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THE

ROWLEY POEMS

BY

THOMAS CHATTERTON

REPRINTED FROM TYRWHITT'S THIRD EDITION

EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY MAURICE EVAN HARE

MCMXI

CONTENTS.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

I. CHATTERTON'S LIFE AND DEATH AND THE GENESIS OF THE ROWLEY POEMS

II. THE VALUE OF THE ROWLEY POEMS

III. BIBLIOGRAPHY

IV. NOTE ON THE TEXT

V. NOTES

VI. APPENDIX ON THE ROWLEY CONTROVERSY

REPRINT OF THE EDITION OF 1778. (The Table of Contents follows the 1778 title-page.)

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.

I. CHATTERTON'S LIFE AND DEATH AND THE GENESIS OF THE ROWLEY POEMS

Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on the 20th of November 1752. His father—also Thomas—dead three months before his son's birth, had been a subchaunter in Bristol Cathedral and had held the mastership in a local free school. We are told that he was fond of reading and music; that he made a collection of Roman coins, and believed in magic (or so he said), studying the black art in the pages of Cornelius Agrippa. With all the self-acquired culture and learning that raised him above his class (his father and grandfathers before him for more than a hundred years had been sextons to the church of St. Mary Redcliffe) he is described as a dissipated, 'rather brutal fellow'. Lastly, he appears to have been 'very proud', self-confident, and self-reliant.

Of Chatterton's mother little need be said. Gentle and rather foolish, she was devoted to her two children Mary and, his sister's junior by two years, Thomas the Poet. Of these Mary seems to have inherited the colourless character of her mother; but Thomas must always have been remarkable. We have the fullest accounts of his childhood, and the details that might with another be set down as chronicles of the nursery will be seen to have their importance in the case of this boy who set himself consciously to be famous when he was eight, wrote fine imaginative verse before he was thirteen, and killed himself aged seventeen and nine months.

Thomas, then, was a moody baby, a dull small boy who knew few of his letters at four; and was superannuated—such was his impenetrability to learning—at the age of five from the school of which his father had been master. He was moreover till the age of six and a half so frequently subject to long fits of abstraction and of apparently causeless crying that his mother and grandmother feared for his reason and thought him 'an absolute fool.' We are told also by his sister—and there is no incongruity in the two accounts—that he early displayed a taste for 'preheminence and would preside over his playmates as their master and they his hired servants.' At seven and a half he dissipated his mother's fear that she had borne a fool by rapidly learning to read in a great black-letter Bible; for characteristically 'he objected to read in a small book.' In a very short time from this he appears to have devoured eagerly the contents of every volume he could lay his hands on. He had a thirst for knowledge at large—for any kind of information, and as the merest child read with a careless voracity books of heraldry, history, astronomy, theology, and such other subjects as would repel most children, and perhaps one may say, most men. At the age of eight we hear of him reading 'all day or as long as they would let him,' confident that he was going to be famous, and promising his mother and sister 'a great deal of finery' for their care of him when the day of his fame arrived. Before he was nine he was nominated for Colston's Hospital, a local school where the Bluecoat dress was worn and at which the 'three Rs' were taught but very little else, so that the boy, disappointed of the hope of knowledge, complained he could work better at home. To this period we should probably assign the delightful story of Chatterton and a friendly potter who promised to give him an earthenware bowl with what inscription he pleased upon it—such writing presumably intended to be 'Tommy his bowl' or 'Tommy Chatterton'. 'Paint me,' said the small boy to the friendly potter, 'an Angel with Wings and a Trumpet to trumpet my Name over the World.'

At ten he was making progress in arithmetic, and it should be mentioned that he 'occupied himself with mechanical pursuits so that if anything was out of order in the house he was set to mend it.' At school he read during play hours and made few friends, but those were 'solid fellows,' his sister tells us; while at home he had appropriated to himself a small attic where he would read, write and draw pictures—a number of which are preserved in the British Museum—of knights and churches, and heraldic designs in red and yellow ochre, charcoal, and black-lead. In this attic too he had stored—though at what date is uncertain—a number of writings on parchment which had a rather singular history. In the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe, the church in which Chatterton's ancestors had served as sextons, there were six or seven great oak chests, of which one, greater than the others and secured by no fewer than six locks, was traditionally called 'Canynges Cofre' after William Canynge the younger, with whose name the erection and completion of St. Mary's were especially associated. These had contained deeds and papers dealing with parochial matters and the affairs of the Church, but some years before Chatterton's birth the Vestry had determined to examine these documents, some of which may have been as old as the building itself. The keys had in the course of time been lost, and the vestrymen accordingly broke open the chests and removed to another place what they thought of value, leaving Canynge's Coffer and its fellows gutted and open but by no means void of all their ancient contents. Such parchments as remained Chatterton's father carried away, whole armfuls at a time, using some to cover his scholars' books and giving others to his wife, who made them into thread-papers and dress patterns.

In the house to which Mrs. Chatterton had moved upon her husband's death there was still a sufficient number of these old manuscripts to make a considerable trove for the boy who, then nine or ten years old, had first learnt to read in black-letter and was in a few years to produce poetry which should pass for fifteenth century with many well-reputed antiquaries. It was no doubt on blank pieces of these parchments that he inscribed the matter of the few Rowley documents which he ever showed for originals. We have the account of a certain Thistlethwaite, one of the 'solid lads' with whom Chatterton had made friends at school, that his friend Thomas in the summer of 1764 told him 'he was in possession of some old MSS. which had been found deposited in a chest in Redcliffe Church, and that he had lent some or one of them to Thomas Phillips'—an usher at Colston's, an earnest and thoughtful man fond of poetry, and a great friend of Chatterton's. 'Within a day or two after this,' (Thistlethwaite wrote to Dean Milles,) 'I saw Phillips … who produced a MS. on parchment or vellum which I am confident was "Elenoure and Juga"[1] a kind of pastoral eclogue afterwards published in the Town and Country Magazine for May 1769. The parchment or vellum appeared to have been closely pared round the margin for what purpose or by what accident I know not … The writing was yellow and pale manifestly as I conceive occasioned by age.'

This was the beginning of the Rowley fiction—which might be metaphorically described as a motley edifice, half castle and half cathedral, to which Chatterton all his life was continually adding columns and buttresses, domes and spires, pediments and minarets, in the shape of more poems by Thomas Rowley (a secular priest of St. John's, Bristol); or by his patron the munificent William Canynge (many times Mayor of the same city); or by Sir Thibbot Gorges, a knight of ancient family with literary tastes; or by good Bishop Carpenter (of Worcester) or John à Iscam (a Canon of St. Augustine's Abbey, also in Bristol); together with plays or portions of plays which they wrote—a Saxon epic translated—accounts of Architecture—songs and eclogues—and friendly letters in rhyme or prose. In short, this clever imaginative lad had evolved before he was sixteen such a mass of literary and quasi-historical matter of one kind or another that his fictitious circle of men of taste and learning (living in the dark and unenlightened age of Lydgate and the other tedious post-Chaucerians) may with study become extraordinarily familiar and near to us, and was certainly to Chatterton himself quite as real and vivid as the dull actualities of Colston's Hospital and the Bristol of his proper century.

Chatterton's own circle of acquaintance was far less brilliant. His principal patrons were Henry Burgum and George Catcott, a pair of pewterers, the former vulgar and uneducated but very ambitious to be thought a man of good birth and education, the latter a credulous, selfish and none too scrupulous fellow, a would-be antiquary, of whom there is the most delightfully absurd description in Boswell's Johnson. The biographer relates that in the year 1776 Johnson and he were on a visit to Bristol and were induced by Catcott to climb the steep flight of stairs which led to the muniment room in order to see the famous 'Rowley's Cofre'. Whereupon, when the ascent had been accomplished, Catcott 'called out with a triumphant air of lively simplicity "I'll make Dr. Johnson a convert" (to the view then still largely obtaining that Rowley's poems were written in the fifteenth century) and he pointed to the "Wondrous chest".' '"There" said he 'with a bouncing confident credulity "There is the very chest itself"!' After which 'ocular demonstration', Boswell remarks, 'there was no more to be said.' It was to such men as these that Chatterton read his 'Rouleie's' poems. Another of his audience was Mr. Barrett, a surgeon, who collected materials for a history of Bristol, which, when published after the boy-poet's death, was found to contain contributions (supplied by Chatterton) in the unmistakable and unique 'Rowleian' language—valuable evidence about old Bristol miraculously preserved in Rowley's chest.

We hear also of Michael Clayfield, a distiller, one of the very few men in Bristol whom Chatterton admired and respected; of Baker, the poet's bedfellow at Colston's, for whom Chatterton wrote love poems, as Cyrano de Bergerac did for Christian de Neuvillette, to the address of a certain Miss Hoyland—thin, conventional silly stuff, but Roxane was probably not very critical; of Catcott's brother, the Rev. A. Catcott, who had a fine library and was the author of a treatise on the Deluge; of Smith, a schoolfellow; of Palmer an engraver, and a number of others—mere names for the most part. Baker, Thistlethwaite and a few more were contemporaries of the poet, but the rest of the circle consisted mainly of men who had reached middle age—dullards, perhaps, who condescended to clever adolescence, whom Chatterton certainly mocked bitterly enough in satires which he wrote apparently for his own private satisfaction, but whom he nevertheless took considerable pains to conciliate as being men of substance who could lend books and now and then reward the Muse with five shillings. For Burgum the poet invented, and pretended to derive from numerous authorities (some of which are wholly imaginary), a magnificent pedigree showing him descended from a Simon de Seyncte Lyse alias Senliz Earl of Northampton who had come over with the Conqueror. To this he appended a portion of a poem not included in this edition, entitled the 'Romaunte of the Cnyghte', composed by John de Bergham about A.D. 1320. It was some years before Mr. Burgum applied to the College of Heralds to have his pedigree ratified, but when he did so he was informed that there had never been a de Bergham entitled to bear arms.

With a second instalment of the genealogical table were copies of the poems called The Tournament and The Gouler's (i.e. Usurer's) Requiem, which are printed in this volume. Mr. Burgum was completely taken in, and, exulting in his new-found dignity, acknowledged the announcement of his splendid birth with a present of five shillings. It is worthy of notice that the pedigree made mention of a certain Radcliffe Chatterton de Chatterton, but Burgum's suspicions were not aroused by the circumstance.

In July 1765, that is to say when the boy was aged about 13, the authorities of Colston's Hospital apprenticed him to John Lambert, a Bristol attorney. He had chosen the calling himself, but it was not long before the life became intolerable to him. It was arranged that he should board with Lambert, and the attorney made him share a bedroom with the foot-boy and eat his meals in the kitchen. Further, though his sister has recorded that the work was light, the practice being inconsiderable, Lambert always tore up any writing of Chatterton's that he could find if it did not relate to his business. 'Your stuff!' he would say. Nevertheless he admitted that his apprentice was always to be found at his desk, for he often sent the footman in to see. And no doubt on some of these occasions Chatterton was copying the legal precedents of which 370 folio pages, neatly written in a well-formed handwriting, remain to this day as evidence of legitimate industry. At other times he was certainly composing poems by Rowley.

Perhaps at this point it would be well to give some account of Chatterton's method in the production of ancient writings. First it seems he wrote the matter in the ordinary English of his day. Then he would with the help of an English-Rowley and Rowley-English Dictionary (which he had laboriously compiled for himself out of the vocabulary to Speght's Chaucer, Bailey's Universal Etymological Dictionary, and Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum) translate the work into what he probably thought was a very fair imitation of fifteenth century language. His spelling Professor Skeat characterizes as 'that debased kind which prevails in Chevy Chase and the Battle of Otterbourn in Percy's Reliques, only a little more disguised.' Percy's Reliques were not published till 1765, but it is natural to suppose that Chatterton when he was 'wildly squandering all he got On books and learning and the Lord knows what,' and thereby involving himself in some little debt, would have bought the volume very soon after its publication. Finally as to the production of 'an original'. We have two accounts; one of which represents the pseudo-Rowley rubbing a parchment upon a dirty floor after smearing it with ochre and saying 'that was the way to antiquate it'; the other, even more explicit, is the testimony of a local chemist, one Rudhall, who was for some time a close friend of Chatterton's. The incident in which Rudhall appears is worth relating at length.

In the month of September 1768 an event of some importance occurred at Bristol—a new bridge that had been built across the Avon to supersede a structure dating from the reign of the second Henry being formally thrown open for traffic. At the time when this was the general talk of the city Chatterton had left with the editor of Felix Farley's Bristol Journal a description of the 'Fryars passing over the Old Bridge taken from an ancient manuscript.' This account was in the best Rowleian manner, with strange spelling and uncouth words, but for the most part quite intelligible to the ordinary reader. The editor accordingly published it (no payment being asked) and great curiosity was aroused in consequence. Where had this most interesting document come from? Were there others like it? The Bristol antiquaries, rather a large body, were all agog with excitement. Ultimately they discovered that the unknown contributor, of whom the editor could say nothing more than that his 'copy' was subscribed Dunclinus Bristoliensis, was Thomas Chatterton the attorney's apprentice. Now the amazing credulity of these learned people is one of the least comprehensible circumstances of our poet's strange life. For on being asked how he had come by his MSS. he refused at first to give any answer. Then he said he was employed to transcribe some old writings by 'a gentleman whom he had supplied with poetry to send to a lady the gentleman was in love with'—the excuse being suggested no doubt by the case of Miss Hoyland and his friend Baker. Finally when, as we can only conclude, this explanation was disproved or disbelieved, he announced that the account was copied from a manuscript his father had taken from Rowley's chest. And this explanation was considered perfectly satisfactory.

Yet it seemed obvious that the antiquaries would demand to see the manuscript, and Chatterton, contrary to his usual practice of secrecy, called upon his friend Rudhall and, having made him promise to tell nothing of what he should show him, took a piece of parchment 'about the size of a half sheet of foolscap paper,' wrote on it in a character which the other did not understand, for it was 'totally unlike English,' and finally held what he had written over a candle to give it the 'appearance of antiquity,' which it did by changing the colour of the ink and making the parchment appear 'black and a little contracted.' Rudhall, who kept his secret till 1779 (when he bartered it for £10, to be given to the poet's mother, at that time in great poverty), believed that no one was shown or asked to see this document. Why, it is impossible to say.

The present volume contains a reproduction[2] in black and white of the original MS. of Chatterton's 'Accounte of W. Canynges Feast'. This was written in red ink. The parchment is stained with brown, except one corner, and the first line written in a legal texting hand. The ageing of his manuscript of the Vita Burtoni, to take a further instance, was effected by smearing the middle of it with glue or varnish. This document was also written partly in an attorney's regular engrossing[3] hand. During the next four years Chatterton 'transcribed' a great quantity of ancient documents, including Ælla, a Tragycal Enterlude—far the finest of the longer Rowleian poems—the Songe to Ælla and The Bristowe Tragedy (the authorship of which last he appears in an unguarded moment to have acknowledged to his mother). He told her also that he had himself written one of the two poems Onn oure Ladies Chyrche—which one, Mrs. Chatterton could not remember[4], but if it was the first of the two printed in this edition (p. 275) it was a strange coincidence indeed that led him to repudiate the antiquity of the only two Rowley poems which are really at all like 'antiques'—Professor Skeat's convenient expression. The two Battles of Hastings were written during this period, and it appears that Barrett the surgeon, on being shown the first poem, was for once very insistent in asking for the original, whereupon Chatterton in a momentary panic confessed he had written the verses for a friend; but he had at home, he said, the copy of what was really the translation of Turgot's Epic—Turgot was a Saxon monk of the tenth century—by Rowley the secular priest of the fifteenth. This was the second Battle of Hastings as printed in this book. Again this strange explanation, so laboured and so patently disingenuous, was accepted without comment though probably not believed. And if it appears matter for surprise that there should ever have been any controversy about the authorship of the Rowley writings, in view of the lad's admission that he had written three such signal pieces as the Bristowe Tragedy, the first Battle of Hastings, and Onn oure Ladies Chyrche, it must be considered that the production of the greater part of the poems by a poorly educated boy not turned seventeen would naturally appear a circumstance more surprising than that such a boy should tell a lie and claim some of them as his own.

With his acknowledged work, as with Rowley, Chatterton by dint of continued application was making good progress. In 1769 he had become a frequent contributor to the Town and Country Magazine, to which he sent articles on heraldry, imitations of Ossian (whom he very much admired) and various other papers; and in December of this year he wrote to Dodsley, the well-known publisher, acquainting him that he could 'procure copies of several ancient poems and an interlude, perhaps the oldest dramatic piece extant, wrote by one Rowley, a Priest in Bristol, who lived in the reign of Henry the Sixth and Edward the Fourth * * * If these pieces would be of any service to Mr. Dodsley copies should be sent.' The publisher returned no answer. Chatterton waited two months, then wrote again and enclosed a specimen passage from Ælla. He could procure a copy of this work, he wrote, upon payment of a guinea to the present owner of the MS. Again Mr. Dodsley lay low and said nothing, and so the incident closed.

