King Hart, an allegory of life, the heart personified as Man; but the gathering energies of the nation have not yet raised up the thinkers who shall cast into new forms the thoughts of a new day.

5. In England John Skelton (ch. v. § 34) may have pro. duced during the latter years of the reign of Henry VII. his Bowge of Court. It was an allegorical court poem against court follies and vices. Bowge is the French bouche (the mouth); and bowge of court was the old technical name for the right to feed at a king's table. Skelton here told, in Chaucer's stanza, how in autumn he thought of the craft of old poets who

"Under as coverte termês as could be

Can touche a trouth, and cloke it subtylly
With fresshe utteraunce full sentencyously."

Weary with much thinking, he slept at the port of Harwich in mine host's house called "Power's Keye;" and it seemed to him that he saw sail into harbour a goodly ship, which cast anchor, and was boarded by traders who found royal merchandise in her. The poet also went on board, where he found no acquaintance, and there was much noise, until one commanded all to hold their peace, and said that the ship was the "Bowge of Court," owned by the Dame Saunce-pere (Peerless); that her merchandise was called Favour, and who would have it must pay dear. Then there was a press to see the fair lady, who sat enthroned. Danger was her chief gentlewoman, and taunted the poet for being over-bold in pressing forward. Danger asked him his name, and he said it was Dread. Why did he come? Forsooth, to buy some of her ware. Danger then looked on him disdainfully; but another gentlewoman, named Desire, came to him and said, "Brother, be bold. Press forward, and speak without any dread. Who spares to speak will spare to speed." He was without friends, he said, and poor. Desire gave him a jewel called "bonne aventure." With that he could thrive; but, above all things, he must be careful to make a friend of Fortune, by whom the ship was steered. Merchants then thronged, suing to Fortune for her friendship. What would they have? "And we asked favóur, and favour she us gave." Thus ended the prologue. Then Dread told how the sail was up, and Fortune ruled the helm. Favour they had; but under honey oft lies bitter gall. There were seven subtle persons in the ship:

TO A.D. 1509]

SKELTON.

ALEXANDER BARCLAY

"The first was Fave!l, full of flatery,

With fables false that well coude fayne a tale;
The seconde was Suspecte, which that dayly
Mysdempte eche man, with face deedly and pale;
And Harry Hafter, that well coude picke a male ;
With other foure of theyr affynite,

Dysdayne, Ryotte, Dyssymuler, Subtylte."

217

Harry Hafter in that stanza derives his name from the old English hafian (to lay fast hold of anything). These seven sins of the court had for their friend Fortune, who often danced with them; but they had no love for the new-comer, Dread. Favell cloaked his ill-will with sugared speech. Dread thanked him, and was then addressed in turn by the other vices, each in his own fashion; and at last Dread, the pcet, was about to jump out of the ship to avoid being slain, when he awoke, “caught penne and ynke, and wrote this lytyll boke."

But Skelton's fame does not rest upon good thought put into this conventional disguise. He felt with the people; and in the reign of Henry VIII. we shall find him speaking with them, and for them, by putting bold words of his own upon the life of his own day into a form of verse borrowed from nobody. This form of verse, which has beer. called Skeltonical, appeared in the delicately playful Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe, the lament of a simple-hearted maid, Jane Scrope, one of the young ladies who were being educated by the Black Nuns at Carow, near Norwich, for Philip, her pet sparrow, killed by a cat. The lament ended with a Latin epitaph to the bird, and it was followed by dainty commendations of its mistress. This poem, suggested no doubt by the sparrow of Catullus, was written by Skelton before the end of 1508, for it is included among follies at the end of Barclay's "Ship of Fools."

6. Alexander Barclay, born north of the Tweed, about the year 1476, was of Oriel College, Oxford. After leaving college he travelled abroad, and then became one of the priests of the college of St. Mary Ottery, in Devonshire. He was afterwards a Benedictine monk of Ely, then among the Franciscans of Canterbury. In 1546 he obtained the livings of Baddow Magna, in Essex, and of Wokey, in Somersetshire; and he had also the living of All Saints, in Lombard Street, when he died, an old man, at Croydon, in 1552. He translated from some of the best authors of the Continent; and the most famous of his translations was that of Sebastian Brandt's "Narrenschiff,” done into Chaucer's stanza, with an occasional variation, and pub

