Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/318

 and concluding address to Henry V in thirteen seven-line stanzas). Begun in 1412 it was completed about 1420, in the eighth year of Henry V's reign. The chief manuscripts are: Brit. Mus. MS. Cotton. Aug. A. iv.; Bodl. MS. Digby, 232; St. John's College, Oxford, vi.; the Earl of Ashburnham's MS. (''Hist. MSS. Comm''. 8th Rep. pt. iii. p. 106 b); the Gloucester Cathedral Library (ib. 12th Rep. pt. ix. p. 399), and Mr. John Tollemache's MS. at Helmingham Hall, Suffolk (ib. 1st Rep. p. 60 b). The first-mentioned manuscript corresponds with a printed edition by Pynson, 1513, fol. (cf. , pp. 75–9; copies are in Brit. Mus., Bodl., and on vellum in Huth Libr.). It reappeared in a text corrected by Robert Braham [q. v.] in 1555 as ‘The Auncient History and onely Trewe and Sincere Cronicles of the Warres betwixt the Grecians and Troyans, Wrytten by Daretas a Troyan, and Dictis a Grecian, and Digested in Latyn by the learned Guydo de Columpnis and sythēs translated into English Verse’ (by Thomas Marshe). Thomas Heywood produced a modernised version as ‘Life and Death of Hector’ (London, by T. Purfoot, 1614). Lydgate mainly paraphrased Guido di Colonna's ‘Historia de Bello Trojano,’ and perhaps Dares Phrygius or Dictys Cretensis (cf. ''Cambr. Antiquarian Society Proc''. iii. 117).

3. ‘The Story of Thebes,’ undertaken, according to the prologue, when the poet was ‘nie fiftie yere of age,’ about 1420. Designed as an additional ‘Canterbury Tale,’ it is in three parts, of which the first reaches to the death of Œdipus, and the other two treat of the wars of Thebes. Lydgate followed some French prose version of the metrical ‘Roman de Thebes,’ but he may have occasionally consulted Statius's ‘Thebais,’ Seneca's ‘Œdipus,’ Boccaccio's ‘Teseide,’ and Chaucer's ‘Knightes Tale’ (cf., Lydgate's Story of Thebes, eine Quellenuntersuchung, Munich, 1884). It consists of 4,716 lines of heroic couplets, with a prologue. The chief manuscripts are: Brit. Mus. MS. Arundel, 119; Addit. MS. 18632, ff. 5–33 (followed by Hoccleve's ‘De Regimine’); Royal MS. D. ii. ff. 147 b–162 (imperfect); Cotton. Appendix, No. xxvii. ff. 11–61 (imperfect). Other manuscripts are at the Bodleian, Rawl. MS. c. 48, and Laud. Misc. 416, f. 227; at Longleat (Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. p. 188), in Sir H. R. Ingilby's library (ib. 6th Rep. 361a, with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales), in Lord Mostyn's library (ib. 10th Rep. p. 361), and in Mr. J. H. Gurney's library, Keswick Hall, Norfolk (ib. 12th Rep. ix. 164). It was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde, n.d., 4to (1500?), with ‘The Interpretacyon’ [No. 18 below] and ‘Temple of Glas’ [No. 19] (imp. copy in Brit. Mus.), and again in Stowe's edition of Chaucer, 1561 (cf., pp. 87 sq.).

II. .—4. ‘The Life of our Lady’ (5,936 lines of rhyme royal), written for Henry V (cf. Brit. Mus.; Cotton MS. App. viii. No. 1; Harl. MS. 629 No. 1, 3862 No. 1, 3952 No. 1, 4011 No. 7, 5272 No. 1; Ashmol. MSS. 39 and 59 No. 67; at St. John's College, Oxford, MS. lvi.; Cambr. Univ. Libr. MS. Kk. i. 3; manuscript at Longleat, see Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. p. 180, and in Lord Mostyn's manuscript, see ib. 4th Rep. p. 35 a; cf. p. 360). It was printed by Caxton, 1484 (Brit. Mus. and Bodl.: a fragment of a second edition by Caxton is in the Bodleian Library). It was reissued by Robert Redman, 1531, and again as ‘Early English Religious Literature,’ No. 2, ed. C. E. Tame, ‘from manuscripts in the British Museum,’ London, 1871. 5. ‘Our Lady's Lamentacion’ (cf. Ashmol. MSS. 59, f. 66, and Harl. MS. 2255 No. 15); printed by de Worde, and in ‘Early English Religious Literature,’ ed. Tame, No. 1. 6. ‘The Vertue of ye Masse’ (574 lines in rhyme royal), printed by Wynkyn de Worde (Cambr. Univ. Libr.), and reprinted in Huth's ‘Fugitive Tracts,’ 1st ser. 1875. The eleventh stanza claims Lydgate as the author. 7. ‘Dance of Death,’ or ‘Dance Machabre,’ from the French, in 24 quatrains, written for pictures (cf. Lansd. MS. 699); printed at the end of Tottell's editions of the ‘Falls,’ 1554; in Dugdale's ‘St. Paul's,’ ed. 1658, p. 289; in Holbein's drawings of the ‘Dance of Death,’ ed. Douce, 1794; and in Holbein's ‘Alphabet of Death,’ Paris, 1846, ed. Montaiglon (cf., Lit. Anecdotes, iv. 704). 8. ‘On the Procession at the Feast of Corpus Christi’ (cf. Longleat MS., Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. p. 183); printed in Nicholas's ‘Chronicle of London,’ 1827, and in Halliwell, p. 95. 9. ‘Lydgate's Testament’ (897 lines, seventy alternately rhyming eight-line stanzas, forty-seven stanzas in rhyme royal) (cf. Harl. MS. 2255, fol. 47–66, and Harl. MS. 218; MS. Coll. Jes. Cantab. Q.T. 8). It was printed by Pynson, n.d. (Cambridge, Bridgewater House, and the British Museum), and in Halliwell, 232 sq.

III. .—10. ‘Life of Albon and Amphabel,’ translated ‘out of french and laten into English’ (4,724 lines of rhyme royal). (Cf. MSS. Trin. Coll. Oxford, 38, Lincoln Cathedral, 157, Lansd. MSS., 699, ff. 96–1766, and Phillipps, Cheltenham, 8299; see, Descriptive Cat. Rolls Ser. i. 23–4). It was ‘printed at the request of Robert Catton, abbot of thexempt monastery of saynt Albon,’ 1533, by John Herford at St. Albans, 4to, and was re-edited in 1882