Dodsley having failed him, Chatterton next took the bolder step of writing to Horace Walpole, who must have been much in his mind for some years before his sending the letter. Some one has made the ingenious suggestion that a consideration of Walpole's delicate connoisseurship sensibly coloured Chatterton's account of the life of Mastre William Canynge. More than this, his delight in the Mediæval—the Gothic—and his content with what may be termed a purely impressionistic view of the past, was singularly akin to the Bristol poet's own outlook on these matters. Walpole had further some three years before this time indulged in the very harmless literary fraud of publishing his Castle of Otranto as a translation from a mediæval Italian MS., only confessing his own authorship upon the publication of the second edition. To Walpole then Chatterton addressed a short letter enclosing some verses by John à Iscam and a manuscript on the Ryse of Peyncteyning yn Englande wroten by T. Rowleie 1469 for Mastre Canynge[5] with the suggestion that it might be of service to Mr. Walpole 'in any future edition of his truly entertaining anecdotes of painting.' This drew from the connoisseur one of the politest letters[6] that have been written in English, in which the simple and elegant sentences expressed with a very charming courtesy the interest and curiosity of its author. He gave his correspondent 'a thousand thanks'; 'he would not be sorry to print' (at his private press) 'some of Rowley's poems'; and added—which reads strangely in the light of what follows—'I would by no means borrow and detain your MS.' Now Chatterton's Peyncteyning yn Englande is the clumsiest fraud of all the Rowley compositions, with the single exception of a letter from the secular Priest which exhibits the exact style and language of de Foe's Robinson Crusoe.[7] Professor Skeat has pointed out that the Anglo-Saxon words, which occur with tolerable frequency in the Ryse, begin almost without exception with the letter A, and concludes that Chatterton had read in an old English glossary, probably Somners, no farther than Ah. Walpole however 'had not the happiness of understanding the Saxon language,' and it was not until after he had received a second letter from Chatterton, enclosing more Rowleian matter both prose and verse, that he consulted his friends Gray and Mason, who at once detected the forgery. If, as seems certain, Elinoure and Juga was among the pieces sent, it was inevitable that Gray should recognize lines 22-25 of that poem as a striking if unconscious reminiscence of his own Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Now Walpole had some years before introduced Ossian's poems to the world and his reputation as a critic had suffered when their authenticity was generally disputed. Accordingly he wrote Chatterton a stiff letter suggesting that 'when he should have made a fortune he might unbend himself with the studies consonant to his inclination'; and in this one must suppose that he was actuated by a very natural irritation at having been duped a second time by an expositor of antique poetry, rather than by any snobbish contempt for his correspondent, who had frankly confessed himself an attorney's apprentice. Chatterton then wrote twice to have his MS. returned, asserting at the same time his confidence in the authenticity of the Rowley documents. Walpole for some reason returned no answer to either application, but left for Paris, where he stayed six weeks, returning to find another letter from Chatterton written with considerable dignity and restraint—a last formal demand to have his manuscript returned. Whereupon, amazed at the boy's 'singular impertinence,' the great man snapped up both letters and poems and returned them in a blank cover—that is to say without a word of apology or explanation. He might have acted otherwise if he had been a more generous spirit, but an attempt had been made to impose upon him which had in part succeeded, and he can hardly be blamed for showing his resentment by neglecting to return the forgeries. One may notice in passing that when Chatterton, more than a year later, committed suicide there were not wanting a great many persons absurd enough to accuse Walpole of having driven him to his death—a contemptible suggestion. Yet the connoisseur's credit certainly suffers from the fact that he gave currency to a false account of the transaction in the hope of concealing his first credulity.[8]

We now come to the circumstance which procured Chatterton's release from his irksome apprenticeship—his threat of suicide. He had often been heard to speak approvingly of suicide, and there is a story, which has, however, little authority, that once in a company of friends he drew a pistol from his pocket, put it to his head, and exclaimed 'Now if one had but the courage to pull the trigger!' This anecdote—if not in fact true—illustrates very well the gloomy depression of spirit which alternated with those outbursts of feverish energy in which his poems were composed. And he had much to make him miserable when with a change of mood he lost his buoyancy and confidence of ultimate fame and success. His ambition was boundless and his audience was as limited in numbers as in understanding. He was as proud as the poor Spaniard who on a bitter day rejected the friendly offer of a cloak with the words 'A gentleman does not feel the cold,' and his pride was continually fretted. He was keenly conscious of the indignity of his position in Lambert's kitchen; he seems to have been pressed for money, and though he 'did not owe five pounds altogether' he probably smarted under the thought that all his hard work, all the long nights of study and composition in the moonlight which helped his thought, could not earn him even this comparatively small sum. Again, he was not restrained from a contemplation of suicide by any scruples of religion—for he has left his views expressed in an article written some few days before his death. He believed in a daemon or conscience which prompted every man to follow good and avoid evil; but—different men different daemons—his held self-slaughter justified when life became intolerable; with him therefore it would be no crime. Wilson suggests too that the boy who had read theology, orthodox and the reverse, held to the common eighteenth century view that death was annihilation; and this may well have been the case. One thing at any rate is certain, that Chatterton on the 14th of April 1770 left on his desk a number of pieces of paper filled with a jumble of satiric verse, mocking prose, and directions for the construction of a mediæval tomb to cover the remains of his father and himself. Part of this strange document was headed in legal form—'This is the last Will and Testament of me Thomas Chatterton,' and contained the declaration that the Testator would be dead on the evening of the following day—'being the feast of the resurrection.' The bundle was dated and endorsed 'All this wrote between 11 and 2 o'clock Saturday in the utmost distress of mind.' Now while one need not doubt that the distress was perfectly genuine, it is tolerably certain that Chatterton intended his master to find what he had written and draw his own conclusions as to the desirability of dismissing his apprentice. The attorney (who is represented as timid, irritable and narrow-minded)[9] did in fact find the document, was thoroughly frightened, and gave the boy his release. He was now free to starve or earn a living by his pen—so no doubt he represented the alternative to his mother. He must go to London, where he would certainly make his fortune. He had been supplying four or five London journals of good standing with free contributions for some time past, and had received it appears great encouragement from their editors. He gained his point and started out for the great city.

His letters show that he called upon four editors the very day he arrived. These were Edmunds of the Middlesex Journal; Fell of the Freeholders Magazine; Hamilton of the Town and Country Magazine; and Dodsley—the same to whom he had sent a portion of Ælla—of the Annual Register. He had received, he wrote, 'great encouragement from them all'; 'all approved of his design; he should soon be settled.' Fell told him later that the great and notorious Wilkes 'affirmed that his writings could not be the work of a youth and expressed a desire to know the author.' This may or may not have been true, but it is certain that Fell was not the only newspaper proprietor who was ready to exchange a little cheap flattery for articles by Chatterton that would never be paid for.[10]

We know very little about Chatterton's life in London—but that little presents some extraordinarily vivid pictures. He lodged at first with an aunt, Mrs. Ballance, in Shoreditch, where he refused to allow his room to be swept, as he said 'poets hated brooms.' He objected to being called Tommy, and asked his aunt 'If she had ever heard of a poet's being called Tommy' (you see he was still a boy). 'But she assured him that she knew nothing about poets and only wished he would not set up for being a gentleman.' He had the appearance of being much older than he was, (though one who knew him when he was at Colston's Hospital described him as having light curly hair and a face round as an apple; his eyes were grey and sparkled when he was interested or moved). He was 'very much himself—an admirably expressive phrase. He had the same fits of absentmindedness which characterized him as a child. 'He would often look stedfastly in a person's face without speaking or seeming to see the person for a quarter of an hour or more till it was quite frightful.' We have accounts of his sitting up writing nearly the whole of the night, and his cousin was almost afraid to share a room with him 'for to be sure he was a spirit and never slept.'[11]

He wrote political letters in the style of Junius—generally signing them Decimus or Probus—that kind of vague libellous ranting which will always serve to voice the discontent of the inarticulate. He wrote essays—moral, antiquarian, or burlesque; he furbished up his old satires on the worthies of Bristol; he wrote songs and a comic opera, and was miserably paid when he was paid at all. None of his work written in these veins has any value as literature; but the skill with which this mere lad not eighteen years old gauged the taste of the town and imitated all branches of popular literature would probably have no parallel in the history of journalism should such a history ever come to be written.

His letters to his mother and sister were always gay and contained glowing accounts of his progress; but in reality he must have been miserably poor and ill-fed.

In July he changed his lodgings to the house of a Mrs. Angel, a sacque maker in Brook Street, Holborn; the dead season of August was coming on and probably he wanted to conceal his growing embarrassment from his aunt, who might have sent word of it to his mother at Bristol.

His opera was accepted—it is a spirited and well written piece—and for this he was paid five pounds, which enabled him to send a box of presents to his mother and sister bought with money he had earned. He had dreamed of this since he was eight. But his Balade of Charitie—the most finished of all the Rowley poems—was refused by the Town and Country Magazine about a month before the end; which came on August 24th. He was starving and still too proud to accept the invitations of his landlady and of a friendly chemist to take various meals with them. He was offended at the good landlady's suggestion that he should dine with her; for 'her expressions seemed to hint' (to hint) 'that he was in want'—no cloak for Thomas Chatterton! He could have borrowed money and gone back to Bristol, but there are many precedents for beaten generalissimos falling on their swords rather than return home defeated and disgraced. How could he return? He had set out so confidently; had boasted not a little of his powers, and had satirized all the good people in Bristol de haut en bas. Think of the jokes and commiserations of Burgum, Catcott, and the rest! 'Well, here you are again, boy; but of course we knew it would come to this!' He could not endure to hear that.

Accordingly on Friday the 24th August 1770 he tore up his manuscripts, locked his door, and poisoned himself with arsenic.

Southey, Byron, and others have supposed that Chatterton was mad; it has been suggested that he was the victim of a suicidal mania. All the evidence that there is goes to show that he was not. He was very far-sighted, shrewd, hard-working, and practical, for all his imaginative dreaming of a non-existent past; and this at least may be said, that Chatterton's suicide was the logical end to a very remarkably consistent life.

Chatterton's character has suffered a good deal from three accusations vehemently urged by Maitland and his eighteenth-century predecessors. The first is that the boy was a 'forger'; the second that he was a freethinker; the third that he was a free-liver.

To examine these in turn: the first admits of no denial as a question of fact, but justification may be pleaded which some will accept as a complete exculpation and others perhaps will hardly comprehend.

Chatterton could only produce poetry in his fifteenth-century vein; his imagination failed him in modern English. No one who has any appreciation of Rowley's poems will consider that the African Eclogues are for a moment comparable with them. If he was to write at all he must produce antiques, and, as it happened, interest had been aroused in ancient poetry, largely by the publication of Percy's Reliques and of the spurious Ossian. Appearing at this juncture, then, as ancient writings taken from an old chest, his poems would be read and their value appreciated; while no one would trouble to make out the professed imitations—not by any means easy reading—of an attorney's apprentice. Probably if an adequate audience had been secured in his lifetime, Chatterton would have revealed the secret when it had served its purpose—just as Walpole confessed to the authorship of Otranto only when that book had run into a second edition.

To the second count of the indictment no defence is urged. Chatterton was too honest and too intelligent to accept traditional dogmatics without examination.

Finally, he was no free-liver in the sense in which that objectionable expression is used. Rather he was an ascetic who studied and wrote poetry half through the night, who ate as little as he slept, and would make his dinner off 'a tart and a glass of water.' He was devoted to his mother and sister and to his poetry; and what spare time was not occupied with the latter he seems to have spent largely with the former. The attempt to represent him as a sort of provincial Don Juan—though in the precocious licence of a few of his acknowledged writings he has even given it some colour himself—cannot be reconciled with the recorded facts of his life.

Equally ill judged is that picture which is presented by Professor Masson and other writers less important—of a truant schoolboy, a pathetic figure, who had petulantly cast away from him the consolations of religion. Monsieur Callet, his French biographer, knew better than this: 'Il fallait l'admirer, lui, non le plaindre,' is the last word on Chatterton.

[Footnote 1: An extraordinary production for a boy of twelve, but we need not suppose that if 'Elenoure and Juga' were written in 1764 and not published until 1769 no alterations and improvements were made by its author in the period between these dates.]

[Footnote 2: From the engraving in Tyrwhitt's edition.]

[Footnote 3: See Southey and Cottle's edition, quoted in Skeat, ii, p. 123.]

[Footnote 4: Dean Milles has a delightful account of the reception accorded to Rowley in the Chatterton household. Neither mother nor sister would appear to have understood a line of the poems, but Mary Chatterton (afterwards Mrs. Newton) remembered she had been particularly wearied with a 'Battle of Hastings' of which her brother would continually and enthusiastically recite portions.]

[Footnote 5: Wilson believed that Chatterton never sent the Ryse, &c., at all (see page 173 of his Chatterton: A Biographical Study), but this is disposed of by the fact that the Ryse of Peyncteyning is the only piece of Chatterton's which contains Saxon words.]

[Footnote 6: March 28th, 1769.]

[Footnote 7: An account of Master William Canynge written by Thos.
Rowlie Priest in 1460. Skeat, Vol. III, p. 219; W. Southey's edition,
Vol. III, p. 75. See especially the last paragraph.]

[Footnote 8: See Letters of Horace Walpole, edited by Mrs. Paget
Toynbee (Clarendon Press), Vol. XIV, pp. 210, 229; Vol. XV, p. 123.]

[Footnote 9: But attorneys are seldom 'in regrate' with the friends of
Poetry.]

[Footnote 10: Masson's reconstruction of the scene between Chatterton and the editor of the Freeholder's Magazine is very convincing (see his Chatterton: a Biography, p. 160).]

[Footnote 11: Almost everything that we know of Chatterton in London was ascertained by Sir H. Croft and printed in his Love and Madness (see Bibliography).]

II. THE VALUE OF ROWLEY'S POEMS—PHILOLOGICAL AND LITERARY

As imitations of fifteenth-century composition it must be confessed the Rowley poems have very little value. Of Chatterton's method of antiquating something has already been said. He made himself an antique lexicon out of the glossary to Speght's Chaucer, and such words as were marked with a capital O, standing for 'obsolete' in the Dictionaries of Kersey and Bailey. Now even had his authorities been well informed, which they were not by any means, and had Chatterton never misread or misunderstood them, which he very frequently did, it was impossible that his work should have been anything better than a mosaic of curious old words of every period and any dialect. Old English, Middle English, and Elizabethan English, South of England folk-words or Scots phrases taken from the border ballads—all were grist for Rowley's mill. It is only fair to say that he seldom invented a word outright, but he altered and modified with a free hand. Professor Skeat indeed estimates that of the words contained in Milles' Glossary to the Rowley Poems only seven percent are genuine old words correctly used. The Professor in his modernized edition is continually pointing out with kindly reluctance that such and such a word never bore the meaning ascribed to it—that because, for instance, Bailey had explained Teres major as a smooth muscle of the arm it was not therefore any legitimate inference of Chatterton's that tere (singular form) meant a muscle and could be translated 'health'. Only occasionally does one find the note (written with an obviously sincere pleasure) 'This word is correctly used.' Of course it was impossible that Chatterton should have produced even a colourable imitation of fifteenth-century poetry at a time when even Malone—for all his acknowledged reputation as an English Scholar—could not quote Chaucer so as to make his lines scan. The Rowley Poems and Percy's Reliques mark the beginning of that renascence of our older poetry so conspicuous in the time of Lamb and Hazlitt. Before this epoch was the Augustan age, much too well satisfied with its own literature to concern itself with an unfashionable past.

But, after all, however absurd from any historical point of view the language and metres of the boy-poet may be, at least he invented a practicable language which admirably conveyed his impression of the latest period of the middle ages—that after-glow which began with the death of Chaucer. Chatterton's poetry is a pageant staged by an impressionist. It cannot be submitted to a close examination, and it is all wrong historically, yet it presents a complete picture with an artistic charm that must be judged on its own merits. An illusion is successfully conveyed of a dim remote age when an idle-strenuous people lived only to be picturesque, to kill one another in tourneys, to rear with painful labour beautiful elaborate cathedrals, and yet had so much time on their hands that they could pass half their lives cracking unhallowed sconces in the Holy Land and, in that part of their ample leisure which they devoted to study, spell 'flourishes' as 'Florryschethe'. But if any one still anxious for literal truth should insist—'Is not the impression as false as the medium that conveys it? Were the middle ages really like that? Is it not a fact that the average baron stayed at home in his castle devising abominable schemes to wring money or its equivalent from miserable and half-starved peasants?'—such a one can only be answered with another question: 'Is Pierrot like a man, and has it been put beyond question that Pontius Pilate was hanged for beating his wife?' The Rowley writings are—properly considered—entirely fanciful and unreal. They have many faults, but are seen at their worst when Chatterton is trying to exhibit some eternal truth. There is a horrible (but perfectly natural) didacticism—the inevitable priggishness of a clever boy—which occasionally intrudes itself on his best work. Thus that charming fanciful fragment which begins—

As onn a hylle one eve fittynge
At oure Ladie's Chyrche mouche wonderynge

embodies this truism fit for a bread-platter—or to be the 'Posy of a ring'—'Do your best.'

Canynges and Gaunts culde doe ne moe.

And the poet's boyishness demands still further consideration. He has a crude violence of expression which is apt to shock the mature person—some of the descriptions of wounds in the two Battles of Hastings would sicken a butcher; while in another vein such a phrase as

Hee thoughte ytt proper for to cheese a wyfe,
And use the sexes for the purpose gevene.
(Storie of William Canynge)

has an absurd affectation of straightforward good sense divested of sentiment which could not appeal to any one on a higher plane of civilization than a medical student.

And this is easily explicable if only it is borne in mind that the Rowley poems were written by a boy, and that such lovely things as the Dirge in Ælla suggest a maturity that Chatterton did not by any means perfectly possess. In some respects he was as childish (to use the word in no contemptuous sense) as in others he was precocious. And it is a thousand pities that the difficulties of Chatterton's language and the peculiar charm and invention of his metrical technique cannot be appreciated till the boyish love of adventure, delight in imagined bloodshed, and ignorance of sentimental love, have generally been left behind. Nothing—to give an example—could be more frigid than the description of Kennewalcha—

White as the chaulkie clyffes of Brittaines isle,
Red as the highest colour'd Gallic wine

(an unthinkable study in burgundy and whitewash, Battle of Hastings, II, 401); nothing, on the other hand, more vivid, more obviously written with a pen that shook with excitement, than

The Sarasen lokes owte: he doethe feere, &c.
(Eclogue the Second, 23.)

Soe wylle wee beere the Dacyanne armie downe,
And throughe a storme of blodde wyll reache the champyon crowne.
(Ælla, 631.)

Loverdes, how doughtilie the tylterrs joyne!
(Tournament, 92.).

In fine, there is no poet, one may boldly declare, whose pages are so filled with battle, murder and sudden death, as Chatterton's are; and this is perhaps the clearest indication he gives of immaturity.

But if his ideas were sometimes crude and boyish they were not by any means always so; he has flashes of genius, sudden beauties that take away the breath. A better example than this of what is called the sublime could not be found:

See! the whyte moone sheenes onne hie;
Whyterre ys mie true loves shroude;
Whyterre yanne the mornynge skie,
Whyterre yanne the evenynge cloude.
(Ælla, 872.)

and, from the Songe bie a Manne and Womanne,

I heare them from eche grene wode tree,
Chauntynge owte so blatauntlie,
Tellynge lecturnyes to mee,
Myscheefe ys whanne you are nygh.
(Ælla, 107.)

Did ever shepherd's pipe play a prettier tune?
He has some fine martial sounds, as for instance:
Howel ap Jevah came from Matraval
(Battle of Hastings, I, 181.)

He rarely employs personifications, but no poet used the figure more convincingly. The third Mynstrelle's description of Autumn is a lovely thing, and one will not easily forget his Winter's frozen blue eyes—though unfortunately that is not in Rowley.

His art was essentially dramatic, and he has some fine dramatic moments, as for example when the Usurer soliloquizing miserably on his certain ultimate damnation suddenly cries out

O storthe unto mie mynde! I goe to helle. (Gouler's Requiem.)

The word 'storthe' is a good example of Chatterton's use of strange words. The effect of a sudden outcry which it produces would be lost in a modernized version which rendered it 'death'.

Mr. Watts-Dunton in his article on Chatterton in Ward's English Poets speaks of his extraordinary metrical inventiveness and of his ultimate responsibility for such lines as these—

And Christabel saw the lady's eye
And nothing else she saw thereby
Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall
Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall—

the anapaestic dance of which breaks in upon the normal iambic movement of the poem with a natural dramatic propriety. He compares too The Eve of St. Agnes with the Excelente Balade of Charitie, remarking that it was only in his latest work that Keats attained to that dramatic objectivity which was 'the very core and centre of Chatterton's genius.'

