Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/316

 tyme of Pleasure,’ apostrophised his ‘mayster Lydgate,’ as ‘the most dulcet sprynge Of famous rethoryke, and of the ballad royal The chefe originall.’ Skelton frequently mentions him in close conjunction with Chaucer and Gower (Philip Sparrow, ll. 804–12; Garland of Laurel, ll. 390, 428–41, 1101); and ‘the triad of Scottish poets,’ Dunbar, Gawin Douglas, and Sir David Lyndsay, reckon his name only second to Chaucer's (cf., Golden Targe, ll. 262–70, and Lament for the Makaris, l. 51; , Palice of Honour, ed. Small, i. 36, 11; , Papyngo, Prol. l. 12). During the Elizabethan period Lydgate's fame was at its zenith. In Tarleton's ‘Seven Deadly Sins,’ of which the ‘platt’ of the second part is alone extant, he figured as chorus (cf., iii. 348), like Gower in ‘Pericles.’ William Bullein [q. v.], in his ‘Dialogue against the Feuer Pestilence,’ 1564, sets him on Parnassus (p. 16), and Richard Robinson, in the ‘Reward of Wickednesse,’ 1574, places him on Helicon. Sackville, in the prologue before the ‘Induction of the Mirror of Magistrates,’ states that the work was designed to imitate or continue Lydgate's adaptation of Boccaccio's ‘Falls of Princes,’ and he and Norton also obtained hints for their ‘Gorboduc’ from Lydgate's prose ‘Serpent of Division.’ In 1581 one John Lawson wrote a long-winded historical chronicle in lumbering verse, which he called ‘Lawson's Orchet,’ avowedly on the model of Lydgate's longer poems (Lansd. MS. 204), and gave reasons for regarding Lydgate as worthy of equal praise with Chaucer (, Restituta, iv. 29). William Webbe, in his ‘Discourse of English Poetrie’ (ed. Arber, p. 32), agrees with Lawson as far as the ‘good proportion of’ Lydgate's verse and ‘his meetely currant style’ are concerned, but censures his subject matter as more ‘superstitious and odd … than was requisite in so good a wit.’ Puttenham, in his ‘Arte of English Poesie,’ credits Lydgate with translations only, but, although ‘no deviser of that which he wrote, he wrote in good verse.’ Shakespeare may have sought some hints for his ‘Troilus and Cressida’ from Lydgate's ‘Troy Book,’ which Heywood published in modernised verse in 1614. John Lane [q. v.] performed a like service for Lydgate's ‘Guy of Warwick’ in 1621. Meres, in his ‘Palladis Tamia,’ Nashe, in his preface to Greene's ‘Menaphon,’ Camden, and Francis Beaumont all make honourable reference to Lydgate. Clarke, in his ‘Polimanteia,’ 1595 (fol. R. 3 a) links him with Sir David Lyndsay. Peacham in the ‘Compleat Gentleman,’ 1634, p. 95, credits him ‘for those times’ with ‘a tolerable and smooth verse.’ In ‘Don Zara del Fogo, a Mock Romance,’ 1656, Lydgate is portrayed as a champion of Chaucer in a contest between the latter and Ben Jonson, for the honour of being known as the first of English poets. To Fuller, Lydgate's English seemed purer and more modern than Chaucer's.

Chatterton read Lydgate; he addressed one of the Rowley poems to him, and wrote another in imitation of him. The poet Gray was the most distinguished of all Lydgate's admirers. In his opinion, his choice of expression and the smoothness of his verse rendered him superior to Gower or Hoccleve, and could even ‘raise the more tender emotions of the mind’ (cf., Works, ed. Gosse, i. 387–407). Warton is no less eulogistic. Recent criticism has been less generous. Hallam perceived in him very occasional displays of spirit, humour, or graphic minuteness. Ritson found him ‘a most prolix and voluminous poetaster,’ or ‘a prosaic and drivelling monk,’ whose ‘stupid and fatiguing productions’ did not deserve the name of poetry, and were only worthy of preservation as typographical curiosities or as specimens of illuminated manuscripts. Mrs. Browning perceived in his verse ‘flashes of genius,’ ‘although not prolonged to the point of warming the soul;’ his moments of power and pathos were infrequent, and he ‘wears for working days no habit of perfection’ (The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets, p. 120). A ‘barbarous jangle’ was, in J. R. Lowell's opinion, the justest estimate of Lydgate's verse (My Study Windows, art. ‘Chaucer’).

Lydgate wrote clearly; the proportion of obsolete words is smaller than in Chaucer, or Wycliffe, or Pecock; he is, therefore, readily intelligible to the reader of modern English. He frequently apologised for the ‘rudeness’ of his language, and explained the defect by representing the speech of his native county as ‘most corrupt, and with most sondry tonges mixt and rupte’ (Court of Sapience, Prol.) But the influence of French and Latin is more apparent in his vocabulary than that of any East-Anglian dialect. Lydgate's voluminousness attests his industry, but he had little or no poetic imagination. The tedious length of his narrative poems renders them unreadable, and, from a literary point of view, worthless. His moralising, usually in allegorical form, is unimpressive, although the piety which inspires it is obviously sincere. He shows to best advantage in his shorter poems on social subjects, like ‘London Lackpenny,’ or the ballade on the ‘Forked Head-dresses of the Ladies’ (‘a dyte of Womenhis hornys,’ Halliwell, p. 46), or ‘A Satirical De-