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excelled his master, in the article of versification. After sometime
spent in our English universities, he travelled thro' France and
Italy, improving his time to the accomplishment of learning the
languages and arts. Pitseus says, he was not only an elegant poet, and
an eloquent rhetorician, but also an expert mathematician, an acute
philosopher, and no mean divine. His verses were so very smooth, and
indeed to a modern ear they appear so, that it was said of him by his
contemporaries, that his wit was framed and fashioned by the Muses
themselves. After his return from France and Italy, he became tutor
to many noblemen's sons, and for his excellent endowments was much
esteemed and reverenced by them. He writ a poem called the Life
and Death of Hector, from which I shall give a specimen of his
versification.

I am a monk by my profession
In Bury, called John Lydgate by my name,
And wear a habit of perfection;
(Although my life agree not with the same)
That meddle should with things spiritual,
As I must needs confess unto you all.

But seeing that I did herein proceed
At[1] his commands whom I could not refuse,
I humbly do beseech all those that read,
Or leisure have this story to peruse,
If any fault therein they find to be,
Or error that committed is by me,

That they will of their gentleness take pain,
The rather to correct and mend the same,
Than rashly to condemn it with disdain,
For well I wot it is not without blame,
Because I know the verse therein is wrong
As being some too short, and some too long.

His prologue to the story of Thebes, a tale (as he says) he was
constrained to tell, at the command of his host of the Tabard in
Southwark, whom he found in Canterbury with the rest of the pilgrims
who went to visit St. Thomas's shrine, is remarkably smooth for
the age in which he writ. This story was first written in Latin by
Chaucer, and translated by Lydgate into English verse, Pitseus says
he writ, partly in prose and partly in verse, many exquisite learned
books, amongst which are eclogues, odes, and satires. He flourished in
the reign of Henry VI. and died in the sixtieth year of his age, ann.
1440. and was buried in his own convent at Bury, with this epitaph,

Mortuus saeclo, superis superstes,
Hic jacet Lydgate tumulatus urna:
Qui suit quondam celebris Britannae,
Fama poesis.

Which is thus rendered into English by Winstanly;

Dead in this worl