Another writer, Mr. Thomas Seccombe, speaks of his 'genuine lyric fire, a poetic energy, and above all an intensity remote from his contemporaries and suggestive (as Cimabue in his antique and primitive manner is suggestive of Giotto and Angelico) of Shelley and Keats.'

Chatterton's influence on the great body of poets of the generation succeeding his own was very considerable—Mr. Watts-Dunton indeed declares him to have been the father of the New Romantic School—and the affection with which Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth and many others regarded him was extraordinary. He was their pioneer, who had lost his life in a heroic attempt to penetrate the dull crassness of the mid-eighteenth century.

He had great originality and the gift of an intense imagination. If he is sometimes crude and immature in thought and expression—if his images sometimes weary by their monotony—it is accepted that a poet is to be judged by his highest and not his lowest; and Chatterton's best work has an inspiration, a singular and unique charm both of thought and of music that is of the first order of English poetry.

III. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

A great deal more has been written about Chatterton than it is worth anybody's while to read. To begin with, there are all the volumes and pamphlets concerning themselves with the question whether the Rowley poems were written by Chatterton or by Rowley, or by both (Chatterton adding matter of his own to existing poems written in the fifteenth century), or by neither. It may be said that these problems were not conclusively and finally solved till Professor Skeat brought out his edition of Chatterton in 1871.

Then again there are the various lives of the poet; for the most part mere random aggregations of such facts, true or imagined, as fell in the editor's way, filled out with pulpit commonplaces and easy paragraphs beginning 'But it is ever the way of Genius …' Professor Wilson's Chatterton: a Biographical Study is as final in its own way as Professor Skeat's two volumes. It is a scholarly compilation of all previous accounts, very well digested and arranged. Moreover, the Professor has for the most part left the facts to tell their own story; and thus his book is free from such absurdities as the sentimental regrets of Gregory and Professor Masson that Chatterton was led into a course of folly ending in suicide through being deprived of a father's care. Such a father as Chatterton's was!

While premising that any one who wishes to learn the facts of the boy-poet's life—his circumstances and surroundings—can find them all set forth in Professor Wilson's book: while equally if he is interested in the pseudo-Rowley's language, philologically considered, he will find this elaborately examined in Professor Skeat's second volume; it has been thought that the following bibliography of books dealing with various aspects of the poet which were read and valued in their day may be found of interest to students of literary history.

1598. Speght's edition of Chaucer, the glossary of which Chatterton used in the compilation of his Rowley Dictionary.

1708. Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, and

1737. Bailey's Universal Etymological Dictionary. (8th Enlarged Edition.) Bailey is largely copied from Kersey, but Chatterton certainly used both dictionaries in making his antique language.

1777. Tyrwhitt's edition of the Rowley poems. Tyrwhitt was Chatterton's first editor and in his edition many of the poems were printed for the first time. 'The only really good edition is Tyrwhitt's.' 'This exhibits a careful and, I believe, extremely accurate text … an excellent account of the MSS. and transcripts from which it was derived. It is a fortunate circumstance that the first editor was so thoroughly competent.' (Professor Skeat, Introd. to Vol. II of his 1871 edition.)

1778. Tyrwhitt's third edition, from which the present edition is printed. With this was printed for the first time 'An appendix … tending to prove that the Rowley poems were written not by any ancient author but entirely by Thomas Chatterton.' This edition follows the first nearly page for page; but was reset.

1780. Love and Madness by Sir Herbert Croft. This strange book deserves a brief description as it is the source of almost all our knowledge of Chatterton.

A certain Captain Hackman, violently in love with a Miss Reay, mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, and stung to madness by his jealousy and the hopelessness of his position, had in 1779 shot her in the Covent Garden Opera House and afterwards unsuccessfully attempted to shoot himself. Enormous public interest was excited, and Croft—baronet, parson, and literary adventurer—got hold of copies which Hackman had kept of some letters he had sent to the charming Miss Reay. These he published as a sensational topical novel in epistolary form, calling it Love and Madness. This is quite worth reading for its own sake, but much more so for its 49th letter, which purports to have been written by Hackman to satisfy Miss Reay's curiosity about Chatterton. As a matter of fact Croft, who had been very interested in the boy-poet and had collected from his relations and those with whom he had lodged in London all they could possibly tell him, wrote the letter himself and included it rather inartistically among the genuine Hackman-Reay correspondence. Amongst other valuable matter, this letter 49 contains a long account of her brother by Mary Chatterton.—(See Love letters of Mr. Hackman and Miss Reay, 1775-79, introduction by Gilbert Burgess: Heinemann, 1895.) 1774-81. Warton's History of English Poetry, in Volume II of which there is an account of Chatterton.

1781. Jacob Bryant's Observations upon the Poems of T. Rowley in which the authenticity of those poems is ascertained. Bryant was a strong Pro-Rowleian and argues cleverly against the possibility of Chatterton's having written the poems. He shows that Chatterton in his notes often misses Rowley's meaning and insists that he neglected to explain obvious difficulties because he could not understand them. Bryant is the least absurd of the Pro-Rowleians.

1782. Dean Milles' edition of the Rowley poems—a splendid quarto with a running commentary attempting to vindicate Rowley's authenticity. Milles was President of the Society of Antiquaries and his commentary is characterized by Professor Skeat as 'perhaps the most surprising trash in the way of notes that was ever penned.

1782. Mathias' Essay on the Evidence … relating to the poems called Rowley's—he is pro-Rowleian and criticizes Tyrwhitt's appendix.

1782. Thomas Warton's Enquiry … into the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley—Anti-Rowleian.

1782. Tyrwhitt's Vindication of his Appendix. Tyrwhitt had discovered Chatterton's use of Bailey's Dictionary and completely refutes Bryant, Milles, and Mathias. It may be observed in passing that though Goldsmith upheld Rowley, Dr. Johnson, the two Wartons, Steevens, Percy, Dr. Farmer, and Sir H. Croft pronounced unhesitatingly in favour of the poems having been written by Chatterton: while Malone in a mocking anti-Rowleian pamphlet shows that the similes from Homer in the Battle of Hastings and elsewhere have often borrowed their rhymes from Pope!

1798. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse by Edward Gardner (two volumes). At the end of Volume II there is a short account of the Rowley controversy and, what is more important, the statement that Gardner had seen Chatterton antiquate a parchment and had heard him say that a person who had studied antiquities could with the aid of certain books (among them Bailey) 'copy the style of our elder poets so exactly that the most skilful observer should not be able to detect him. "No," said he, "not Mr. Walpole himself."' But perhaps this should be taken cum grano.

1803. Southey and Cottle's edition in three volumes with an account of Chatterton by Dr. Gregory which had previously been published as an independent book. Southey and Cottle's edition is very compendious so far as matter goes, and contains much that is printed for the first time. Gregory's life is inaccurate but very pleasantly written.

1837. Dix's life of Chatterton, with a frontispiece portrait of Chatterton aged 12 which was for a long time believed to be authentic. No genuine portrait of Chatterton is known to be in existence; probably none was ever made. Dix's life, not a remarkable work in itself, has some interesting appendices; one of which contains a story—extraordinary enough but well supported—that Chatterton's body, which had received a pauper's burial in London, was secretly reburied in St. Mary's churchyard by his uncle the Sexton.

1842. Willcox's edition printed at Cambridge; on the whole a slovenly piece of work with a villainously written introduction.

1854. George Pryce's Memorials of Canynges Family; which contains some notes of the coroner's inquest on Chatterton's body, which would have been most interesting if authentic, but were in fact forged by one Gutch.

1856. Chatterton: a biography by Professor Masson—published originally in a volume of collected essays; re-published and in part re-written as an independent volume in 1899. The Professor reconstructs scenes in which Chatterton played a part; but it is suggested (with diffidence) that his treatment is too sentimental, and the boy-poet is Georgy-porgied in a way that would have driven him out of his senses, if he could have foreseen it. The picture is fundamentally false.

1857. An Essay on Chatterton by S.R. Maitland, D.D., F.R.S., and F.S.A. A very monument of ignorant perversity. The writer shamelessly distorts facts to show that Chatterton was an utterly profligate blackguard and declares finally that neither Rowley nor Chatterton wrote the poems.

1869. Professor D. Wilson's Chatterton: a Biographical Study, and

1871. Professor W.W. Skeat's Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton (in modernized English) of which mention has been made above.

1898. A beautifully printed edition of the Rowley poems with decorated borders, edited by Robert Steele. (Ballantyne Press.)

1905 and 1909. The works of Chatterton, with the Rowley poems in modernized English, edited with a brief introduction by Sidney Lee.

1910. The True Chatterton—a new study from original documents by John H. Ingram. (Fisher Unwin.)

Besides all these serious presentations of Chatterton there are a number of burlesques—such as Rowley and Chatterton in the Shades (1782) and An Archæological Epistle to Jeremiah Milles (1782), which are clever and amusing, and three plays, two in English, and one in French by Alfred de Vigny, which represents the love affair of Chatterton and an apocryphal Mme. Kitty Bell.

The whole of Chatterton's writings—Rowley, acknowledged poems, and private letters, have been translated into French prose. Oeuvres complètes de Thomas Chatterton traduites par Javelin Pagnon, précédées d'une Vie de Chatterton par A. Callet (1839). Callet's treatment of Chatterton is very sympathetic and interesting.

Finally for further works on Chatterton the reader is referred to Bohn's Edition of Lowndes' Bibliographer's Manual—but the most important have been enumerated above.

IV. NOTE ON THE TEXT.

This edition is a reprint of Tyrwhitt's third (1778) edition, which it follows page for page (except the glossary; see note on p. 291). The reference numbers in text and glossary, which are often wrong in 1778, have been corrected; line-numbers have been corrected when wrong, and added to one or two poems which are without them in 1778, and the text has been collated throughout with that of 1777 and corrected from it in many places where the 1778 printer was at fault. These corrections have been made silently; all other corrections and additions are indicated by footnotes enclosed in square brackets.

V. NOTES.

1. The Tournament, lines 7-10.

Wythe straunge depyctures, Nature maie nott yeelde, &c.

'This is neither sense nor grammar as it stands' says Professor Skeat. But Chatterton is frequently ungrammatical, and the sense of the passage is quite clear if either of the two following possible meanings is attributed to unryghte.

(1)=to present an intelligible significance otherwise than by writing—as 'rebus'd shields' do (un-write);

or (2) = to misrepresent (un-right).

With pictures of strange beasts that have no counterpart in Nature and appear to be purely fantastic ('unseemly to all order') yet none the less make known to men good at guessing riddles ('who thyncke and have a spryte') what the strange heraldic forms express-without-use-of-written-words ('unryghte')—or (taking the second meaning of unryghte—misrepresent) present-with-a-disregard-of-truth-to-nature.

2. Letter to the Dygne Mastre Canynge, line 15.

Seldomm, or never, are armes vyrtues mede, (that is to say, coats of arms)
Shee nillynge to take myckle aie dothe hede

i.e. 'She unwilling to take much aye doth heed'; 'which is nonsense' says Prof. Skeat. But the sentence is an example of ellipse, a figure which Chatterton affected a good deal, and fully expressed would run 'She—not willing to take much, ever doth heed not to take much', which would of course be intolerably clumsy but perfectly intelligible.

3. Ælla, line 467.

Certis thie wordes maie, thou motest have sayne &c.

Prof. Skeat 'can make nothing of this' and reads 'Certes thy wordes mightest thou have sayn'.

A simple emendation of maie to meynte would give very good sense.

4. Ælla, line 489.

Tyrwhitt has sphere—evidently a mistake in the MS. for spere which he overlooked. It is not included in his errata. In the 1842 edition the meaning 'spear' is given in a footnote.

5. Englysh Metamorphosis.

Prof. Skeat was the first to point out that this piece is an imitation of The Faerie Queene, Bk. ii, Canto X, stanzas 5-19.

6. Battle of Hastings, II, line 578.

To the ourt arraie of the thight Saxonnes came

Prof. Skeat explains ourt as 'overt' and observes that it contradicts thight, which he renders 'tight'. But really there is not even an antithesis. Ourt arraie is what a military handbook calls 'open order' and thight is 'well-built', well put together (Bailey's Dictionary). The Saxons were well-built men marching in open order.

VI. APPENDIX.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE ARGUMENTS USED IN THE ROWLEY CONTROVERSY.

(Taken mainly from Gregory's Life of Chatterton.)

Against Rowley.

1. So few originals produced—not more than 124 verses.

2. Chatterton had shown (by his article on Christmas games, &c.) that he had a strong turn for antiquities. He had also written poetry. Why then should he not have written Rowley's poems?

3. His declaration that the Battle of Hastings I was his own.

4. Rudhall's testimony.

5. Chatterton first exhibited the Songe to Ælla in his own handwriting, then gave Barrett the parchment, which contained strange textual variations.

6. Rowley's very existence doubtful.

William of Worcester, who lived at his time and was himself of
Bristol, makes no mention of him, though he frequently alludes to
Canynge. Neither Bale, Leland, Pitts nor Turner mentions Rowley.

7. Improbability of there being poems in a muniment chest. 8. Style unlike other fifteenth century writings.

9. No mediæval learning or citation of authority to be found in Rowley; no references to the Round Table and stories of chivalry.

10. Stockings were not knitted in the fifteenth century (Ælla). MSS. are referred to as if they were rarities and printed books common.

11. Metres and imitation of Pindar absurdly modern.

12. Mistakes cited which are derived from modern dictionaries (Tyrwhitt).

13. Existence of undoubted plagiarisms from Shakespeare, Gray, &c.

For Rowley.

1. Chatterton's assertion that they were Rowley's, his sister having represented him as a 'lover of truth from the earliest dawn of reason.'

2. Catcott's assertion that Chatterton on their first acquaintance had mentioned by name almost all the poems which have since appeared in print (Bryant).

3. Smith had seen parchments in the possession of Chatterton, some as broad as the bottom of a large-sized chair. (Bryant.)

4. Even Mr. Clayfield and Rudhall believed Chatterton incapable of composing Rowley's poems.

5. Undoubtedly there were ancient MSS. in the 'cofre'.

6. Chatterton would never have had time to write so much. He did not neglect his work in the attorney's office and he read enormously.

7. Chatterton made many mistakes in his transcription of Rowley and in his notes to the poems. (Bryant's main contention.)

8. If Leland never mentioned Rowley it is equally true he says nothing of Canynge, Lydgate, or Occleve.

For Rowley.

1. The poems contain much historical allusion at once true and inaccessible to Chatterton.

2. The admitted poems are much below the standard of Rowley.

3. The old octave stanza is not far removed from the usual stanza of Rowley.

4. If Rowley's language differs from that of other fifteenth century writers, the difference lies in provincialisms natural to an inhabitant of Bristol.

5. Plagiarisms from modern authors may in some cases have been introduced by Chatterton but in others they are the commonplaces of poetry.

Against Rowley.

1. No writings or chest deposited in Redcliffe Church are mentioned in Canynge's Will.

2. The Bristol library was in Chatterton's time of general access, and Chatterton was introduced to it by Rev. A. Catcott (Warton).

3. Facts about Canynge may be found in his epitaph in Redcliffe Church; and the account of Redcliffe steeple—(which had been destroyed by fire before Chatterton's time) came from the bottom of an old print published in 1746.

4. The parchments were taken from the bottom of old deeds where a small blank space was usually left—hence their small size.

POEMS,

SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN AT BRISTOL,

BY THOMAS ROWLEY, AND OTHERS, IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

POEMS,

SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN AT BRISTOL, BY THOMAS ROWLEY, AND OTHERS, IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. THE THIRD EDITION; TO WHICH IS ADDED AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON THE LANGUAGE OF THESE POEMS; TENDING TO PROVE, THAT THEY WERE WRITTEN, NOT BY ANY ANCIENT AUTHOR, BUT ENTIRELY BY THOMAS CHATTERTON.

THE CONTENTS OF THIS VOLUME.

The Preface
Introductory Account of the Several Pieces
Advertisement
Eclogue the First
Eclogue the Second
Eclogue the Third
Elinoure and Juga
Verses to Lydgate
Songe to Ælla
Lydgate's Answer
The Tournament
The Dethe of Syr Charles Bawdin
Epistle to Mastre Canynge on Ælla
Letter to the dygne M. Canynge
Entroductionne
Ælla; a Tragycal Enterlude
Goddwyn; a Tragedie. (A Fragment.)
Englysh Metamorphosis, B.I.
Balade of Charitie
Battle of Hastings, No. 1.
Battle of Hastings, No. 2.
Onn oure Ladies Chyrche
On the same
Epitaph on Robert Canynge
The Storie of William Canynge
On Happienesse, by William Canynge
Onn Johne a Dalbenie, by the same
The Gouler's Requiem, by the same
The Accounte of W. Canynge's Feast
GLOSSARY

PREFACE.

The Poems, which make the principal part of this Collection, have for some time excited much curiosity, as the supposed productions of THOMAS ROWLEY, a priest of Bristol, in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV. They are here faithfully printed from the most authentic MSS that could be procured; of which a particular description is given in the Introductory account of the several pieces contained in this volume, subjoined to this Preface. Nothing more therefore seems necessary at present, than to inform the Reader shortly of the manner in which these Poems were first brought to light, and of the authority upon which they are ascribed to the persons whose names they bear.

This cannot be done so satisfactorily as in the words of Mr. George Catcott of Bristol, to whose very laudable zeal the Publick is indebted for the most considerable part of the following collection. His account of the matter is this: "The first discovery of certain MSS having been deposited in Redclift church, above three centuries ago, was made in the year 1768, at the time of opening the new bridge at Bristol, and was owing to a publication in Farley's Weekly Journal, 1 October 1768, containing an Account of the ceremonies observed at the opening of the old bridge, taken, as it was said, from a very antient MS. This excited the curiosity of some persons to enquire after the original. The printer, Mr. Farley, could give no account of it, or of the person who brought the copy; but after much enquiry it was discovered, that the person who brought the copy was a youth, between 15 and 16 years of age, whose name was Thomas Chatterton, and whose family had been sextons of Redclift church for near 150 years. His father, who was now dead, had also been master of the free-school in Pile-street. The young man was at first very unwilling to discover from whence he had the original; but, after many promises made to him, he was at last prevailed on to acknowledge, that he had received this, together with many other MSS, from his father, who had found them in a large chest in an upper room over the chapel on the north side of Redclift church."

