stand forth
from the barren after-season of the earlier half of the fifteenth
century, were, both of them, according to their own profession,
disciples of Chaucer. In truth, however, Occleve, the only name-worthy
poetical writer of the reign of Henry IV, seems to have been less akin
as an author to Chaucer than to Gower, while his principal poem
manifestly was, in an even greater degree than the "Confessio Amantis,"
a severely learned or, as its author terms it, unbuxom book. Lydgate,
on the other hand, the famous monk of Bury, has in him something of the
spirit as well as of the manner of Chaucer, under whose advice he is
said to have composed one of his principal poems. Though a monk, he was
no stay-at-home or do-nothing; like him of the "Canterbury Tales," we
may suppose Lydgate to have scorned the maxim that a monk out of his
cloister is like a fish out of water; and doubtless many days which he
could spare from the instruction of youth at St. Edmund's Bury were
spent about the London streets, of the sights and sounds of which he
has left us so vivacious a record--a kind of farcical supplement to the
"Prologue" of the "Canterbury Tales." His literary career, part of
which certainly belongs to the reign of Henry V, has some resemblance
to Chaucer's, though it is less regular and less consistent with
itself; and several of his poems bear more or less distinct traces of
Chaucer's influence. The "Troy-book" is not founded on "Troilus and
Cressid," though it is derived from the sources which had fed the
original of Chaucer's poem; but the "Temple of Glass" seems to have
been an imitation of the "House of Fame"; and the "Story of Thebes" is
actually introduced by its author as an additional "Canterbury Tale,"
and challenges comparison with the rest of the series into which it
asks admittance. Both Occleve and Lydgate enjoyed the patronage of a
prince of genius descended from the House, with whose founder Chaucer
was so closely connected--Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Meanwhile, the
sovereign of a neighbouring kingdom was in all probability himself the
agent who established the influence of Chaucer as predominant in the
literature of his native land. The long though honourable captivity in
England of King James I of Scotland--the best poet among kings and the
best king among poets, as he has been antithetically called--was
consoled by the study of the "hymns" of his "dear masters, Chaucer and
Gower," for the happines