[625] [may.]
X.
THE TOWER OF DOCTRINE.
The reader has here a specimen of the descriptive powers of Stephen Hawes, a celebrated poet in the reign of Hen. VII. tho' now little known. It is extracted from an allegorical poem of his (written in 1505.) intitled, The History of Graunde Amoure and La Bel Pucell, called the Pastime of Pleasure, &c. 4to. 1555. See more of Hawes in Ath. Ox. v. 1. p. 6. and Warton's Observ. v. 2. p. 105. He was also author of a book, intitled, The Temple of Glass. Wrote by Stephen Hawes, gentleman of the bedchamber to K. Henry VII. Pr. for Caxton, 4to. no date.
The following Stanzas are taken from Chap. III. and IV. of the Hist. above-mentioned. "How Fame departed from Graunde Amoure and left him with Governaunce and Grace, and how he went to the Tower of Doctrine, &c."—As we are able to give no small lyric piece of Hawes's, the reader will excuse the insertion of this extract.
[Most readers will probably be satisfied with the seventy-four lines that Percy has extracted from Hawes's long didactic poem, but those who wish to read the whole will find it reprinted by Mr. Thomas Wright in the fifteenth volume of the Percy Society's publications. The account of Rhetorick and the other allegorical nullities is weary reading, but the chapter in commendation of Gower, Chaucer and the author's master Lydgate, "the chefe orygynal of my lernyng," is interesting from a literary point of view. The poem was very popular in its own day and passed through several editions, and it has found admirers among critics of a later age. The Rev. Dr. Hodgson in a letter to Percy, dated Sept. 22, 1800,[626] speaks of it in very extravagant terms, and regrets that it had not then found an editor, as he regarded it "as one of the finest poems in our own or any other language." Warton describes Hawes as the only writer deserving the name of a poet in the reign of Henry VII. and says that "this poem contains no common touches of romantic and allegoric fiction." Mr. Wright however looks at it as "one of those allegorical writings which were popular with our forefathers, but which can now only be looked upon as monuments of the bad taste of a bad age." Hawes was a native of Suffolk, but the dates of his birth and death are not known. He studied in the University of Oxford and afterwards travelled much, becoming "a complete master of the French and Italian poetry.">[
Cap. III.