Soon after this Mr. Catcott commenced his acquaintance with young Chatterton[1], and, partly as presents partly as purchases, procured from him copies of many of his MSS. in in prose and verse. Other copies were disposed of, in the same way, to Mr. William Barrett, an eminent surgeon at Bristol, who has long been engaged in writing the history of that city. Mr. Barrett also procured from him several fragments, some of a considerable length, written upon vellum[2], which he asserted to be part of his original MSS. In short, in the space of about eighteen months, from October 1768 to April 1770, besides the Poems now published, he produced as many compositions, in prose and verse, under the names of Rowley, Canynge, &c. as would nearly fill such another volume.

In April 1770 Chatterton went to London, and died there in the August following; so that the whole history of this very extraordinary transaction cannot now probably be known with any certainty. Whatever may have been his part in it; whether he was the author, or only the copier (as he constantly asserted) of all these productions; he appears to have kept the secret entirely to himself, and not to have put it in the power of any other person, to bear certain testimony either to his fraud or to his veracity.

The question therefore concerning the authenticity of these Poems must now be decided by an examination of the fragments upon vellum, which Mr. Barrett received from Chatterton as part of his original MSS., and by the internal evidence which the several pieces afford. If the Fragments shall be judged to be genuine, it will still remain to be determined, how far their genuineness should serve to authenticate the rest of the collection, of which no copies, older than those made by Chatterton, have ever been produced. On the other hand, if the writing of the Fragments shall be judged to be counterfeit and forged by Chatterton, it will not of necessity follow, that the matter of them was also forged by him, and still less, that all the other compositions, which he professed to have copied from antient MSS., were merely inventions of his own. In either case, the decision must finally depend upon the internal evidence.

It may be expected perhaps, that the Editor should give an opinion upon this important question; but he rather chooses, for many reasons, to leave it to the determination of the unprejudiced and intelligent Reader. He had long been desirous that these Poems should be printed; and therefore readily undertook the charge of superintending the edition. This he has executed in the manner, which seemed to him best suited to such a publication; and here he means that his task should end. Whether the Poems be really antient, or modern; the compositions of Rowley, or the forgeries of Chatterton; they must always be considered as a most singular literary curiosity.

[Footnote 1: The history of this youth is so intimately connected with that of the poems now published, that the Reader cannot be too early apprized of the principal circumstances of his short life. He was born on the 20th of November 1752, and educated at a charity-school on St. Augustin's Back, where nothing more was taught than reading, writing, and accounts. At the age of fourteen, he was articled clerk to an attorney, with whom he continued till he left Bristol in April 1770.

Though his education was thus confined, he discovered an early turn towards poetry and English antiquities, particularly heraldry. How soon he began to be an author is not known. In the Town and Country Magazine for March 1769, are two letters, probably, from him, as they are dated at Bristol, and subscribed with his usual signature, D.B. The first contains short extracts from two MSS., "written three hundred years ago by one Rowley, a Monk" concerning dress in the age of Henry II; the other, "ETHELGAR, a Saxon poem" in bombast prose. In the same Magazine for May 1769, are three communications from Bristol, with the same signature, D.B. viz. CERDICK, translated from the Saxon (in the same style with ETHELGAR), p. 233.—Observations upon Saxon heraldry, with drawings of Saxon atchievements, &c. p. 245.—ELINOURE and JUGA, written three hundred years ago by T. ROWLEY, a secular priest, p. 273. This last poem is reprinted in this volume, p. 19. In the subsequent months of 1769 and 1770 there are several other pieces in the same Magazine, which are undoubtedly of his composition.

In April 1770, he left Bristol and came to London, in hopes of advancing his fortune by his talents for writing, of which, by this time, he had conceived a very high opinion. In the prosecution of this scheme, he appears to have almost entirely depended upon the patronage of a set of gentlemen, whom an eminent author long ago pointed out, as not the very worst judges or rewarders of merit, the booksellers of this great city. At his first arrival indeed he was so unlucky as to find two of his expected Mæcenases, the one in the King's Bench, and the other in Newgate. But this little disappointment was alleviated by the encouragement which he received from other quarters; and on the 14th of May he writes to his mother, in high spirits upon the change in his situation, with the following sarcastic reflection upon his former patrons at Bristol. "As to Mr.——, Mr.——, Mr.——, &c. &c. they rate literary lumber so low, that I believe an author, in their estimation, must be poor indeed! But here matters are otherwise. Had Rowley been a Londoner instead of a Bristowyan, I could have lived by copying his works."

In a letter to his sister, dated 30 May, he informs her, that he is to be employed "in writing a voluminous history of London, to appear in numbers the beginning of next winter." In the mean time, he had written something in praise of the Lord Mayor (Beckford), which had procured him the honour of being presented to his lordship. In the letter just mentioned he gives the following account of his reception, with some curious observations upon political writing: "The Lord Mayor received me as politely as a citizen could. But the devil of the matter is, there is no money to be got of this side of the question.—But he is a poor author who cannot write on both sides.—Essays on the patriotic side will fetch no more than what the copy is sold for. As the patriots themselves are searching for a place, they have no gratuity to spare.—On the other hand, unpopular essays will not even be accepted; and you must pay to have them printed: but then you seldom lose by it, as courtiers are so sensible of their deficiency in merit, that they generously reward all who know how to dawb them with the appearance of it."

Notwithstanding his employment on the History of London, he continued to write incessantly in various periodical publications. On the 11th of July he tells his sister that he had pieces last month in the Gospel Magazine; the Town and Country, viz. Maria Friendless; False Step; Hunter of Oddities; To Miss Bush, &c. Court and City; London; Political Register &c. But all these exertions of his genius brought in so little profit, that he was soon reduced to real indigence; from which he was relieved by death (in what manner is not certainly known), on the 24th of August, or thereabout, when he wanted near three months to complete his eighteenth year. The floor of his chamber was covered with written papers, which he had torn into small pieces; but there was no appearance (as the Editor has been credibly informed) of any writings on parchment or vellum.]

[Footnote 2: One of these fragments, by Mr. Barrett's permission, has been copied in the manner of a Fac simile, by that ingenious artist Mr. Strutt, and an engraving of it is inserted at p. 288. Two other small fragments of Poetry are printed in p. 277, 8, 9. See the Introductory Account. The fragments in prose, which are considerably larger, Mr. Barrett intends to publish in his History of Bristol, which, the Editor has the satisfaction to inform the Publick, is very far advanced. In the same work will be inserted A Discorse on Bristowe, and the other historical pieces in prose, which Chatterton at different times delivered out, as copied from Rowley's MSS.; with such remarks by Mr. Barrett, as he of all men living is best qualified to make, from his accurate researches into the Antiquities of Bristol.]

INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT

OF THE

SEVERAL PIECES

CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME.

ECLOGUE THE FIRST. p. 1
ECLOGUE THE SECOND. 6
ECLOGUE THE THIRD. 12

These three Eclogues are printed from a MS. furnished by Mr. Catcott, in the hand-writing of Thomas Chatterton. It is a thin copy-book in 4to. with the following title in the first page. "Eclogues and other Poems by Thomas Rowley, with a Glossary and Annotations by Thomas Chatterton."

There is only one other Poem in this book, viz. the fragment of "Goddwyn, a Tragedie," which see below, p. 173.

ELINOURE AND JUGA.

This Poem is reprinted from the Town and Country Magazine for May 1769, p. 273. It is there entitled, "Elinoure and Juga. Written three hundred years ago by T. Rowley, a secular priest." And it has the following subscription; "D.B. Bristol, May, 1769." Chatterton soon after told Mr. Catcott, that he (Chatterton) inserted it in the Magazine.

The present Editor has taken the liberty to supply [between books][1] the names of the speakers, at ver. 22 and 29, which had probably been omitted by some accident in the first publication; as the nature of the composition seems to require, that the dialogue should proceed by alternate stanzas.

VERSES TO LYDGATE. p. 23
SONGE TO ÆLLA. Ibid.
LYDGATE'S ANSWER. 26

These three small Poems are printed from a copy in Mr. Catcott's hand-writing. Since they were printed off, the Editor has had an opportunity of comparing them with a copy made by Mr. Barrett from the piece of vellum, which Chatterton formerly gave to him as the original MS. The variations of importance (exclusive of many in the spelling) are set down below [2].

[Footnote 1: Misspelled as hooks in the original.—PG editor]

[Footnote 2: Verses to Lydgate.

In the title for Ladgate, r. Lydgate.
ver. 2. r. Thatt I and thee.
3. for bee, r. goe.
7. for fyghte, r. wryte.]

THE TOURNAMENT. p. 28

This Poem is printed from a copy made by Mr. Catcott, from one in
Chatterton's hand-writing.

Songe to Ælla.

The title in the vellum MS. was simply "Songe toe Ælle," with a small mark of reference to a note below, containing the following words—"Lorde of the castelle of Brystowe ynne daies of yore." It may be proper also to take notice, that the whole song was there written like prose, without any breaks, or divisions into verses.

ver. 6. for brastynge, r. burslynge. 11. for valyante, r. burlie. 23. for dysmall, r. honore.

Lydgate's answer.

No title in the vellum MS.

ver. 3. for varses, r. pene. antep. for Lendes, r. Sendes. ult. for lyne, r. thynge.

Mr. Barrett had also a copy of these Poems by Chatterton, which differed from that, which Chatterton afterwards produced as the original, in the following particulars, among others.

In the title of the Verses to Lydgate.

Orig. Lydgate Chat. Ladgate.
ver. 3. Orig, goe. Chat. doe.
7. Orig. wryte. Chat. fyghte.

Songe to Ælla. ver. 5. Orig. Dacyane. Chat. Dacya's. Orig. whose lockes Chat. whose hayres. 11. Orig. burlie. Chat. bronded. 22. Orig. kennst. Chat. hearst. 23. Orig. honore. Chat. dysmall. 26. Orig. Yprauncynge Chat. Ifrayning, 30. Orig. gloue. Chat. glare.

Sir Simon de Bourton, the hero of this poem, is supposed to have been the first founder of a church dedicated to oure Ladie, in the place where the church of St. Mary Ratcliffe now stands. Mr. Barrett has a small leaf of vellum (given to him by Chatterton as one of Rowley's original MSS.), entitled, "Vita de Simon de Bourton," in which Sir Simon is said, as in the poem, to have begun his foundation in consequence of a vow made at a tournament.

THE DETHE OF SYR CHARLES BAWDIN. p. 44

This Poem is reprinted from the copy printed at London in 1772, with a few corrections from a copy made by Mr. Catcott, from one in Chatterton's hand-writing.

The person here celebrated, under the name of Syr Charles Bawdin, was probably Sir Baldewyn Fulford, Knt. a zealous Lancastrian, who was executed at Bristol in the latter end of 1461, the first year of Edward the Fourth. He was attainted, with many others, in the general act of Attainder, 1 Edw. IV. but he seems to have been executed under a special commission for the trial of treasons, &c. within the town of Bristol. The fragment of the old chronicle, published by Hearne at the end of Sprotti Chronica, p. 289, says only; "Item the same yere (1 Edw. IV.) was takin Sir Baldewine Fulford and behedid att Bristow." But the matter is more fully stated in the act which passed in 7 Edw. IV. for the restitution in blood and estate of Thomas Fulford, Knt. eldest son of Baldewyn Fulford, late of Fulford, in the county of Devonshire, Knt. Rot. Pat. 8 Edw. IV. p. 1, m. 13. The preamble of this act, after stating the attainder by the act 1 Edw. IV. goes on thus: "And also the said Baldewyn, the said first yere of your noble reign, at Bristowe in the shere of Bristowe, before Henry Erle of Essex William Hastyngs of Hastyngs Knt. Richard Chock William Canyng Maire of the said towne of Bristowe and Thomas Yong, by force of your letters patentes to theym and other directe to here and determine all treesons &c. doon withyn the said towne of Bristowe before the vth day of September the first yere of your said reign, was atteynt of dyvers tresons by him doon ayenst your Highnes &c." If the commission sate soon after the vth of September, as is most probable, King Edward might very possibly be at Bristol at the time of Sir Baldewyn's execution; for, in the interval between his coronation and the parliament which met in November, he made a progress (as the Continuator of Stowe informs us, p. 416.) by the South coast into the West, and was (among other places) at Bristol. Indeed there is a circumstance which might lead us to believe, that he was actually a spectator of the execution from the minster-window, as described in the poem. In an old accompt of the Procurators of St. Ewin's church, which was then the minster, from xx March in the 1 Edward IV. to 1 April in the year next ensuing, is the following article, according to a copy made by Mr. Catcott from the original book.

Item for washynge the church payven ageyns } iiij d. ob.
Kynge Edward 4th is comynge. }

ÆLLA, a tragycal enterlude. p. 65

This Poem, with the Epistle, Letter, and Entroductionne, is printed from a folio MS. furnished by Mr. Catcott, in the beginning of which he has written, "Chatterton's transcript. 1769." The whole transcript is of Chatterton's hand-writing.

GODDWYN, a Tragedie. p. 173

This Fragment is printed from the MS. mentioned above, p. xv. in
Chatterton's hand-writing.

ENGLYSH METAMORPHOSIS. p. 196

This Poem is printed from a single sheet in Chatterton's hand-writing, communicated by Mr. Barrett, who received it from Chatterton.

BALADE OF CHARITIE. p. 203

This Poem is also printed from a single sheet in Chatterton's hand-writing. It was sent to the Printer of the Town and Country Magazine, with the following letter prefixed:

"To the Printer of the Town and Country Magazine.

SIR,

If the Glossary annexed to the following piece will make the language intelligible; the Sentiment, Description, and Versification, are highly deserving the attention of the literati.

July 4, 1770. D.B."

BATTLE OF HASTINGS, No. 1. p. 210
BATTLE OF HASTINGS, No. 2. 237

In printing the first of these poems two copies have been made use of, both taken from copies of Chatterton's hand-writing, the one by Mr. Catcott, and the other by Mr. Barrett. The principal difference between them is at the end, where the latter has fourteen lines from ver. 550, which are wanting in the former. The second poem is printed from a single copy, made by Mr. Barrett from one in Chatterton's hand-writing.

It should be observed, that the Poem marked No. 1, was given to Mr. Barrett by Chatterton with the following title; "Battle of Hastings, wrote by Turgot the Monk, a Saxon, in the tenth century, and translated by Thomas Rowlie, parish preeste of St. Johns in the city of Bristol, in the year 1465.—The remainder of the poem I have not been happy enough to meet with." Being afterwards prest by Mr. Barrett to produce any part of this poem in the original hand-writing, he at last said, that he wrote this poem himself for a friend; but that he had another, the copy of an original by Rowley: and being then desired to produce that other poem, he, after a considerable interval of time, brought to Mr. Barrett the poem marked No. 2, as far as ver. 530 incl. with the following title; "Battle of Hastyngs by Turgotus, translated by Roulie for W. Canynge Esq." The lines from ver. 531 incl. were brought some time after, in consequence of Mr. Barrett's repeated sollicitations for the conclusion of the poem.

ONN OURE LADIES CHYRCHE. p. 275
ON THE SAME. 276

The first of these Poems is printed from a copy made by Mr. Catcott, from one in Chatterton's hand-writing.

The other is taken from a MS. in Chatterton's hand-writing, furnished by Mr. Catcott, entitled, "A Discorse on Bristowe, by Thomas Rowlie." See the Preface, p. xi. n.

EPITAPH ON ROBERT CANYNGE. p. 277

This is one of the fragments of vellum, given by Chatterton to Mr.
Barrett, as part of his original MSS.

THE STORIE OF WILLIAM CANYNGE. p. 278

The 34 first lines of this poem are extant upon another of the vellum-fragments, given by Chatterton to Mr. Barrett. The remainder is printed from a copy furnished by Mr. Catcott, with some corrections from another copy, made by Mr. Barrett from one in Chatterton's hand-writing. This poem makes part of a prose-work, attributed to Rowley, giving an account of Painters, Carvellers, Poets, and other eminent natives of Bristol, from the earliest times to his own. The whole will be published by Mr. Barrett, with remarks, and large additions; among which we may expect a complete and authentic history of that distinguished citizen of Bristol, Mr. William Canynge. In the mean time, the Reader may see several particulars relating to him in Cambden's Britannia, Somerset. Col. 95.—Rymers Foedera, &c. ann. 1449 & 1450.—Tanner's Not. Monast. Art. BRISTOL and WESTBURY.—Dugdale's Warwickshire, p. 634.

It may be proper just to remark here, that Mr. Canynge's brother, mentioned in ver. 129, who was lord mayor of London in 1456, is called Thomas by Stowe in his List of Mayors, &c.

The transaction alluded to in the last Stanza is related at large in some Prose Memoirs of Rowley, of which a very incorrect copy has been printed in the Town and Country Magazine for November 1775. It is there said, that Mr. Canynge went into orders, to avoid a marriage, proposed by King Edward, between him and a lady of the Widdevile family. It is certain, from the Register of the Bishop of Worcester, that Mr. Canynge was ordained Acolythe by Bishop Carpenter on 19 September 1467, and received the higher orders of Sub-deacon, Deacon, and Priest, on the 12th of March, 1467, O.S. the 2d and 16th of April, 1468, respectively.

ON HAPPIENESSE, by WILLIAM CANYNGE. p. 286
ONNE JOHNE A DALBENIE, by the same. Ibid.
THE GOULER'S REQUIEM, by the same. 287
THE ACCOUNTE OF W. CANYNGE'S FEASTE. 288

Of these four Poems attributed to Mr. Canynge, the three first are printed from Mr. Catcott's copies. The last is taken from a fragment of vellum, which Chatterton gave to Mr. Barrett as an original. The Editor has doubts about the reading of the second word in ver. 7, but he has printed it keene, as he found it so in other copies. The Reader may judge for himself, by examining the Fac simile in the opposite page.

With respect to the three friends of Mr. Canynge mentioned in the last line, the name of Rowley is sufficiently known from the preceding poems. Iscamm appears as an actor in the tragedy of Ælla, p. 66. and in that of Goddwyn, p. 174.; and a poem, ascribed to him, entitled "The merry Tricks of Laymington," is inserted in the "Discorse of Bristowe". Sir Theobald Gorges was a knight of an antient family seated at Wraxhall, within a few miles of Bristol [See Rot. Parl. 3 H. VI. n. 28. Leland's Itin. vol. VII. p. 98.]. He has also appeared above as an actor in both the tragedies, and as the author of one of the Mynstrelles songes in Ælla, p. 91. His connexion with Mr. Canynge is verified by a deed of the latter, dated 20 October, 1467, in which he gives to trustees, in part of a benefaction of £500 to the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, "certain jewells of Sir Theobald Gorges Knt." which had been pawned to him for £160.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The Reader is desired to observe, that the notes at the bottom of the several pages, throughout the following part of this book, are all copied from MSS. in the hand-writing of Thomas Chatterton.

POEMS, &c.

ECLOGUE THE FIRST.

