| Among this many in mine audience,
Methought I was ymade a man for ever—
So tickled me that nyce reverénce,
That it me made larger of dispence;—
For Riot payeth largely ever mo;
He stinteth never till his purse be bare.
|
He is at length seized amid his jollities,
| By force of the penniless maladíe,
Ne lust[3] had none to Bacchus House to hie.
Fy! lack of coin departeth compaigníe;
And hevé purse with Herté liberál
Quencheth the thirsty heat of Hertés drie,
Where chinchy Herté[4] hath thereof but small.
|
This “mirror of riot and excess” effected a discovery, and it was, that all the mischiefs which he recounts came from the high reports of himself which servants bring to their lord. The Losengour or pleasant flatterer was too lightly believed, and honied words made more harmful the deceitful error. Oh! babbling flattery! he spiritedly exclaims, author of all lyes, that causest all day thy lord to fare amiss. Such is the import of the following uncouth verse:—
| Many a servant unto his Lord saith
That all the world speaketh of him, Honoúr,
When the contrarie of that is sooth in faith;
And lightly leeved is this Losengoúr,[5]
His hony wordés wrapped in Erroúr,
Blindly conceived been, the more harm is,
O thou, Favele, of lesynges auctoúr,[6]
Causest all day thy Lord to fare amiss.
The Combre worldés;[7] ’clept been Enchantoúrs
In Bookes, as I have red——.
|
Occleve was a shrewd observer of his own times. That this rhymer was even a playful painter of society we have a remarkable evidence preserved in the volume of his great master. “The Letter of Cupid,” in the works of Chaucer, was the production of Occleve, and appears to have been overlooked by his modern critics. He had originally entitled it, “A Treatise of the Conversation of Men and Women in the Little Island of Albion.” It is a caustic “polite conversation;” and deemed so execrably good, as to have excited, as our ancient critic Speght tells, “such hatred among the gentlewomen of the Court, that Occleve was forced to recant in that boke of his called ‘Planetas Proprius.’”[8] The Letter of Cupid is thus dated:—
| Written in the lusty month of May,
In our Paléis where many a millión
Of lovers true have habitatión,
The yere of grace joyfull and jocúnd,
A thousand four hundred and secónd.
|
Imagery and imagination are not required in the school of society. Occleve seems, however, sometimes to have told a tale not amiss, for William Brown, the pastoral bard, inserted entire a long story by old Occleve in his “Shepherd’s Pipe.” To us he remains sufficiently uncouth. The language had not at this period acquired even a syntax, though with all its rudeness it was neither wanting in energy nor copiousness, from that adoption of the French, the Provençal, and the Italian, with which Chaucer had enriched his vein. The present writer seems to have had some notions of the critical art, for he requests the learned tutor of Prince Edward, afterwards Edward the Fourth, to warn him, when,—