up, and praide
To her, and in this wise he saide;
'O Hermegilde, which Cristes feith
Enformed, as Constance saith,
Received hast, yif me my sighte.'

Upon this worde her herte aflighte',
Thenkend what beste was to done,
But netheles she herde his bone3,
And saide,' In trust of Cristës lawe,
Which don was on the crosse and slawe
Thou blindë man, beholde and se.
With that to God upon his kne
Thonkend, he tok his sight anon,
Wherof they merveile everychon.
But Elda wondreth most of alle;
This open thing whiche is befalle

▲ creed.

⚫ felt afflicted.

• petition,

Concludeth him by such a way,
That he the feith no nede obey.
Now list what fell upon this thinge.
This Elda forth unto the kinge

A morwe tok his way and rood,
And Hermegild at home abood
Forth with Constancë well at ese.
Elda, which thought his king to plese
As he, that than unwedded was,
Of Constance all the pleine cas
As godelich as he couthë, tolde.
The king was glad and said he wolde
Comen thider in suche a wise,
That he him might of her avise.

LYDGATE.

[JOHN LYDGATE was born at the village of Lydgate near Newmarket in Suffolk, about 1370. His death probably occurred about 1440. Appar ently the latest date discoverable in any of his poems is 1433, in which year he wrote a sort of city poem,' celebrating the pageants, processions, and other rejoicings in the city of London on the occasion of the solemn entry of Henry VI. He was a monk in the Benedictine monastery of Bury St. Edmunds. Among his numerous writings three stand out prominently: the Storie of Thebes, written when he was nearly fifty; the Troye Book, begun under Henry IV, and finished about 1420; and the Falls of Princes, written between 1422 and 1433.]

Lydgate seems to have been stimulated to write partly by the example and renown of Chaucer, partly by a predilection for the French poets of that day-Christine de Pisan, Machault, Granson, &c. and the desire to emulate them. He was a monk of that monastery of St. Edmund king and martyr, at Bury, into the interior life of which Jocelyn de Brakelonde, much helped by his modern editor', has enabled us to look so clearly. But Abbot Hubert and Abbot Samson had laboured and gone to their account more than two centuries before, and though his rule remained the same, the conditions of life were much changed in the interval, even for a monk of Bury. In particular, the dazzling and distracıing images of Literature besieged his cell, and haunted his thoughts, with a persistency unknown at the earlier period. Then the vernacular literatures were in their infancy, and sober Latin was the ordinary dress of a cultivated man's thought; now, in France and Italy, and in England, numerous works, bearing the imprint of the newest spirit of the day, decked also with sallies of wit and beautiful imagery which came directly from the heart and brain, through the familiar mother-tongue, were circulating amongst and influencing all who could think and feel. Lydgate, who by his

Mr. Carlyle, in Part II of his Past and Present.

own account had little vocation for the cloister, whose boyhood had been mischievous', his youth lazy and riotous, and his early manhood disedifying, for a long time cared little about St. Edmund and the special duties of the monastic life. He had an intense admiration for Chaucer, and his first large work seems to have heen The Storie of Thebes, which he represents as a new Canterbury tale, told by himself soon after his joining the company of pilgrims at Canterbury. It is founded on the Thebaid of Statius and the Teseide of Boccaccio, and written in the ten-syllable rhyming couplet which Chaucer had used with such effect in The Knightes Tale. The prologue is spirited, but when the body of the poem is reached the attention soon flags. Chaucer versifies with facility, and also with power; Lydgate has the facility without the power. His next considerable work, on the story of Troy, was undertaken about A.D. 1412, at the request of Prince Henry, afterwards Henry V., and finished in 1420. The prince desired that the noble storye' of Troye should be as well known in England as elsewhere, and as well written in English

As in the Latyn and the Frenshe it is.'

Troy was then regarded as the 'antiqua mater' of every European nation. It would therefore seem very fitting, that since Wace and his English translators, following Geoffrey of Monmouth, had given in the vernacular the story of the original Trojan settlement of England under Brutus the great-grandson of Aeneas, the moving vicissitudes of the city to which Brutus and Aeneas belonged should also now be told in English. This poem is in five books, and written, like The Storie of Thebes, in the ten-syllable couplet. It is founded on the Latin prose history of Troy by Guido di Colonna, a Sicilian jurist of the thirteenth century. The austere old layman

To my bettre did no reverence,

Of my sovereyns gafe no fors at al,
Wex obstinat by inobedience,
Ran into gardyns, applys ther I stal.'
'Loth to ryse, lother to bedde at eve,
With unwash handys reedy to dyneer,

My Pater-noster, my crede, or my beleeve,

Cast at the cok; loo! this was my manere.'

Of religioun I weryd a blak habite,

Oonly outward as by apparence.'

Lydgate's Testament, among his Minor Poems, edited by Mr. Halliwell.

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