Whanne Englonde, smeethynge[1] from her lethal[2] wounde,
From her galled necke dyd twytte[3] the chayne awaie,
Kennynge her legeful sonnes falle all arounde,
(Myghtie theie fell, 'twas Honoure ledde the fraie,)
Thanne inne a dale, bie eve's dark surcote[4] graie, 5
Twayne lonelie shepsterres[5] dyd abrodden[6] flie,
(The rostlyng liff doth theyr whytte hartes affraie[7],)
And wythe the owlette trembled and dyd crie;
Firste Roberte Neatherde hys sore boesom stroke.
Then fellen on the grounde and thus yspoke. 10

ROBERTE.

Ah, Raufe! gif thos the howres do comme alonge,
Gif thos wee flie in chase of farther woe,
Oure fote wylle fayle, albeytte wee bee stronge,
Ne wylle oure pace swefte as oure danger goe.
To oure grete wronges we have enheped[8] moe, 15
The Baronnes warre! oh! woe and well-a-daie!
I haveth lyff, bott have escaped soe,
That lyff ytsel mie Senses doe affraie.
Oh Raufe, comme lyste, and hear mie dernie[9] tale,
Comme heare the balefull[10] dome of Robynne of the Dale. 20

RAUFE.

Saie to mee nete; I kenne thie woe in myne;
O! I've a tale that Sabalus[11] mote[12] telle.
Swote[13] flouretts, mantled meedows, forestes dygne[14];
Gravots[15] far-kend[16] arounde the Errmiets[17] cell;
The swote ribible[18] dynning[19] yn the dell; 25
The joyous daunceynge ynn the hoastrie[20] courte;
Eke[21] the highe songe and everych joie farewell,
Farewell the verie shade of fayre dysporte[22]:
Impestering[23] trobble onn mie heade doe comme,
Ne on kynde Seyncte to warde[24] the aye[25] encreasynge dome. 30

ROBERTE.

Oh! I coulde waile mie kynge-coppe-decked mees[26],
Mie spreedynge flockes of shepe of lillie white,
Mie tendre applynges[27], and embodyde[28] trees,
Mie Parker's Grange[29], far spreedynge to the syghte,
Mie cuyen[30] kyne [31], mie bullockes stringe[32] yn syghte, 35
Mie gorne[33] emblaunched[34] with the comfreie[35] plante,
Mie floure[36] Seyncte Marie shotteyng wythe the lyghte,
Mie store of all the blessynges Heaven can grant.
I amm duressed[37] unto sorrowes blowe,
Ihanten'd[38] to the peyne, will lette ne salte teare flowe. 40

RAUFE.

Here I wille obaie[39] untylle Dethe doe 'pere,
Here lyche a foule empoysoned leathel[40] tree,
Whyche sleaeth[41] everichone that commeth nere,
Soe wille I fyxed unto thys place gre[42].
I to bement[43] haveth moe cause than thee; 45
Sleene in the warre mie boolie[44] fadre lies;
Oh! joieous I hys mortherer would slea,
And bie hys syde for aie enclose myne eies.
Calked[45] from everych joie, heere wylle I blede;
Fell ys the Cullys-yatte[46] of mie hartes castle stede. 50

ROBERTE.

Oure woes alyche, alyche our dome[47] shal bee.
Mie sonne, mie sonne alleyn[48], ystorven[49] ys;
Here wylle I staie, and end mie lyff with thee;
A lyff lyche myn a borden ys ywis.
Now from een logges[50] fledden is selyness[51], 55
Mynsterres[52] alleyn[53] can boaste the hallie[54] Seyncte,
Now doeth Englonde weare a bloudie dresse
And wyth her champyonnes gore her face depeyncte;
Peace fledde, disorder sheweth her dark rode[55],
And thorow ayre doth flie, yn garments steyned with bloude. 60

[Footnote 1: Smething, smoking; in some copies bletheynge, but in the original as above.]

[Footnote 2: deadly.]

[Footnote 3: pluck or pull.]

[Footnote 4: Surcote, a cloke, or mantel, which hid all the other dress.]

[Footnote 5: shepherds.]

[Footnote 6: abruptly, so Chaucer, Syke he abredden dyd attourne.]

[Footnote 7: affright.]

[Footnote 8: Added.]

[Footnote 9: sad.]

[Footnote 10: woeful, lamentable.]

[Footnote 11: the Devil.]

[Footnote 12: might.]

[Footnote 13: sweet.]

[Footnote 14: good, neat, genteel.]

[Footnote 15: groves, sometimes used for a coppice.]

[Footnote 16: far-seen.]

[Footnote 17: Hermit.]

[Footnote 18: violin.]

[Footnote 19: sounding.]

[Footnote 20: inn, or public-house.]

[Footnote 21: also.]

[Footnote 22: pleasure.]

[Footnote 23: annoying.]

[Footnote 24: to keep off.]

[Footnote 25: ever, always.]

[Footnote 26: meadows.]

[Footnote 27: grafted trees.]

[Footnote 28: thick, stout.]

[Footnote 29: liberty of pasture given to the Parker.]

[Footnote 30: tender.]

[Footnote 31: cows.]

[Footnote 32: strong.]

[Footnote 33: garden.]

[Footnote 34: whitened.]

[Footnote 35: cumfrey, a favourite dish at that time.]

[Footnote 36: marygold.]

[Footnote 37: hardened.]

[Footnote 38: accustomed.]

[Footnote 39: abide. This line is also wrote, "Here wyll I obaie untill dethe appere," but this is modernized.]

[Footnote 40: deadly.]

[Footnote 41: destroyeth, killeth.]

[Footnote 42: grow.]

[Footnote 43: lament.]

[Footnote 44: much-loved, beloved.]

[Footnote 45: cast out, ejected.]

[Footnote 46: alluding to the portcullis, which guarded the gate, on which often depended the castle.]

[Footnote 47: fate.]

[Footnote 48: my only son.]

[Footnote 49: dead.]

[Footnote 50: cottages.]

[Footnote 51: happiness.]

[Footnote 52: monasterys.]

[Footnote 53: only.]

[Footnote 54: holy.]

[Footnote 55: complexion.]

ECLOGUE THE SECOND.

Sprytes[1] of the bleste, the pious Nygelle sed,
Poure owte yer pleasaunce[2] onn mie fadres hedde.

Rycharde of Lyons harte to fyghte is gon,
Uponne the brede[3] sea doe the banners gleme[4];
The amenused[5] nationnes be aston[6], 5
To ken[7] syke[8] large a flete, syke fyne, syke breme[9].
The barkis heafods[10] coupe[11] the lymed[12] streme;
Oundes[13] synkeynge oundes upon the hard ake[14] riese;
The water slughornes[15] wythe a swotye[16] cleme[17]
Conteke[18] the dynnynge[19] ayre, and reche the skies. 10
Sprytes of the bleste, on gouldyn trones[20] astedde[21],
Poure owte yer pleasaunce onn mie fadres hedde.

The gule[22] depeyncted[23] oares from the black tyde,
Decorn[24] wyth fonnes[25] rare, doe shemrynge[26] ryse;
Upswalynge[27] doe heie[28] shewe ynne drierie pryde, 15
Lyche gore-red estells[29] in the eve[30]-merk[31] skyes;
The nome-depeyncted[32] shields, the speres aryse,
Alyche[33] talle roshes on the water syde;
Alenge[34] from bark to bark the bryghte sheene[35] flyes;
Sweft-kerv'd[36] delyghtes doe on the water glyde. 20
Sprites of the bleste, and everich Seyncte ydedde,
Poure owte youre pleasaunce on mie fadres hedde.

The Sarafen lokes owte: he doethe feere,
That Englondes brondeous[37] sonnes do cotte the waie.
Lyke honted bockes, theye reineth[38] here and there, 25
Onknowlachynge[39] inne whatte place to obaie[40].
The banner glesters on the beme of daie;
The mittee[41] crosse Jerusalim ys seene;
Dhereof the syghte yer corrage doe affraie[42],
In balefull[43] dole their faces be ywreene[44]. 30
Sprytes of the bleste, and everich Seyncte ydedde,
Poure owte your pleasaunce on mie fadres hedde.

The bollengers[45] and cottes[45], soe swyfte yn fyghte,
Upon the sydes of everich bark appere;
Foorthe to his offyce lepethe everych knyghte, 35
Eftsoones[46] hys squyer, with hys shielde and spere.
The jynynge shieldes doe shemre and moke glare[47];
The dotheynge oare doe make gemoted[48] dynne;
The reynyng[49] foemen[50], thynckeynge gif[51] to dare,
Boun[52] the merk[53] swerde, theie seche to fraie[54], theie blyn[55].
Sprytes of the bleste, and everyche Seyncte ydedde,
Powre oute yer pleasaunce onn mie fadres hedde.

Now comm the warrynge Sarasyns to fyghte;
Kynge Rycharde, lyche a lyoncel[56] of warre,
Inne sheenynge goulde, lyke feerie[57] gronfers[58], dyghte[59],
Shaketh alofe hys honde, and seene afarre. 45
Syke haveth I espyde a greter starre
Amenge the drybblett[60] ons to sheene fulle bryghte;
Syke sunnys wayne[61] wyth amayl'd[62] beames doe barr
The blaunchie[63] mone or estells[64] to gev lyghte. 50
Sprytes of the bleste, and everich Seyncte ydedde,
Poure owte your pleasaunce on mie fadres hedde.

Distraughte[65] affraie[66], wythe lockes of blodde-red die,
Terroure, emburled[67] yn the thonders rage,
Deathe, lynked to dismaie, dothe ugsomme[68] flie, 55
Enchasynge[69] echone champyonne war to wage.
Speeres bevyle[70] speres; swerdes upon swerdes engage;
Armoure on armoure dynn[71], shielde upon shielde;
Ne dethe of thosandes can the warre assuage,
Botte salleynge nombers sable[72] all the feelde. 60
Sprytes of the bleste, and everych Seyncte ydedde,
Poure owte youre pleasaunce on mie fadres hedde.

The foemen fal arounde; the cross reles[73] hye;
Steyned ynne goere, the harte of warre ys seen;
Kyng Rycharde, thorough everyche trope dothe flie, 65
And beereth meynte[74] of Turkes onto the greene;
Bie hymm the floure of Asies menn ys sleene[75];
The waylynge[76] mone doth fade before hys sonne;
Bie hym hys knyghtes bee formed to actions deene[77],
Doeynge syke marvels[78], strongers be aston[79]. 70
Sprytes of the bleste, and everych Seyncte ydedde,
Poure owte your pleasaunce onn mie fadres hedde.

The fyghte ys wonne; Kynge Rycharde master is;
The Englonde bannerr kisseth the hie ayre;
Full of pure joie the armie is iwys[80], 75
And everych one haveth it onne his bayre[81];
Agayne to Englonde comme, and worschepped there.
Twyghte[82] into lovynge armes, and feasted eft[83];
In everych eyne aredynge nete of wyere[84],
Of all remembrance of past peyne berefte. 80
Sprites of the bleste, and everich Seyncte ydedde,
Syke pleasures powre upon mie fadres hedde.

Syke Nigel sed, whan from the bluie sea
The upswol[85] sayle dyd daunce before his eyne;
Swefte as the withe, hee toe the beeche dyd flee. 85
And founde his fadre steppeynge from the bryne.
Lette thyssen menne, who haveth sprite of loove,
Bethyncke untoe hemselves how mote the meetynge proove.

[Footnote 1: Spirits, souls.]

[Footnote 2: pleasure.]

[Footnote 3: broad.]

[Footnote 4: shine, glimmer.]

[Footnote 5: diminished, lessened.]

[Footnote 6: astonished, confounded.]

[Footnote 7: see, discover, know.]

[Footnote 8: such, so.]

[Footnote 9: strong.]

[Footnote 10: heads.]

[Footnote 11: cut.]

[Footnote 12: glassy, reflecting.]

[Footnote 13: waves, billows.]

[Footnote 14: oak.]

[Footnote 15: a musical instrument, not unlike a hautboy.]

[Footnote 16: sweet.]

[Footnote 17: sound.]

[Footnote 18: confuse, contend with.]

[Footnote 19: sounding.]

[Footnote 20: thrones.]

[Footnote 21: seated.]

[Footnote 22: red.]

[Footnote 23: painted.]

[Footnote 24: carved.]

[Footnote 25: devices.]

[Footnote 26: glimmering.]

[Footnote 27: rising high, swelling up.]

[Footnote 28: they.]

[Footnote 29: a corruption of estoile, Fr. a star.]

[Footnote 30: evening.]

[Footnote 31: dark.]

[Footnote 32: rebus'd shields; a herald term, when the charge of the shield implies the name of the bearer.]

[Footnote 33: like.]

[Footnote 34: along.]

[Footnote 35: shine.]

[Footnote 36: short-lived.]

[Footnote 37: furious.]

[Footnote 38: runneth.]

[Footnote 39: not knowing.]

[Footnote 40: abide.]

[Footnote 41: mighty.]

[Footnote 42: affright.]

[Footnote 43: woeful.]

[Footnote 44: covered.]

[Footnote 45: different kinds of boats.]

[Footnote 46: full soon, presently.]

[Footnote 47: glitter.]

[Footnote 48: united, assembled.]

[Footnote 49: running.]

[Footnote 50: foes.]

[Footnote 51: if.]

[Footnote 52: make ready.]

[Footnote 53: dark.]

[Footnote 54: engage.]

[Footnote 55: cease, stand still.]

[Footnote 56: a young lion.]

[Footnote 57: flaming.]

[Footnote 58: a meteor, from gron, a fen, and fer, a corruption of fire; that is, a fire exhaled from a fen.]

[Footnote 59: deckt.]

[Footnote 60: small, insignificant.]

[Footnote 61: carr.]

[Footnote 62: enameled.]

[Footnote 63: white, silver.]

[Footnote 64: stars.]

[Footnote 65: distracting.]

[Footnote 66: affright.]

[Footnote 67: armed.]

[Footnote 68: terribly.]

[Footnote 69: encouraging, heating.]

[Footnote 70: break, a herald term, signifying a spear broken in tilting.]

[Footnote 71: sounds.]

[Footnote 72: blacken.]

[Footnote 73: waves.]

[Footnote 74: many, great numbers.]

[Footnote 75: slain.]

[Footnote 76: decreasing.]

[Footnote 77: glorious, worthy.]

[Footnote 78: wonders.]

[Footnote 79: astonished.]

[Footnote 80: certainly.]

[Footnote 81: brow.]

[Footnote 82: plucked, pulled.]

[Footnote 83: often.]

[Footnote 84: grief, trouble.]

[Footnote 85: swollen.]

ECLOGUE THE THIRD.

Wouldst thou kenn nature in her better parte?
Goe, serche the logges [1] and bordels[2] of the hynde[3];
Gyff[4] theie have anie, itte ys roughe-made arte,
Inne hem[5] you see the blakied[6] forme of kynde[7].
Haveth your mynde a lycheynge[8] of a mynde? 5
Woulde it kenne everich thynge, as it mote[9] bee?
Woulde ytte here phrase of the vulgar from the hynde,
Withoute wiseegger[10] wordes and knowlache[11] free?
Gyf soe, rede thys, whyche Iche dysporteynge[12] pende;
Gif nete besyde, yttes rhyme maie ytte commende. 10

MANNE.

Botte whether, fayre mayde, do ye goe?
O where do ye bende yer waie?
I wille knowe whether you goe,
I wylle not bee asseled[13] naie.

WOMANNE.

To Robyn and Nell, all downe in the delle, 15
To hele[14] hem at makeynge of haie.

MANNE.

Syr Rogerre, the parsone, hav hyred mee there,
Comme, comme, lett us tryppe ytte awaie,
We'lle wurke[15] and we'lle synge, and wylle drenche[16] of stronge beer
As longe as the merrie sommers daie. 20

WOMANNE.

How harde ys mie dome to wurch!
Moke is mie woe.
Dame Agnes, whoe lies ynne the Chyrche
With birlette[17] golde,
Wythe gelten[18] aumeres[19] stronge ontolde, 25
What was shee moe than me, to be soe?

MANNE.

I kenne Syr Roger from afar
Tryppynge over the lea;
Ich ask whie the loverds[20] son
Is moe than mee. 30

SYR ROGERRE.

The sweltrie[21] sonne dothe hie apace hys wayne[22],
From everich beme a seme[23]; of lyfe doe falle;
Swythyn[24] scille[25] oppe the haie uponne the playne;
Methynckes the cockes begynneth to gre[26] talle.
Thys ys alyche oure doome[27]; the great, the smalle, 35
Mofte withe[28] and bee forwyned[29] by deathis darte.
See! the swote[30] flourette[31] hathe noe swote at alle;
Itte wythe the ranke wede bereth evalle[32] parte.
The cravent[33], warrioure, and the wyse be blente[34],
Alyche to drie awaie wythe those theie dyd bemente[35]. 40

MANNE.

All-a-boon[36], Syr Priest, all-a-boon,
Bye yer preestschype nowe saye unto mee;
Syr Gaufryd the knyghte, who lyvethe harde bie,
Whie shoulde hee than mee
Bee moe greate, 45
Inne honnoure, knyghtehoode and estate?

SYR ROGERRE.

Attourne[37] thine eyne arounde thys haied mee,
Tentyflie[38] loke arounde the chaper[39] delle[40];
An answere to thie barganette[41] here see,
Thys welked[42] flourette wylle a leson telle: 50
Arist[43] it blew[44], itte florished, and dyd welle,
Lokeynge ascaunce[45] upon the naighboure greene;
Yet with the deigned[46] greene yttes rennome[47] felle,
Eftsoones[48] ytte shronke upon the daie-brente[49] playne,
Didde not yttes loke, whilest ytte there dyd stonde, 55
To croppe ytte in the bodde move somme dred honde.

Syke[50] ys the waie of lyffe; the loverds[51] ente[52]
Mooveth the robber hym therfor to slea[53];
Gyf thou has ethe[54], the shadowe of contente,
Beleive the trothe[55], theres none moe haile[56] yan thee. 60
Thou wurchest[57]; welle, canne thatte a trobble bee?
Slothe moe wulde jade thee than the roughest daie.
Couldest thou the kivercled[58] of soughlys[59] see,
Thou wouldst eftsoones[60] see trothe ynne whatte I saie;
Botte lette me heere thie waie of lyffe, and thenne 65
Heare thou from me the lyffes of odher menne.

MANNE.

I ryse wythe the sonne,
Lyche hym to dryve the wayne[61],
And eere mie wurche is don
I synge a songe or twayne[62]. 70
I followe the plough-tayle,
Wythe a longe jubb[63] of ale.
Botte of the maydens, oh!
Itte lacketh notte to telle;
Syr Preeste mote notte crie woe, 75
Culde hys bull do as welle.
I daunce the beste heiedeygnes[64],
And foile[65] the wysest feygnes[66].
On everych Seynctes hie daie
Wythe the mynstrelle[67] am I seene, 80
All a footeynge it awaie,
Wythe maydens on the greene.
But oh! I wyshe to be moe greate,
In rennome, tenure, and estate.

