heard, clapped down night by night, in hostelries

or in tent perhaps on horseback are cherished

of all men, and must be reckoned the liveliest, if not the best of all chronicles of his time. He died in the first decade of that fifteenth century on which we open our British march to-day; and, at the outset, I call attention to a little nest of dates, which from their lying so close together, can be easily kept in mind. Richard II. son of the Black Prince, died—a disgraced prisoner-in 1400. John of Gaunt, his uncle, friend of Chaucer, died the previous year while Chaucer, Froissart and John Gower all died in less than ten years thereafter; thus, the century opens with a group of great deaths.

Two Henrys and Two Poets.

the

That Henry IV. who appears now upon throne, and who was not a very noticeable man, save for his kingship, you will remember as the little son of John of Gaunt, who played about Chaucer's knee; you will remember him further

nette Amoureuse·

appear in the Buchon edition of the Chroniques; Paris, 1835.

as giving title to a pair of Shakespeare's plays, in which appears for the first time that semi-historic character

that enormous wallet of flesh, that

egre

gious villain, that man of a prodigious humor, all in one -Jack Falstaff. And this famous, fat Knight of Literature shall introduce us to Prince Hal who, according to traditions (much doubted nowadays), was a wild boy in his youth, and boon companion of such as Falstaff; but, afterward, became the brave and cruel, but steady and magnificent Henry V. Yet we shall never forget those early days of his, when at Gad's Hill, he plots with Falstaff and his fellows, to waylay travellers bound to London, with plump purses. Before the plot is carried out, the Prince agrees privately with Poins (one of the rogues) to put a trick upon Falstaff: Poins and the Prince will slip away in the dusk - let Falstaff and his companions do the robbing; then, suddenly – disguised in buckram suits -pounce on them and seize the booty. This, the Prince and Poins do: and at the first onset of these latter, the fat Knight runs off, as fast as his great hulk will let him, and goes spluttering and puffing to a near tavern, where - after consuming "an intolerable deal of sack

he is confronted by the Prince, who demands his share of the spoils. But the big Knight blurts out"A plague on all cowards!" He has been beset, while the Prince had sneaked away; the spoils are gone:

"I am a rogue, if I was not at half a sword with a dozen of them two hours together; I have scaped by a miracle; I am eight times thrust thro' the doublet-four thro' the hose. My sword is hacked like a hand-saw. If I fought not with fifty of them, then am I a bunch of radish. If there were not two or three and fifty on poor old Jack, then am I no two-legged creature."

'Pray God, [says the Prince, keeping down his laughter] you have not murdered some of them!"

Falstaff.

two of them

Nay, that's past praying for; for I peppered

two rogues in buckram. Here I lay, and thus

I bore my sword.

Prince.

Four rogues in buckram let drive at me.

What, four?; thou said'st two. Falstaff. Four, Hal; I told thee four.

And Poins comes to his aid, with

"Ay, he said four." Whereat the fat Knight takes courage; the men in buckram growing, in whimsical stretch to seven, and nine; he, paltering and swearing, and never losing his delicious insolent swagger, till at last the Prince declares the truth, and makes show of the booty. You think this coward Falstaff may lose heart at this; not a whit of it; his eye, roll

ing in fat, does not blink even, while the Prince unravels the story; but at the end the stout Knight hitches up his waistband, smacks his lips :

"D'ye think I did not know ye, my masters? Should I turn upon the true Prince? Why thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules; but beware instinct: I was a coward on instinct."

So runs the Shakespearean scene, of which I give this glimpse only as a remembrancer of Henry IV., and his possibly wayward son.

If we keep by the strict letter of history, there is little of literary interest in that short reign of his only fourteen years. Occleve, a poet of whom I spoke as having painted a portrait of Chaucer (which I tried to describe to you) is worth mentioning were it only for this. Lydgate,* of about the same date, was a more fertile poet; wrote so easily indeed, that he was tempted to write too much. But he had the art of choosing taking subjects, and so, was vastly popular. He had excellent training, both English and Continental; he was a priest, though sometimes a naughty one; and he opened a school at his monastery of St. Edmunds.

* John Lydgate: dates of birth and death unsettled.

A few fragments of that monastery are still to be

a

seen in the ancient town of Bury St. Edmunds : town you may remember in a profane way, as the scene of certain nocturnal adventures that befel, in our time, Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller.

Notable amongst the minor poems of this old Bury monk, is a jingling ballad called London Lickpenny, in which a poor suitor pushing his way into London courts, is hustled about, has his hood stolen, wanders hither and yon, with stout cries of "ripe strawberries" and "hot sheepes feete" shrilling in his ears; is beset by taverners and thievish thread-sellers, and is glad to get himself away again into Kent, and there digest the broad, and ever good moral that a man's pennies get "licked" out of him fast in London. Remembering that this was at the very epoch when Nym and Bardolph frequented the Boar's Head, Eastcheap, and cracked jokes and oaths with Dame Quickly and Doll Tearsheet, and we are more grateful for the old rhyming priest's realistic bit of London sights, than for all his classics,* or all his stories of the saints.

*The Storie of Thebe and the Troy booke were among his ambitious works. Skeat gives his epoch "about 1420," and