[1] “The Troy Tale” was composed at the command of the King, Henry the Fifth; as “the Fall of Princes,” from Boccace, was at the desire of Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester. He wrote regal poems for kings, while he dispersed wisdom and merriment for their subjects.
[2] While this volume is passing through the press, “A Selection from the Minor Poems of Lydgate” has been edited by Mr. Halliwell. The versatility of Lydgate’s poetical skill is advantageously shown in his comic satire, and his ethics drawn from a deep insight into human nature. The editor suggests a new reading for the title of the ballad of “London Lick-penny,” more suitable to the misadventures of its hero,—“London Lack-penny,” for London could not lick a penny from the forlorn hero who had not one to offer to it. Grose, probably taken by the humorous designation, has placed it among his local proverbs.
The tale of the “Prioress and her Three Wooers” is one of the happiest fabliaux. Mr. Campbell transcribed “the merrie tale” for his Specimens, when he discovered that a preceding forager had anticipated him in Mr. Jamieson, who has preserved it in his “Popular Ballads,” i. 253.
[3] Turner’s “Hist. of England,” v.
[4] I may point out the raw material which our poetical antiquary has here worked up with such perfect effect in this picturesque enumeration. Appended to Speght’s “Chaucer,” that editor furnished a very curious list of about a hundred works by Lydgate, which were in his own possession. Most of the singular poetical exhibitions here enumerated are mentioned towards the end of that list, and which Warton has happily appropriated, and so turned a dry catalogue into a poetical picture. [A selection of Lydgate’s Poems, 44 in number, were printed by the Percy Society in 1840.]
[5] Dan, as Ritson tells us, is a title given to the individuals of certain religious orders, from the barbarous Latin Domnus, a variation of Dominus, or the French Dam, or Dom. Dan became a corruption of Don for Dominus. The title afterwards extended to persons of respectable condition, as vague as our complimentary esquire. It was applied to Chaucer by Spenser, and when obsolete it became jocular; for we have “Dan Cupid.” Prior renewed it with ludicrous gravity when telling a tale which he had from “Dan Pope.” It is still used in an honourable sense by the Spaniards in their Don.
[6] “Literary Remains,” ii. 130.
[7] The great poet has left two or three most precious fragments; but these have long been buried in those ill-fated quartos, consisting chiefly of notes on Greek and on Plato, which Matthias published with extraordinary pomp; and, so he used to say, as a monument for himself as well as the bard—a monument which, his egregious self-complacency lived to witness, partook more of the properties of a tombstone than the glory of a column.
[8] “Gray’s Works,” by Matthias, ii. p. 60.