SYR ROGERRE.

Has thou ne seene a tree uponne a hylle, 85
Whose unliste[68] braunces[69] rechen far toe fyghte;
Whan fuired[70] unwers[71] doe the heaven fylle,
Itte shaketh deere[72] yn dole[73] and moke affryghte.
Whylest the congeon[74] flowrette abessie[75] dyghte[76],
Stondethe unhurte, unquaced[77] bie the storme: 90
Syke is a picte[78] of lyffe: the manne of myghte
Is tempest-chaft[79], hys woe greate as hys forme,
Thieselfe a flowrette of a small accounte,
Wouldst harder felle the wynde, as hygher thee dydste mounte.

[Footnote 1: lodges, huts.]

[Footnote 2: cottages.]

[Footnote 3: servant, slave, peasant.]

[Footnote 4: if.]

[Footnote 5: a contraction of them.]

[Footnote 6: naked, original.]

[Footnote 7: nature.]

[Footnote 8: liking.]

[Footnote 9: might. The sense of this line is, Would you see every thing in its primæval state.]

[Footnote 10: wise-egger, a philosopher.]

[Footnote 11: knowledge.]

[Footnote 12: sporting.]

[Footnote 13: answered.]

[Footnote 14: aid, or help.]

[Footnote 15: work.]

[Footnote 16: drink.]

[Footnote 17: a hood, or covering for the back part of the head.]

[Footnote 18: guilded.]

[Footnote 19: borders of gold and silver, on which was laid thin plates of either metal counterchanged, not unlike the present spangled laces.]

[Footnote 20: lord.]

[Footnote 21: sultry.]

[Footnote 22: car.]

[Footnote 23: seed.]

[Footnote 24: quickly, presently.]

[Footnote 25: gather.]

[Footnote 26: grow.]

[Footnote 27: fate.]

[Footnote 28: a contraction of wither.]

[Footnote 29: dried.]

[Footnote 30: sweet.]

[Footnote 31: flower.]

[Footnote 32: equal.]

[Footnote 33: coward.]

[Footnote 34: ceased, dead, no more.]

[Footnote 35: lament.]

[Footnote 36: a manner of asking a favour.]

[Footnote 37: turn.]

[Footnote 38: carefully, with circumspection.]

[Footnote 39: dry, sun-burnt.]

[Footnote 40: valley.]

[Footnote 41: a song, or ballad.]

[Footnote 42: withered.]

[Footnote 43: arisen, or arose.]

[Footnote 44: blossomed.]

[Footnote 45: disdainfully.]

[Footnote 46: disdained.]

[Footnote 47: glory.]

[Footnote 48: quickly.]

[Footnote 49: burnt.]

[Footnote 50: such.]

[Footnote 51: lord's.]

[Footnote 52: a purse or bag.]

[Footnote 53: slay.]

[Footnote 54: ease.]

[Footnote 55: truth.]

[Footnote 56: happy.]

[Footnote 57: workest.]

[Footnote 58: the hidden or secret part of.]

[Footnote 59: souls.]

[Footnote 60: full soon, or presently.]

[Footnote 61: car.]

[Footnote 62: two.]

[Footnote 63: a bottle.]

[Footnote 64: a country dance, still practised in the North.]

[Footnote 65: baffle.]

[Footnote 66: a corruption of feints.]

[Footnote 67: a minstrel is a musician.]

[Footnote 68: unbounded.]

[Footnote 69: branches.]

[Footnote 70: furious.]

[Footnote 71: tempests, storms.]

[Footnote 72: dire.]

[Footnote 73: dismay.]

[Footnote 74: dwarf.]

[Footnote 75: humility.]

[Footnote 76: decked.]

[Footnote 77: unhurt.]

[Footnote 78: picture.]

[Footnote 79: tempest-beaten.]

ELINOURE AND JUGA.

Onne Ruddeborne[1] bank twa pynynge Maydens fate,
Theire teares faste dryppeynge to the waterre cleere;
Echone bementynge[2] for her absente mate,
Who atte Seyncte Albonns shouke the morthynge[3] speare.
The nottebrowne Elinoure to Juga fayre 5
Dydde speke acroole[4], wythe languishment of eyne,
Lyche droppes of pearlie dew, lemed[5] the quyvryng brine.

ELINOURE.

O gentle Juga! heare mie dernie[6] plainte,
To fyghte for Yorke mie love ys dyghte[7] in stele;
O maie ne sanguen steine the whyte rose peyncte, 10
Maie good Seyncte Cuthberte watche Syrre Roberte wele.
Moke moe thanne deathe in phantasie I feele;
See! see! upon the grounde he bleedynge lies;
Inhild[8] some joice[9] of lyfe or else mie deare love dies.

JUGA.

Systers in sorrowe, on thys daise-ey'd banke, 15
Where melancholych broods, we wyll lamente;
Be wette wythe mornynge dewe and evene danke;
Lyche levynde[10] okes in eche the odher bente,
Or lyche forlettenn[11] halles of merriemente,
Whose gastlie mitches[12] holde the traine of fryghte[13], 20
Where lethale[14] ravens bark, and owlets wake the nyghte.

[ELINOURE.]

No moe the miskynette[15] shall wake the morne,
The minstrelle daunce, good cheere, and morryce plaie;
No moe the amblynge palfrie and the horne
Shall from the lessel[16] rouze the foxe awaie; 25
I'll seke the foreste alle the lyve-longe daie;
Alle nete amenge the gravde chyrche[17] glebe wyll goe,
And to the passante Spryghtes lecture[18] mie tale of woe.

[JUGA.]

Whan mokie[19] cloudis do hange upon the leme
Of leden[20] Moon, ynn sylver mantels dyghte; 30
The tryppeynge Faeries weve the golden dreme
Of Selyness[21], whyche flyethe wythe the nyghte;
Thenne (botte the Seynctes forbydde!) gif to a spryte
Syrr Rychardes forme ys lyped, I'll holde dystraughte
Hys bledeynge claie-colde corse, and die eche daie ynn thoughte. 35

ELINOURE.

Ah woe bementynge wordes; what wordes can shewe!
Thou limed[22] ryver, on thie linche[23] maie bleede
Champyons, whose bloude wylle wythe thie waterres flowe,
And Rudborne streeme be Rudborne streeme indeede!
Haste, gentle Juga, tryppe ytte oere the meade, 40
To knowe, or wheder we muste waile agayne,
Or wythe oure fallen knyghtes be menged onne the plain.

Soe sayinge, lyke twa levyn-blasted trees,
Or twayne of cloudes that holdeth stormie rayne;
Theie moved gentle oere the dewie mees[24], 45
To where Seyncte Albons holie shrynes remayne.
There dyd theye fynde that bothe their knyghtes were slayne,
Distraughte[25] theie wandered to swollen Rudbornes syde,
Yelled theyre leathalle knelle, sonke ynn the waves, and dyde.

[Footnote 1: Rudborne (in Saxon, red-water), a River near Saint
Albans, famous for the battles there fought between the Houses of
Lancaster and York.]

[Footnote 2: lamenting.]

[Footnote 3: murdering.]

[Footnote 4: faintly.]

[Footnote 5: glistened.]

[Footnote 6: sad complaint.]

[Footnote 7: arrayed, or cased.]

[Footnote 8: infuse.]

[Footnote 9: juice.]

[Footnote 10: blasted.]

[Footnote 11: forsaken.]

[Footnote 12: ruins.]

[Footnote 13: fear.]

[Footnote 14: deadly or deathboding.]

[Footnote 15: a small bagpipe.]

[Footnote 16: in a confined sense, a bush or hedge, though sometimes used as a forest.]

[Footnote 17: church-yard.]

[Footnote 18: relate.]

[Footnote 19: black.]

[Footnote 20: decreasing.]

[Footnote 21: happiness.]

[Footnote 22: glassy.]

[Footnote 23: bank.]

[Footnote 24: meeds.]

[Footnote 25: distracted.]

TO JOHNE LADGATE.

[Sent with the following Songe to Ælla.]

Well thanne, goode Johne, sythe ytt must needes be soe,
Thatt thou & I a bowtynge matche must have,
Lette ytt ne breakynge of oulde friendshyppe bee,
Thys ys the onelie all-a-boone I crave.

Rememberr Stowe, the Bryghtstowe Carmalyte, 5
Who whanne Johne Clarkynge, one of myckle lore,
Dydd throwe hys gauntlette-penne, wyth hym to fyghte,
Hee showd smalle wytte, and showd hys weaknesse more.

Thys ys mie formance, whyche I nowe have wrytte,
The best performance of mie lyttel wytte. 10

SONGE TO ÆLLA, LORDE OF THE CASTEL OF BRYSTOWE YNNE DAIES OF YORE.

Oh thou, orr what remaynes of thee,
Ælla, the darlynge of futurity,
Lett thys mie songe bolde as thie courage be,
As everlastynge to posteritye.

Whanne Dacya's sonnes, whose hayres of bloude-redde hue 5
Lyche kynge-cuppes brastynge wythe the morning due,
Arraung'd ynne dreare arraie,
Upponne the lethale daie,
Spredde farre and wyde onne Watchets shore;
Than dyddst thou furiouse stande, 10
And bie thie valyante hande
Beesprengedd all the mees wythe gore.

Drawne bie thyne anlace felle,
Downe to the depthe of helle
Thousandes of Dacyanns went; 15
Brystowannes, menne of myghte,
Ydar'd the bloudie fyghte,
And actedd deeds full quent.

Oh thou, whereer (thie bones att reste)
Thye Spryte to haunte delyghteth beste, 20
Whetherr upponne the bloude-embrewedd pleyne,
Orr whare thou kennst fromm farre
The dysmall crye of warre,
Orr seest somme mountayne made of corse of sleyne;
Orr seest the hatchedd stede, 25
Ypraunceynge o'er the mede,
And neighe to be amenged the poynctedd speeres;
Orr ynne blacke armoure staulke arounde
Embattel'd Brystowe, once thie grounde,
And glowe ardurous onn the Castle steeres; 30

Orr fierye round the mynsterr glare;
Lette Brystowe stylle be made thie care;
Guarde ytt fromme foemenne & consumynge fyre;
Lyche Avones streme ensyrke ytte rounde,
Ne lette a flame enharme the grounde, 35
Tylle ynne one flame all the whole worlde expyre.

The underwritten Lines were composed by JOHN LADGATE, a Priest in
London, and sent to ROWLIE, as an Answer to the preceding Songe of
Ælla.

Havynge wythe mouche attentyonn redde
Whatt you dydd to mee sende,
Admyre the varses mouche I dydd,
And thus an answerr lende.

Amongs the Greeces Homer was 5
A Poett mouche renownde,
Amongs the Latyns Vyrgilius
Was beste of Poets founde.

The Brytish Merlyn oftenne hanne
The gyfte of inspyration, 10
And Afled to the Sexonne menne
Dydd synge wythe elocation.

Ynne Norman tymes, Turgotus and
Goode Chaucer dydd excelle,
Thenn Stowe, the Bryghtstowe Carmelyte, 15
Dydd bare awaie the belle.

Nowe Rowlie ynne these mokie dayes
Lendes owte hys sheenynge lyghtes,
And Turgotus and Chaucer lyves
Ynne ev'ry lyne he wrytes. 20

THE TOURNAMENT.

AN INTERLUDE.

ENTER AN HERAWDE.

The Tournament begynnes; the hammerrs sounde;
The courserrs lysse[1] about the mensuredd[2] fielde;
The shemrynge armoure throws the sheene arounde;
Quayntyssed[3] fons[4] depictedd[5] onn eche sheelde.
The feerie[6] heaulmets, wythe the wreathes amielde[7], 5
Supportes the rampynge lyoncell[8] orr beare,
Wythe straunge depyctures[9], Nature maie nott yeelde,
Unseemelie to all orderr doe appere,
Yett yatte[10] to menne, who thyncke and have a spryte[11],
Makes knowen thatt the phantasies unryghte. 10

I, Sonne of Honnoure, spencer[11] of her joies,
Muste swythen[12] goe to yeve[13] the speeres arounde,
Wythe advantayle[14] & borne[15] I meynte[16] emploie,
Who withoute mee woulde fall untoe the grounde.
Soe the tall oake the ivie twysteth rounde; 15
Soe the neshe[17] flowerr grees[18] ynne the woodeland shade.
The worlde bie diffraunce ys ynne orderr founde;
Wydhoute unlikenesse nothynge could bee made.
As ynn the bowke[19] nete[20] alleyn[21] cann bee donne,
Syke[22] ynn the weal of kynde all thynges are partes of onne. 20

Enterr SYRR SYMONNE DE BOURTONNE.

Herawde[23], bie heavenne these tylterrs staie too long.
Mie phantasie ys dyinge forr the fyghte.
The mynstrelles have begonne the thyrde warr songe,
Yett notte a speere of hemm[24] hath grete mie syghte.
I feere there be ne manne wordhie mie myghte. 25
I lacke a Guid[25], a Wyllyamm[26] to entylte.
To reine[27] anente[28] a fele[29] embodiedd knyghte,
Ytt gettes ne rennome[30] gyff hys blodde bee spylte.
Bie heavenne & Marie ytt ys tyme they're here;
I lyche nott unthylle[31] thus to wielde the speare. 30

HERAWDE.

Methynckes I heare yer slugghornes[32] dynn[33] fromm farre.

BOURTONNE.

Ah! swythenn[34] mie shielde & tyltynge launce bee bounde [35].
Eftsoones[36] beheste[37] mie Squyerr to the warre.
I flie before to clayme a challenge grownde.
[Goeth oute.

HERAWDE.

Thie valourous actes woulde meinte[38] of menne astounde;
Harde bee yer shappe[39] encontrynge thee ynn fyghte;
Anenst[40] all menne thou bereft to the grounde,
Lyche the hard hayle dothe the tall roshes pyghte[41].
As whanne the mornynge sonne ydronks the dew,
Syche dothe thie valourous actes drocke[42] eche knyghte's hue. 40

THE LYSTES. THE KYNGE. SYRR SYMONNE DE BOURTONNE, SYRR HUGO FERRARIS, SYRR RANULPH NEVILLE, SYRR LODOVICK DE CLYNTON, SYRR JOHAN DE BERGHAMME, AND ODHERR KNYGHTES, HERAWDES, MYNSTRELLES. AND SERVYTOURS[43].

KYNGE.

The barganette[44]; yee mynstrelles tune the strynge,
Somme actyonn dyre of auntyante kynges now synge.

MYNSTRELLES.

Wyllyamm, the Normannes floure botte Englondes thorne,
The manne whose myghte delievretie[45] hadd knite[46],
Snett[46] oppe hys long strunge bowe and sheelde aborne[47], 45
Behesteynge[48] all hys hommageres[49] to fyghte.
Goe, rouze the lyonn fromm hys hylted[50] denne,
Lett thie floes[51] drenche the blodde of anie thynge bott menne.

Ynn the treed forreste doe the knyghtes appere;
Wyllyamm wythe myghte hys bowe enyronn'd[52] plies[53]; 50
Loude dynns[54] the arrowe ynn the wolfynn's eare;
Hee ryseth battent[55] roares, he panctes, hee dyes.
Forslagenn att thie feete lett wolvynns bee,
Lett thie floes drenche theyre blodde, bott do ne bredrenn flea.

Throwe the merke[56] shade of twistynde trees hee rydes; 55
The flemed[57] owlett[58] flapps herr eve-speckte[59] wynge;
The lordynge[60] toade ynn all hys passes bides;
The berten[61] neders[62] att hymm darte the stynge;
Styll, stylle, hee passes onn, hys stede astrodde,
Nee hedes the daungerous waie gyff leadynge untoe bloodde. 60

The lyoncel, fromme sweltrie[63] countries braughte,
Coucheynge binethe the sheltre of the brierr,
Att commyng dynn[64] doth rayse hymselfe distraughte[65],
He loketh wythe an eie of flames of fyre.
Goe, sticke the lyonn to hys hyltren denne. 65
Lette thie floes[66] drenche the blood of anie thynge botte menn.

Wythe passent[67] steppe the lyonn mov'th alonge;
Wyllyamm hys ironne-woven bowe hee bendes,
Wythe myghte alyche the roghlynge[68] thonderr stronge;
The lyonn ynn a roare hys spryte foorthe sendes. 70
Goe, slea the lyonn ynn hys blodde-steyn'd denne,
Botte bee thie takelle[69] drie fromm blodde of odherr menne.

Swefte fromm the thyckett starks the stagge awaie;
The couraciers[70] as swefte doe afterr flie.
Hee lepethe hie, hee stondes, hee kepes att baie, 75
Botte metes the arrowe, and eftsoones[71] doth die.
Forslagenn atte thie fote lette wylde beastes bee,
Lett thie floes drenche yer blodde, yett do ne bredrenn slee.

Wythe murtherr tyredd, hee sleynges hys bowe alyne[72].
The stagge ys ouch'd[73] wythe crownes of lillie flowerrs. 80
Arounde theire heaulmes theie greene verte doe entwyne;
Joying and rev'lous ynn the grene wode bowerrs.
Forslagenn wyth thie floe lette wylde beastes bee,
Feeste thee upponne theire fleshe, doe ne thie bredrenn flee.

KYNGE.

Nowe to the Tourneie[74]; who wylle fyrste affraie[75]? 85

HERAULDE.

Nevylle, a baronne, bee yatte[76] honnoure thyne.

BOURTONNE.

I clayme the passage.

NEVYLLE.

I contake[77] thie waie.

BOURTONNE.

Thenn there's mie gauntlette[78] onn mie gaberdyne[79].

HEREHAULDE.

A leegefull[80] challenge, knyghtes & champyonns dygne[81],
A leegefull challenge, lette the flugghorne sounde. 90
[Syrr Symonne and Nevylle tylte.
Nevylle ys goeynge, manne and horse, toe grounde.
[Nevylle falls.
Loverdes, how doughtilie[82] the tylterrs joyne!
Yee champyonnes, heere Symonne de Bourtonne fyghtes,
Onne hee hathe quacedd[83], assayle[84] hymm, yee knyghtes.

FERRARIS.

I wylle anente[85] hymm goe; mie squierr, mie shielde; 95
Orr onne orr odherr wyll doe myckle[86] scethe[87]
Before I doe departe the lissedd[88] fielde,
Mieselfe orr Bourtonne hereupponn wyll blethe[89].
Mie shielde.

BOURTONNE.

Comme onne, & fitte thie tylte-launce ethe[90].
Whanne Bourtonn fyghtes, hee metes a doughtie foe. 100
[Theie tylte. Ferraris falleth.
Hee falleth; nowe bie heavenne thie woundes doe smethe[91];
I feere mee, I have wroughte thee myckle woe[92].

