CHAPTER V.
When we turned the leaf upon the Balladry of England, we were upon fifteenth century ground, which, you will remember, we found very barren of great writers. Gower and Froissart, whom we touched upon, slipped off the stage just as the century began—their names making two of those joined in that group of deaths to which I called attention, and which marked the meeting of two centuries. Next we had glimpse of Lydgate and of King James (of Scotland), who, at their best, only gave faint token of the poetic spirit which illuminated the far better verses of Chaucer.
We then passed over the period of the Henrys, and of the War of the Roses, with mention of Shakespeare’s Falstaff—of his Prince Hal—his Agincourt—his courtship of Katharine of Valois—his inadequate presentment of the Maid of Orleans—his crabbed and crooked Richard III.—all rounded out with the battle of Bosworth field, and the coming to power of Henry of Richmond.
We found the book-trade taking on a new phase with Caxton’s press: we gave a tinkling bit of Skelton’s “Merry Margaret;” we put a woman-writer—Dame Juliana Barnes—for the first time on our list; we lingered over the quaint time-stained Paston Letters, which smelled so strongly of old English home-life; and we summed up our talk with a little bugle-note of that Balladry which made fitful snatches of music all through the weariness of those hundred years.