Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/74

60 the Church, only the more to put forth its strength in this direction. Sculptors, both foreign and English, therefore received the highest encouragement, and were in the fullest employ. The few statues which yet remain in niches, on the outside of our cathedrals, especially those on the west end of the Cathedral of Wells, though probably not the best work of the artists, are decided proofs of their ability. The effigies of knights and ladies extended on their altar tombs received great damage, with the rest of the ecclesiastical art, from the misguided zeal of the reformers, yet many such remain of great beauty, and the chantries, which were in this century erected over the tombs of great prelates, are of the most exquisite design and workmanship. Such are those in Winchester Cathedral of Bishops Wykeham, Beaufort, and Waynflete. That of Bishop Beaufort, in particular, is a mass of Portland stone, carved like the finest ivory, and is a most gorgeous specimen of a tomb of the Perpendicular period. Henry V.'s chantry, in Westminster Abbey, is the only one erected in this period to royalty, and it is a monument of high honour to the age.

The names of some of the artists of this era are preserved. Thomas Colyn, Thomas Holewell, and Thomas Poppehowe, executed, carried over, and erected in Nantes, in 1408, the alabaster tomb of the Duke of Brittany. Of the five artists who executed the celebrated tomb of Richard, Earl of Warwick, in the Beauchamp Chapel, four were English, and the fifth was a Dutch goldsmith. Besides the great image of the earl, there were thirty-two images on this monument. These were all cast by William Austin, a founder of London, clearly a great genius, on the finest latten (brass), and gilded by Bartholomew Lambespring, the Dutch goldsmith. The monument and the superb chapel in which it stands cost £2,481 4s. 7d., equivalent to £24,800 now.

Most of the monumental brasses which abound in our churches were the work of this period. There are some of much older date, but during this century they were multiplied everywhere, and afforded great scope for the talents of founders, engravers, and enamellers.

In painting, the age does not appear to have equally excelled. There were, unquestionably, abundance of religious pictures on the walls of our churches, and the images themselves were painted and gilt; but there does not seem to have existed artists who had a true conception of the sublimity of their pursuit. The painting of such works was undertaken by the job, by painters and stainers. John Prudde, glazier in Westminster, undertook to "import from beyond seas glass of the finest colours, blue, yellow, red, purple, sanguine, and violet," and with it glaze the windows of the Beauchamp Chapel. Brentwood, a stainer of London, was to paint the west wall of the chapel "with all manner of devices and imagery;" and Christian Coliburne, painter of London, was to "paint the images in the finest oil colours." The great Earl of Warwick bargained with his tailor to paint the scenes of his embassy to France, for which he was to receive £1 8s. 6d. The "Dance of Death," so common on the Continent in churches and churchyards, made also so famous by Holbein, was copied from the cloister of the Innocents in Paris, and painted on the walls of the cloister of St. Paul's. It was a specimen of the portrait painting of the age, for it contained the portraits of actual persons, in different ranks of life, in their proper dresses. The portraits of our kings, queens, and celebrated characters, done at this time, are of inferior merit.

Gilding was in great request, not only for ornamenting churches and their monuments, but for domestic use, the precious metals being very scarce, and therefore copper and brass articles were very commonly silvered or gilt. But it was in the illumination of manuscripts that the artistic genius of the time was, more than almost in any other department, displayed. The colours used are deemed inferior in splendour to those of the fourteenth century, but they are superior in drawing and power of expression. The terror depicted in the faces of the Earl of Warwick's sailors in expectation of shipwreck, and the grief in those who witnessed his death, are evidences of the hand of a master. Many of the portraits of the leading characters of the age are to be found in these illuminations; and they afford us the most lively views of the persons and dresses of our ancestors of that day—their arms, ships, houses, furniture, manners, and employments. But the art of printing was already in existence, and before it the beautiful art of illumination fell and died out.

If all the authors of this century who wrote in verse had been poets, no age could have been more brilliantly poetical, but in truth its genuine poets were very few. Of the seventy poets enumerated by Ritson, we can only select three who deserve a mention. These are James I. of Scotland, Oocleve, and Lydgate. James I. was a man of remarkably earnest and independent mind. He seems to have overflowed with genius on all sides. The writers of his time celebrate his skill in architecture, gardening, and painting. Of these we have no remains, but we know that in government he was a great reformer; and in poetry, his "King's Quair," or Book, is a poem which is still read with equal admiration and pleasure. It consists of six cantos, containing 197 stanzas of seven lines each. It was written as the story of his courtship of Jane Beaufort, who was afterwards his queen. He describes his first seeing her from his window at Windsor, as she tended a little garden there. A single stanza relating this first glimpse of the beautiful Lady Beaufort, will give an idea of the poetic language of the times:—

Two other poems have been attributed to James I., "Christ's Kirk on the Green," and "Peebles to the Play;" but there is reason to think that they should be assigned to James V., who wrote "The Gaberlunzie Man," and the "Jolly Beggar," poems of the same humorous and popular character. If the "King's Quair" alone, however, can be authentically assigned to James I., it stamps him as the great poet of that age, and as the greatest from Chaucer to Spenser, that is, from the time of Henry V. to the reign of Elizabeth.

The merit of Occleve is not of that quality that it need detain the reader. He wrote much, but without much