HERAWDE.

Bourtonne hys seconde beereth to the feelde.
Comme onn, yee knyghtes, and wynn the honnour'd sheeld.

BERGHAMME.

I take the challenge; squyre, mie launce and stede. 105
I, Bourtonne, take the gauntlette; forr mee staie.
Botte, gyff thou fyghteste mee, thou shalt have mede[93];
Somme odherr I wylle champyonn toe affraie[94];
Perchaunce fromme hemm I maie possess the daie,
Thenn I schalle bee a foemanne forr thie spere. 110
Herehawde, toe the bankes of Knyghtys saie,
De Berghamme wayteth forr a foemann heere.

CLINTON.

Botte longe thou schalte ne tend[95]; I doe thee fie[96].
Lyche forreying[97] levynn[98], schalle mie tylte-launce flie.
[Berghamme & Clinton tylte. Clinton fallethe.
BERGHAMME.

Nowe, nowe, Syrr Knyghte, attoure[99] thie beeveredd[100] eyne.
I have borne downe, and este[101] doe gauntlette thee.
Swythenne[102] begynne, and wrynn[103] thie shappe[104] orr myne;
Gyff thou dyscomfytte, ytt wylle dobblie bee.
[Bourtonne & Burghamm tylteth. Berghamme falls.

HERAWDE.

Symonne de Bourtonne haveth borne downe three,
And bie the thyrd hathe honnoure of a fourthe. 120
Lett hymm bee sett asyde, tylle hee doth see
A tyltynge forr a knyghte of gentle wourthe.
Heere commethe straunge knyghtes; gyff corteous[105] heie[106],
Ytt welle beseies[107] to yeve[108] hemm ryghte of fraie[109].

FIRST KNYGHTE.

Straungerrs wee bee, and homblie doe wee clayme 125
The rennome[110] ynn thys Tourneie[111] forr to tylte;
Dherbie to proove fromm cravents[112] owre goode name,
Bewrynnynge[113] thatt wee gentile blodde have spylte.

HEREHAWDE.

Yee knyghtes of cortesie, these straungerrs, saie,
Bee you fulle wyllynge forr to yeve hemm fraie? 130
[Fyve Knyghtes tylteth wythe the straunge Knyghte, and bee
everichone[114] overthrowne.

BOURTONNE.

Nowe bie Seyncte Marie, gyff onn all the fielde
Ycrasedd[115] speres and helmetts bee besprente[116],
Gyff everyche knyghte dydd houlde a piercedd[117] sheeld,
Gyff all the feelde wythe champyonne blodde bee stente[118],
Yett toe encounterr hymm I bee contente. 135
Annodherr launce, Marshalle, anodherr launce.
Albeytte hee wythe lowes[119] of fyre ybrente[120],
Yett Bourtonne woulde agenste hys val[121] advance.
Fyve haveth fallenn downe anethe[122] hys speere,
Botte hee schalle bee the next thatt falleth heere. 140

Bie thee, Seyncte Marie, and thy Sonne I sweare,
Thatt ynn whatte place yonn doughtie knyghte shall fall
Anethe[123] the stronge push of mie straught[124] out speere,
There schalle aryse a hallie[125] chyrches walle,
The whyche, ynn honnoure, I wylle Marye calle, 145
Wythe pillars large, and spyre full hyghe and rounde.
And thys I faifullie[126] wylle stonde to all,
Gyff yonderr straungerr falleth to the grounde.
Straungerr, bee boune[127]; I champyonn[128] you to warre.
Sounde, sounde the flughornes, to bee hearde fromm farre. 150
[Bourtonne & the Straungerr tylt. Straunger falleth.

KYNGE.

The Mornynge Tyltes now cease.

HERAWDE.

Bourtonne ys kynge.
Dysplaie the Englyshe bannorre onn the tente;
Rounde hymm, yee mynstrelles, songs of achments[129] synge;
Yee Herawdes, getherr upp the speeres besprente[130];
To Kynge of Tourney-tylte bee all knees bente. 155
Dames faire and gentle, forr youre loves hee foughte;
Forr you the longe tylte-launce, the swerde hee shente[131];
Hee joustedd, alleine[132] havynge you ynn thoughte.
Comme, mynstrelles, sound the strynge, goe onn eche syde,
Whylest hee untoe the Kynge ynn state doe ryde. 160

MYNSTRELLES.

Whann Battayle, smethynge[133] wythe new quickenn'd gore,
Bendynge wythe spoiles, and bloddie droppynge hedde,
Dydd the merke[134] woode of ethe[135] and rest explore,
Seekeynge to lie onn Pleasures downie bedde,
Pleasure, dauncyng fromm her wode, 165
Wreathedd wythe floures of aiglintine,
Fromm hys vysage washedd the bloude,
Hylte[136] hys swerde and gaberdyne.

Wythe syke an eyne shee swotelie[137] hymm dydd view,
Dydd foe ycorvenn[138] everrie shape to joie, 170
Hys spryte dydd chaunge untoe anodherr hue,
Hys armes, ne spoyles, mote anie thoughts emploie.
All delyghtsomme and contente,
Fyre enshotynge[139] fromm hys eyne,
Ynn hys arms hee dydd herr hente[140], 175
Lyche the merk[141]-plante doe entwyne.
Soe, gyff thou lovest Pleasure and herr trayne,
Onknowlachynge[142] ynn whatt place herr to fynde,
Thys rule yspende[143], and ynn thie mynde retayne;
Seeke Honnoure fyrste, and Pleasaunce lies behynde. 180

[Footnote 1: sport, or play.]

[Footnote 2: bounded, or measured.]

[Footnote 3: curiously devised.]

[Footnote 4: fancys or devices.]

[Footnote 5: painted, or displayed.]

[Footnote 6: fiery.]

[Footnote 7: ornamented, enameled.]

[Footnote 8: a young lion.]

[Footnote 9: drawings, paintings.]

[Footnote 10: that.]

[Footnote 11: soul.]

[Footnote 11: dispenser.]

[Footnote 12: quickly.]

[Footnote 13: give.]

[Footnote 14: armer.]

[Footnote 15: burnish.]

[Footnote 16: many.]

[Footnote 17: young, weak, tender.]

[Footnote 18: grows.]

[Footnote 19: body.]

[Footnote 20: nothing.]

[Footnote 21: alone.]

[Footnote 22: so.]

[Footnote 23: herald.]

[Footnote 24: a contraction of them.]

[Footnote 25: Guie de Sancto Egidio, the most famous tilter of his age.]

[Footnote 26: William Rufus.]

[Footnote 27: run.]

[Footnote 28: against.]

[Footnote 29: feeble.]

[Footnote 30: honour, glory.]

[Footnote 31: useless.]

[Footnote 32: a kind of claryon.]

[Footnote 33: sound.]

[Footnote 34: quickly.]

[Footnote 35: ready.]

[Footnote 36: soon.]

[Footnote 37: command.]

[Footnote 38: most.]

[Footnote 39: fate, or doom.]

[Footnote 40: against.]

[Footnote 41: pitched, or bent down.]

[Footnote 42: drink.]

[Footnote 43: servants, attendants.]

[Footnote 44: song, or ballad.]

[Footnote 45: activity.]

[Footnote 46: joined (1842; left blank in 1777 and 1778)]

[Footnote 46: bent.]

[Footnote 47: burnished.]

[Footnote 48: commanding.]

[Footnote 49: servants.]

[Footnote 50: hidden.]

[Footnote 51: arrows.]

[Footnote 52: worked with iron.]

[Footnote 53: bends.]

[Footnote 54: sounds.]

[Footnote 55: loudly.]

[Footnote 56: dark, or gloome.]

[Footnote 57 & 58: frighted owl.]

[Footnote 59: marked with evening dew.]

[Footnote 60: standing on their hind legs.]

[Footnote 61: venemous.]

[Footnote 62: adders.]

[Footnote 63: hot, sultry.]

[Footnote 64: sound, noise.]

[Footnote 65: distracted.]

[Footnote 66: arrows.]

[Footnote 67: walking leisurely.]

[Footnote 68: rolling.]

[Footnote 69: arrow.]

[Footnote 70: horse coursers.]

[Footnote 71: full soon.]

[Footnote 72: across his shoulders.]

[Footnote 73: garlands of flowers being put round the neck of the game, it was said to be ouch'd, from ouch, a chain, worn by earls round their necks.]

[Footnote 74: Turnament.]

[Footnote 75: fight, or encounter.]

[Footnote 76: that.]

[Footnote 77: dispute.]

[Footnote 78: glove.]

[Footnote 79: a piece of armour.]

[Footnote 80: lawful.]

[Footnote 81: worthy.]

[Footnote 82: furiously.]

[Footnote 83: vanquished.]

[Footnote 84: oppose.]

[Footnote 85: against.]

[Footnote 86: much.]

[Footnote 87: damage, mischief.]

[Footnote 88: bounded.]

[Footnote 89: bleed.]

[Footnote 90: easy.]

[Footnote 91: smoke.]

[Footnote 92: hurt, or damage.]

[Footnote 93: reward.]

[Footnote 94: fight or engage.]

[Footnote 95: attend or wait.]

[Footnote 96: defy.]

[Footnote 97 & 98: destroying lightening.]

[Footnote 99: turn.]

[Footnote 100: beaver'd.]

[Footnote 101: again.]

[Footnote 102: quickly.]

[Footnote 103: declare.]

[Footnote 104: fate.]

[Footnote 105: worthy.]

[Footnote 106: they.]

[Footnote 107: becomes.]

[Footnote 108: give.]

[Footnote 109: fyght.]

[Footnote 110: honour.]

[Footnote 111: Tournament.]

[Footnote 112: cowards.]

[Footnote 113: declaring.]

[Footnote 114: every one.]

[Footnote 115: broken, split.]

[Footnote 116: scatter'd.]

[Footnote 117: broken, or pierced through with darts.]

[Footnote 118: stained.]

[Footnote 119: flames.]

[Footnote 120: burnt.]

[Footnote 121: healm.]

[Footnote 122: beneath.]

[Footnote 123: against.]

[Footnote 124: stretched out.]

[Footnote 125: holy.]

[Footnote 126: faithfully.]

[Footnote 127: ready.]

[Footnote 128: challenge.]

[Footnote 129: atchievements, glorious actions.]

[Footnote 130: broken spears.]

[Footnote 131: broke, destroyed.]

[Footnote 132: only, alone.]

[Footnote 133: smoaking, steaming.]

[Footnote 134: dark, gloomy.]

[Footnote 135: ease.]

[Footnote 136: hid, secreted.]

[Footnote 137: sweetly.]

[Footnote 138: moulded.]

[Footnote 139: shooting, darting.]

[Footnote 140: grasp, hold.]

[Footnote 141: night-shade.]

[Footnote 142: ignorant, unknowing.]

[Footnote 143: consider.]

BRISTOWE TRAGEDIE:

OR THE DETHE OF

SYR CHARLES BAWDIN.

The featherd songster chaunticleer
Han wounde hys bugle horne,
And tolde the earlie villager
The commynge of the morne:

Kynge EDWARDE sawe the ruddie streakes 5
Of lyghte eclypse the greie;
And herde the raven's crokynge throte
Proclayme the fated daie.

"Thou'rt ryght," quod hee, "for, by the Godde
That syttes enthron'd on hyghe! 10
CHARLES BAWDIN, and hys fellowes twaine,
To-daie shall surelie die."

Thenne wythe a jugge of nappy ale
Hys Knyghtes dydd onne hymm waite;
"Goe tell the traytour, thatt to-daie 15
Hee leaves thys mortall state."

Syr CANTERLOUE thenne bendedd lowe,
Wythe harte brymm-fulle of woe;
Hee journey'd to the castle-gate,
And to Syr CHARLES dydd goe. 20

Butt whenne hee came, hys children twaine,
And eke hys lovynge wyfe,
Wythe brinie tears dydd wett the floore,
For goode Syr CHARLESES lyfe.

"O goode Syr CHARLES!" sayd CANTERLOUE, 25
"Badde tydyngs I doe brynge."
"Speke boldlie, manne," sayd brave Syr CHARLES,
"Whatte says thie traytor kynge?"

"I greeve to telle, before yonne sonne
Does fromme the welkinn flye, 30
Hee hath uponne hys honour sworne,
Thatt thou shalt surelie die."

"Wee all must die," quod brave Syr CHARLES;
"Of thatte I'm not affearde;
Whatte bootes to lyve a little space? 35
Thanke JESU, I'm prepar'd."

"Butt telle thye kynge, for myne hee's not,
I'de sooner die to-daie
Thanne lyve hys slave, as manie are,
Tho' I shoulde lyve for aie." 40

Thenne CANTERLOUE hee dydd goe out,
To telle the maior straite
To gett all thynges ynne reddyness
For goode Syr CHARLESES fate.

Thenne Maisterr CANYNGE saughte the kynge, 45
And felle down onne hys knee;
"I'm come," quod hee, "unto your grace
To move your clemencye."

Thenne quod the kynge, "Youre tale speke out,
You have been much oure friende; 50
Whatever youre request may bee,
Wee wylle to ytte attende."

"My nobile leige! alle my request
Ys for a nobile knyghte,
Who, tho' may hap hee has donne wronge, 55
He thoghte ytte stylle was ryghte."

"Hee has a spouse and children twaine,
Alle rewyn'd are for aie;
Yff thatt you are resolv'd to lett
CHARLES BAWDIN die to-daie." 60

"Speke nott of such a traytour vile,"
The kynge ynne furie sayde;
"Before the evening starre doth sheene,
BAWDIN shall loose hys hedde."

"Justice does loudlie for hym calle, 65
And hee shalle have hys meede:
Speke, Maister CANYNGE! Whatte thynge else
Att present doe you neede?"

"My nobile leige!" goode CANYNGE sayde,
"Leave justice to our Godde, 70
And laye the yronne rule asyde;
Be thyne the olyve rodde."

"Was Godde to serche our hertes and reines,
The best were synners grete;
CHRIST'S vycarr only knowes ne synne, 75
Ynne alle thys mortall state."

"Lett mercie rule thyne infante reigne,
'Twylle faste thye crowne fulle sure;
From race to race thy familie
Alle sov'reigns shall endure." 80

"But yff wythe bloode and slaughter thou
Beginne thy infante reigne,
Thy crowne uponne thy childrennes brows
Wylle never long remayne."

"CANYNGE, awaie! thys traytour vile 85
Has scorn'd my power and mee;
Howe canst thou thenne for such a manne
Intreate my clemencye?"

"My nobile leige! the trulie brave
Wylle val'rous actions prize, 90
Respect a brave and nobile mynde,
Altho' ynne enemies."

"CANYNGE, awaie! By Godde ynne Heav'n
Thatt dydd mee beinge gyve,
I wylle nott taste a bitt of breade 95
Whilst thys Syr CHARLES dothe lyve."

"By MARIE, and alle Seinctes ynne Heav'n,
Thys sunne shall be hys laste."
Thenne CANYNGE dropt a brinie teare,
And from the presence paste. 100

Wyth herte brymm-fulle of gnawynge grief,
Hee to Syr CHARLES dydd goe,
And satt hymm downe uponne a stoole,
And teares beganne to flowe.

"Wee all must die," quod brave Syr CHARLES; 105
"Whatte bootes ytte howe or whenne;
Dethe ys the sure, the certaine fate
Of all wee mortall menne.

"Saye why, my friend, thie honest soul
Runns overr att thyne eye; 110
Is ytte for my most welcome doome
Thatt thou dost child-lyke crye?"

Quod godlie CANYNGE, "I doe weepe,
Thatt thou so soone must dye,
And leave thy sonnes and helpless wyfe; 115
'Tys thys thatt wettes myne eye."

"Thenne drie the tears thatt out thyne eye
From godlie fountaines sprynge;
Dethe I despise, and alle the power
Of EDWARDE, traytor kynge. 120

"Whan throgh the tyrant's welcom means
I shall resigne my lyfe,
The Godde I serve wylle soone provyde
For bothe mye sonnes and wyfe.

"Before I sawe the lyghtsome sunne, 125
Thys was appointed mee;
Shall mortal manne repyne or grudge
Whatt Godde ordeynes to bee?

"Howe oft ynne battaile have I stoode,
Whan thousands dy'd arounde; 130
Whan smokynge streemes of crimson bloode
Imbrew'd the fatten'd grounde:

"How dydd I knowe thatt ev'ry darte,
Thatt cutte the airie waie,
Myghte nott fynde passage toe my harte, 135
And close myne eyes for aie?

"And shall I nowe, forr feere of dethe,
Looke wanne and bee dysmayde?
Ne! fromm my herte flie childyshe feere,
Bee alle the manne display'd. 140

"Ah, goddelyke HENRIE! Godde forefende,
And guarde thee and thye sonne,
Yff 'tis hys wylle; but yff 'tis nott,
Why thenne hys wylle bee donne.

"My honest friende, my faulte has beene 145
To serve Godde and mye prynce;
And thatt I no tyme-server am,
My dethe wylle soone convynce.

"Ynne Londonne citye was I borne,
Of parents of grete note; 150
My fadre dydd a nobile armes
Emblazon onne hys cote:

"I make ne doubte butt hee ys gone
Where soone I hope to goe;
Where wee for ever shall bee blest, 155
From oute the reech of woe:

"Hee taughte mee justice and the laws
Wyth pitie to unite;
And eke hee taughte mee howe to knowe
The wronge cause fromm the ryghte: 160

"Hee taughte mee wythe a prudent hande
To feede the hungrie poore,
Ne lett mye sarvants dryve awaie
The hungrie fromme my doore:

"And none can saye, butt alle mye lyfe 165
I have hys wordyes kept;
And summ'd the actyonns of the daie
Eche nyghte before I slept.

"I have a spouse, goe aske of her,
Yff I defyl'd her bedde? 170
I have a kynge, and none can laie
Blacke treason onne my hedde.

"Ynne Lent, and onne the holie eve,
Fromm fleshe I dydd refrayne;
Whie should I thenne appeare dismay'd 175
To leave thys worlde of payne?

"Ne! hapless HENRIE! I rejoyce,
I shalle ne see thye dethe;
Moste willynglie ynne thye just cause
Doe I resign my brethe. 180

"Oh, fickle people! rewyn'd londe!
Thou wylt kenne peace ne moe;
Whyle RICHARD'S sonnes exalt themselves,
Thye brookes wythe bloude wylle flowe.

"Saie, were ye tyr'd of godlie peace, 185
And godlie HENRIE'S reigne,
Thatt you dydd choppe youre easie daies
For those of bloude and peyne?

