A literary historian, who has read manuscripts with the eagerness which others do the last novelty, more careful than Warton, and more discriminate than Ritson, has, with honest intrepidity, confessed that “Occleve has not had his just share of reputation. His writings greatly assisted the growth of the popularity of our infant poetry.”[2] Our historian has furnished from the manuscripts of Occleve testimonies of his assertion.
Among the six poems printed, one of considerable length exhibits the habits of a dissipated young gentleman in the fourteenth century.
Occleve for more than twenty years was a writer in the Privy Seal, where we find quarter days were most irregular; and though briberies constantly flowed in, yet the golden shower passed over the heads of the clerks, dropping nothing into the hands of these innocents.
Our poet, in his usual passage from his “Chestres Inn by the Strond” to “Westminster Gate,” by land or water—for “in the winter the way was deep,” and “the Strand” was then what its name indicates—often was delayed by
| The outward signe of Bacchus and his lure, That at his dore hangeth day by day, Exciteth Folk to taste of his moistúre So often that they cannot well say Nay! |
There was another invitation for this susceptible writer of the Privy Seal.
| I dare not tell how that the fresh repaír Of Venus femel, lusty children dear, That so goodlý, so shapely were, and fair, And so pleasánt of port and of manére. |
There he loitered,
| To talk of mirth, and to disport and play. |
He never “pinched” the taverners, the cooks, the boatmen, and all such gentry.