VIII. MILDNESS OF THE SPRING SEASON IN 1413
DITTO OF THOMAS CHAUCER’S POETRY AT THE SAME EPOCH.—DEATH OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH, AND OTHER INDICATIONS OF NATIONAL PROSPERITY.
THE spring of 1413 was one of extraordinary mildness. It is a matter of deep regret (to us) that there were no newspapers at that period; otherwise we should undoubtedly have had handed down to us many valuable records of enormous primroses, wonderful thorn-blossoms, and belled cowslips, which might not impossibly have equalled in interest to statistics of parallel phenomena in the present day. It is true that parliament was sitting at the time, and the reporters (had such an objectionable class then existed) might have evaded the important duty of chronicling these matters, on the pitiful and unusual plea that they had something better to write about. They do so now-a-days; and often give us nine columns of a parliamentary speech, the valuable substance of which we had all much rather see condensed in a short paragraph surmounted by the heading of “Enormous Cabbage.”
Thomas Chaucer, the son of the immortal Geoffry, already alluded to in these pages, has feebly attempted to immortalise the phenomena of this remarkable season in verses which, it will be admitted, at all events, prove his inferiority to his father as a poet. *