"Whatte tho' I onne a sledde bee drawne,
And mangled by a hynde, 190
I doe defye the traytor's pow'r,
Hee can ne harm my mynde;

"Whatte tho', uphoisted onne a pole,
Mye lymbes shall rotte ynne ayre,
And ne ryche monument of brasse 195
CHARLES BAWDIN'S name shall bear;

"Yett ynne the holie booke above,
Whyche tyme can't eate awaie,
There wythe the sarvants of the Lorde
Mye name shall lyve for aie. 200

"Thenne welcome dethe! for lyfe eterne
I leave thys mortall lyfe:
Farewell, vayne worlde, and alle that's deare,
Mye sonnes and lovynge wyfe!

"Nowe dethe as welcome to mee comes, 205
As e'er the moneth of Maie;
Nor woulde I even wyshe to lyve,
Wyth my dere wyfe to staie."

Quod CANYNGE, "'Tys a goodlie thynge
To bee prepar'd to die; 210
And from thys world of peyne and grefe
To Godde ynne Heav'n to flie."

And nowe the bell beganne to tolle,
And claryonnes to sounde;
Syr CHARLES hee herde the horses feete 215
A prauncyng onne the grounde:

And just before the officers,
His lovynge wyfe came ynne,
Weepynge unfeigned teeres of woe,
Wythe loude and dysmalle dynne. 220

"Sweet FLORENCE! nowe I praie forbere,
Ynne quiet lett mee die;
Praie Godde, thatt ev'ry Christian soule
Maye looke onne dethe as I.

"Sweet FLORENCE! why these brinie teeres? 225
Theye washe my soule awaie,
And almost make mee wyshe for lyfe,
Wyth thee, sweete dame, to staie.

"'Tys butt a journie I shalle goe
Untoe the lande of blysse; 230
Nowe, as a proofe of husbande's love,
Receive thys holie kysse."

Thenne FLORENCE, fault'ring ynne her saie,
Tremblynge these wordyes spoke,
"Ah, cruele EDWARDE! bloudie kynge! 235
My herte ys welle nyghe broke:

"Ah, sweete Syr CHARLES! why wylt thou goe,
Wythoute thye lovynge wyfe?
The cruelle axe thatt cuttes thye necke,
Ytte eke shall ende mye lyfe." 240

And nowe the officers came ynne
To brynge Syr CHARLES awaie,
Whoe turnedd toe his lovynge wyfe,
And thus toe her dydd saie:

"I goe to lyfe, and nott to dethe; 245
Truste thou ynne Godde above,
And teache thye sonnes to feare the Lorde,
And ynne theyre hertes hym love:

"Teache them to runne the nobile race
Thatt I theyre fader runne: 250
FLORENCE! shou'd dethe thee take—adieu!
Yee officers, leade onne."

Thenne FLORENCE rav'd as anie madde,
And dydd her tresses tere;
"Oh! staie, mye husbande! lorde! and lyfe!"— 255
Syr CHARLES thenne dropt a teare.

'Tyll tyredd oute wythe ravynge loud,
Shee fellen onne the flore;
Syr CHARLES exerted alle hys myghte,
And march'd fromm oute the dore. 260

Uponne a sledde hee mounted thenne,
Wythe lookes fulle brave and swete;
Lookes, thatt enshone ne moe concern
Thanne anie ynne the strete.

Before hym went the council-menne, 265
Ynne scarlett robes and golde,
And tassils spanglynge ynne the sunne,
Muche glorious to beholde:

The Freers of Seincte AUGUSTYNE next
Appeared to the syghte, 270
Alle cladd ynne homelie russett weedes,
Of godlie monkysh plyghte:

Ynne diffraunt partes a godlie psaume
Moste sweetlie theye dydd chaunt;
Behynde theyre backes syx mynstrelles came, 275
Who tun'd the strunge bataunt.

Thenne fyve-and-twentye archers came;
Echone the bowe dydd bende,
From rescue of kynge HENRIES friends
Syr CHARLES forr to defend. 280

Bolde as a lyon came Syr CHARLES,
Drawne onne a clothe-layde sledde,
Bye two blacke stedes ynne trappynges white,
Wyth plumes uponne theyre hedde:

Behynde hym fyve-and-twentye moe 285
Of archers stronge and stoute,
Wyth bended bowe echone ynne hande,
Marched ynne goodlie route:

Seincte JAMESES Freers marched next,
Echone hys parte dydd chaunt; 290
Behynde theyre backs syx mynstrelles came,
Who tun'd the strunge bataunt:

Thenne came the maior and eldermenne,
Ynne clothe of scarlett deck't;
And theyre attendyng menne echone, 295
Lyke Easterne princes trickt:

And after them, a multitude
Of citizenns dydd thronge;
The wyndowes were alle fulle of heddes,
As hee dydd passe alonge. 300

And whenne hee came to the hyghe crosse,
Syr CHARLES dydd turne and saie,
"O Thou, thatt savest manne fromme synne,
Washe mye soule clean thys daie!"

Att the grete mynsterr wyndowe sat 305
The kynge ynne myckle state,
To see CHARLES BAWDIN goe alonge
To hys most welcom fate.

Soone as the sledde drewe nyghe enowe,
Thatt EDWARDE hee myghte heare, 310
The brave Syr CHARLES hee dydd stande uppe,
And thus hys wordes declare:

"Thou seest mee, EDWARDE! traytour vile!
Expos'd to infamie;
Butt bee assur'd, disloyall manne! 315
I'm greaterr nowe thanne thee.

"Bye foule proceedyngs, murdre, bloude,
Thou wearest nowe a crowne;
And hast appoynted mee to dye,
By power nott thyne owne. 320

"Thou thynkest I shall dye to-daie;
I have beene dede 'till nowe,
And soone shall lyve to weare a crowne
For aie uponne my browe:

"Whylst thou, perhapps, for som few yeares, 325
Shalt rule thys fickle lande,
To lett them knowe howe wyde the rule
'Twixt kynge and tyrant hande:

"Thye pow'r unjust, thou traytour slave!
Shall falle onne thye owne hedde"— 330
Fromm out of hearyng of the kynge
Departed thenne the sledde.

Kynge EDWARDE'S soule rush'd to hys face,
Hee turn'd hys hedde awaie,
And to hys broder GLOUCESTER 335
Hee thus dydd speke and saie:

"To hym that soe-much-dreaded dethe
Ne ghastlie terrors brynge,
Beholde the manne! hee spake the truthe,
Hee's greater thanne a kynge!" 340

"Soe lett hym die!" Duke RICHARD sayde;
"And maye echone oure foes
Bende downe theyre neckes to bloudie axe,
And feede the carryon crowes."

And nowe the horses gentlie drewe 345
Syr CHARLES uppe the hyghe hylle;
The axe dydd glysterr ynne the sunne,
Hys pretious bloude to spylle.

Syrr CHARLES dydd uppe the scaffold goe,
As uppe a gilded carre 350
Of victorye, bye val'rous chiefs
Gayn'd ynne the bloudie warre:

And to the people hee dydd saie,
"Beholde you see mee dye,
For servynge loyally mye kynge, 355
Mye kynge most rightfullie.

"As longe as EDWARDE rules thys lande,
Ne quiet you wylle knowe;
Youre sonnes and husbandes shalle bee slayne.
And brookes wythe bloude shalle flowe. 360

"You leave youre goode and lawfulle kynge.
Whenne ynne adversitye;
Lyke mee, untoe the true cause stycke,
And for the true cause dye."

Thenne hee, wyth preestes, uponne hys knees, 365
A pray'r to Godde dydd make,
Beseechynge hym unto hymselfe
Hys partynge soule to take.

Thenne, kneelynge downe, hee layd hys hedde
Most seemlie onne the blocke; 370
Whyche fromme hys bodie fayre at once
The able heddes-manne stroke:

And oute the bloude beganne to flowe,
And rounde the scaffolde twyne;
And teares, enow to washe't awaie, 375
Dydd flowe fromme each mann's eyne.

The bloudie axe hys bodie fayre
Ynnto foure parties cutte;
And ev'rye parte, and eke hys hedde,
Uponne a pole was putte. 380

One parte dydd rotte onne Kynwulph-hylle,
One onne the mynster-tower,
And one from off the castle-gate
The crowen dydd devoure:

The other onne Seyncte Powle's goode gate, 385
A dreery spectacle;
Hys hedde was plac'd onne the hyghe crosse,
Ynne hyghe-streete most nobile.

Thus was the ende of BAWDIN'S fate:
Godde prosper longe oure kynge, 390
And grante hee maye, wyth BAWDIN'S soule,
Ynne heav'n Godd's mercie synge!

ÆLLA:

A

TRAGYCAL ENTERLUDE,

OR

DISCOORSEYNGE TRAGEDIE,

WROTENN BIE

THOMAS ROWLEIE;

PLAIEDD BEFORE

MASTRE CANYNGE, ATTE HYS HOWSE NEMPTE THE RODDE LODGE;

[ALSOE BEFORE THE DUKE OF NORFOLCK, JOHAN HOWARD.]

PERSONNES REPRESENTEDD.

ÆLLA, bie Thomas Rowleie, Preeste, the Aucthoure.

CELMONDE, Johan Iscamm, Preeste.

HURRA, Syrr Thybbotte Gorges, Knyghte.

BIRTHA, Mastre Edwarde Canynge.

Odherr Partes bie Knyghtes Mynstrelles.

EPISTLE TO MASTRE CANYNGE ON ÆLLA.

'Tys songe bie mynstrelles, thatte yn auntyent tym,
Whan Reasonn hylt[1] herselfe in cloudes of nyghte,
The preeste delyvered alle the lege[2] yn rhym;
Lyche peyncted[3] tyltynge speares to please the syghte,
The whyche yn yttes felle use doe make moke[4] dere[5], 5
Syke dyd theire auncyante lee deftlie[6] delyghte the eare.

Perchaunce yn Vyrtues gare[7] rhym mote bee thenne,
Butt eefte[8] nowe flyeth to the odher syde;
In hallie[9] preeste apperes the ribaudes[10] penne,
Inne lithie[11] moncke apperes the barronnes pryde: 10
But rhym wythe somme, as nedere[12] widhout teethe,
Make pleasaunce to the sense, botte maie do lyttel scathe[13].

Syr Johne, a knyghte, who hath a barne of lore[14],
Kenns[15] Latyn att fyrst syghte from Frenche or Greke,
Pyghtethe[16] hys knowlachynge[17] ten yeres or more, 15
To rynge upon the Latynne worde to speke.
Whoever spekethe Englysch ys despysed,
The Englysch hym to please moste fyrste be latynized.

Vevyan, a moncke, a good requiem[18] synges;
Can preache so wele, eche hynde[19] hys meneynge knowes 20
Albeytte these gode guyfts awaie he flynges,
Beeynge as badde yn vearse as goode yn prose.
Hee synges of seynctes who dyed for yer Godde,
Everych wynter nyghte afresche he sheddes theyr blodde.

To maydens, huswyfes, and unlored[20] dames, 25
Hee redes hys tales of merryment & woe.
Loughe[21] loudlie dynneth[22] from the dolte[23] adrames[24];
He swelles on laudes of fooles, tho' kennes[25] hem soe.
Sommetyme at tragedie theie laughe and synge,
At merrie yaped[26] fage[27] somme hard-drayned water brynge. 30

Yette Vevyan ys ne foole, beyinde[28] hys lynes.
Geofroie makes vearse, as handycraftes theyr ware;
Wordes wythoute sense fulle grossyngelye[29] he twynes,
Cotteynge hys storie off as wythe a sheere;
Waytes monthes on nothynge, & hys storie donne, 35
Ne moe you from ytte kenn, than gyf[30] you neere begonne.

Enowe of odhers; of mieselfe to write,
Requyrynge whatt I doe notte nowe possess,
To you I leave the taske; I kenne your myghte
Wyll make mie faultes, mie meynte[31] of faultes, be less. 40
ÆLLA wythe thys I sende, and hope that you
Wylle from ytte caste awaie, whatte lynes maie be untrue.

Playes made from hallie[32] tales I holde unmeete;
Lette somme greate storie of a manne be songe;
Whanne, as a manne, we Godde and Jesus treate, 45
In mie pore mynde, we doe the Godhedde wronge.
Botte lette ne wordes, whyche droorie[33] mote ne heare,
Bee placed yn the same. Adieu untylle anere[34].

THOMAS ROWLEIE.

[Footnote 1: hid, concealed.]

[Footnote 2: law.]

[Footnote 3: painted.]

[Footnote 4: much.]

[Footnote 5: hurt, damage.]

[Footnote 6: sweetly.]

[Footnote 7: cause.]

[Footnote 8: oft.]

[Footnote 9: holy.]

[Footnote 10: rake, lewd person.]

[Footnote 11: humble.]

[Footnote 12: adder.]

[Footnote 13: hurt, damage.]

[Footnote 14: learning.]

[Footnote 15: knows.]

[Footnote 16: plucks or tortures.]

[Footnote 17: knowledge.]

[Footnote 18: a service used over the dead.]

[Footnote 19: peasant.]

[Footnote 20: unlearned.]

[Footnote 21: laugh.]

[Footnote 22: sounds.]

[Footnote 23: foolish.]

[Footnote 24: churls.]

[Footnote 25: knows.]

[Footnote 26: laughable.]

[Footnote 27: tale, jest.]

[Footnote 28: beyond.]

[Footnote 29: foolishly.]

[Footnote 30: if.]

[Footnote 31: many.]

[Footnote 32: holy.]

[Footnote 33: strange perversion of words. Droorie in its antient signification stood for modesty.]

[Footnote 34: another.]

LETTER TO THE DYGNE MASTRE CANYNGE.

Straunge dome ytte ys, that, yn these daies of oures,
Nete[35] butte a bare recytalle can hav place;
Nowe shapelie poesie hast loste yttes powers,
And pynant hystorie ys onlie grace;
Heie[36] pycke up wolsome weedes, ynstedde of flowers, 5
And famylies, ynstedde of wytte, theie trace;
Nowe poesie canne meete wythe ne regrate[37],
Whylste prose, & herehaughtrie[38], ryse yn estate.

Lette kynges, & rulers, whan heie gayne a throne,
Shewe whatt theyre grandsieres, & great grandsieres bore, 10
Emarschalled armes, yatte, ne before theyre owne,
Now raung'd wythe whatt yeir fadres han before;
Lette trades, & toune folck, lett syke[39] thynges alone,
Ne fyghte for sable yn a fielde of aure;
Seldomm, or never, are armes vyrtues mede, 15
Shee nillynge[40] to take myckle[41] aie dothe hede.

A man ascaunse upponn a piece maye looke,
And shake hys hedde to styrre hys rede[42] aboute;
Quod he, gyf I askaunted oere thys booke,
Schulde fynde thereyn that trouthe ys left wythoute; 20
Eke, gyf[43] ynto a vew percase[44] I tooke
The long beade-rolle of al the wrytynge route,
Asserius, Ingolphus, Torgotte, Bedde,
Thorow hem[45] al nete lyche ytte I coulde rede.—

Pardon, yee Graiebarbes[46], gyff I saie, onwise 25
Yee are, to stycke so close & bysmarelie[47]
To hystorie; you doe ytte tooe moche pryze,
Whyche amenused[48] thoughtes of poesie;
Somme drybblette[49] share you shoulde to yatte[50] alyse[51],
Nott makynge everyche thynge bee hystorie; 30
Instedde of mountynge onn a wynged horse,
You onn a rouncy[52] dryve yn dolefull course.

Cannynge & I from common course dyssente;
Wee ryde the stede, botte yev to hym the reene;
Ne wylle betweene crased molterynge bookes be pente, 35
Botte soare on hyghe, & yn the sonne-bemes sheene;
And where wee kenn somme ishad[53] floures besprente,
We take ytte, & from oulde rouste doe ytte clene;
Wee wylle ne cheynedd to one pasture bee,
Botte sometymes soare 'bove trouthe of hystorie. 40

Saie, Canynge, whatt was vearse yn daies of yore?
Fyne thoughtes, and couplettes fetyvelie[54] bewryen[55],
Notte syke as doe annoie thys age so sore,
A keppened poyntelle[56] restynge at eche lyne.
Vearse maie be goode, botte poesie wantes more, 45
An onlist[57] lecturn[58], and a songe adygne[59];
Accordynge to the rule I have thys wroughte,
Gyff ytt please Canynge, I care notte a groate.

The thynge yttself moste bee ytts owne defense;
Som metre maie notte please a womannes ear. 50
Canynge lookes notte for poesie, botte sense;
And dygne, & wordie thoughtes, ys all hys care.
Canynge, adieu! I do you greete from hence;
Full soone I hope to taste of your good cheere;
Goode Byshoppe Carpynter dyd byd mee saie, 55
Hee wysche you healthe & selinesse for aie.

T. ROWLEIE.

[Footnote 35: nought.]

[Footnote 36: they.]

[Footnote 37: esteem.]

[Footnote 38: heraldry.]

[Footnote 39: such.]

[Footnote 40: unwilling.]

[Footnote 41: much.]

[Footnote 42: wisdom, council.]

[Footnote 43: if.]

[Footnote 44: perchance.]

[Footnote 45: them.]

[Footnote 46: Greybeards.]

[Footnote 47: curiously.]

[Footnote 48: lessened.]

[Footnote 49: small.]

[Footnote 50: that.]

[Footnote 51: allow.]

[Footnote 52: cart-horse.]

[Editor's note: ll. 15-16 See Introduction p. xli]

[Footnote 53: broken.]

[Footnote 54: elegantly.]

[Footnote 55: declared, expressed.]

[Footnote 56: a pen, used metaphorically, as a muse or genius.]

[Footnote 57: boundless.]

[Footnote 58: subject.]

[Footnote 59: nervous, worthy of praise.]

ENTRODUCTIONNE.

Somme cherisounce[60] it ys to gentle mynde,
Whan heie have chevyced[61] theyre londe from bayne[62],
Whan theie ar dedd, theie leave yer name behynde,
And theyre goode deedes doe on the earthe remayne;
Downe yn the grave wee ynhyme[63] everych steyne, 5
Whylest al her gentlenesse ys made to sheene,
Lyche fetyve baubels[64] geasonne[65] to be seene.

ÆLLA, the wardenne of thys[66] castell[67] stede,
Whylest Saxons dyd the Englysche sceptre swaie,
Who made whole troopes of Dacyan men to blede, 10
Then seel'd[68] hys eyne, and seeled hys eyne for aie,
Wee rowze hym uppe before the judgment daie,
To saie what he, as clergyond[69], can kenne,
And howe hee sojourned in the vale of men.

[Footnote 60: comfort.]

[Footnote 61: preserved.]

[Footnote 62: ruin.]

[Footnote 63: inter.]

[Footnote 64: jewels.]

[Footnote 65: rare.]

[Footnote 66: Bristol.]

[Footnote 67: castle.]

[Footnote 68: closed.]

[Footnote 69: taught.]