lished in 1508, with some additional home-thrusts of his own, as Barclay's Ship of Fools. Sebastian Brandt, born at Strasburg, in 1458, and educated at Basle, became syndic of his native town, and was in 1508 a living writer. He died in 1520. His "Narrenschiff," supposed to have been first published in 1494, though the Latin version of it, "Navis Stultifera," appeared in 1488, led the march of sixteenth century satire in Germany. Brandt called his book "The Ship of Fools" because no cart or coach was big enough to hold them all. The ship once ready, there was a great thronging for berths in her; but nobody was admitted who had sense enough to call himself a fool. Whoever set up for a wit was welcome. One hundred and thirteen several forms of folly were at last entered, with Brandt himself for their leader, as the Bookish Fool, who had many books, and was continually buying others, which he neither read nor understood. Various forms of human folly, among misers and spendthrifts, labourers, gamblers, beggars, huntsmen, cooks, &c., were passed in good-humoured satirical review, with incidental bits of counsel upon the training of children and other subjects. The book was rhymed with homely vigour, and many a proverbial phrase in the Alsatian dialect; it had, therefore, wide currency as a picture of manners, and a wholesome satire on the follies of the day. It went through many editions, was translated into French in 1497; and, while still in the first flush of its fame, was also in 1508 translated into English as the "Ship of Fools" by Alexander Barclay, then signing himself priest and chaplain in the College of St. Mary Ottery. Alexander Barclay's other writings were produced after the death of Henry VII.

7. Another English poet of the reign of Henry VII. was Stephen Hawes, a Suffolk man. Like Barclay, he was educated at Oxford, and then travelled. He was well read in the poets of England, France, and Italy, could repeat much of the verse of Lydgate, whom he called especially his master, and, perhaps for his good knowledge of French, was made by Henry VII. groom of the privy chamber. Like Alexander Barclay, Stephen Hawes was a poet without independent genius, a clever man who took delight in literature, and was active with his pen. In 1500 his Temple of Glass, an imitation of Chaucer's "House of Fame," was printed by Wynken de Worde. His chief work, first printed by Wynken de Worde in 1517, was finished in 1506, and dedicated to King Henry VII. as "The Pastime of Pleasure, or, the History of Graund Amoure and La

TO A.D. 1507)

STEPHEN HAWES

219

Bel Pucell: containing the Knowledge of the Seven Sciences and the Course of Man's Life in this World. Invented by Stephen Hawes, groom of King Henry VII. his chamber" It is an allegory of the old form, chiefly in Chaucer's stanza. Graund Amoure passed through the fair meadow of youth, and then came to the choice between two highways of life, the way of Contemplation--that was life in a religious order--and the way of Active Life. He took the way of Active Life, met Fame with her two greyhounds, Grace and Governaunce, who told him of La Bel Pucell. In her Hawes represented the true aim of life, only attainable through many labours. Then he first visited the Tower of Doctrine, and was introduced to her seven daughters. These were the seven sciences, arranged of old into three, Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, forming what was called the "Trivium;" and four, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, Astronomy, which formed the "Quadrivium." When, in his introduction to these seven daughters of Doctrine, Graund Amoure had advanced to Music, he found her playing on an organ in her tower, and it was then that he first saw his ideal, La Bel Pucell. He told his love to her, and danced with her to sweet harmony. This means that the youth who has advanced far enough in the pursuit of knowledge to have ears for the grand harmonies of life is for a time brought face to face with the bright ideal to be sought through years of forward battle. La Bel Pucell went to her distant home; and Graund Amoure, after receiving counsel from Geometry and Astronomy, proceeded to the Castle of Chivalry, prayed in the Temple of Mars, within which was Fortune at her wheel, and on his way to the Temple of Venus met Godfrey Gobilive, who spoke ill of women. This part is in couplets. They went to the Temple of Venus; but Godfrey was overtaken by a lady named Correction, with a knotted whip, who said that he was False Report, escaped in disguise from his prison in the Tower of Chastity. To that tower the lady Correction introduced Graund Amoure. As the adventurer proceeded on his way he fought a giant with three heads, named Falsehood, Imagination, Perjury, and cut his heads off with the sword Claraprudence. Then he proceeded through other adventures, which carried on the allegory of stead. fast endeavour till Graund Amoure saw the stately palace of La Bel Pucell upon an island beyond a stormy ocean. After the water had been crossed, there was still to be quelled a monster against which Graund Amoure could only defend himself by

anointing his sword with the ointment of Pallas. The last victory achieved, Graund Amoure was received into the palace by Peace, Mercy, Justice, Reason, Grace, and Memory; and he was married next morning to La Bel Pucell by Lex Ecclesiæ (Law of the Church). After his happy years with her, Old Age came one day into Graund Amoure's chamber, and struck him on the breast; Policy and Avarice came next. Graund Amoure became eager to heap up riches. Death warned him that these must be left. After the warning, Contrition and Conscience Mercy and Charity then buried Time and Eternity pronounced

came to him before he died. him. Fame wrote his epitaph. the final exhortation of the poem.

Among the other books by Stephen Hawes was a Conversion of Swearers, printed in 1509. He wrote also in verse, A Joyful Meditation of All England, on the Coronation of King Henry VIII.

8. The chroniclers of English history who wrote in the latter part of the reign of Henry VII. were Robert Fabyan, a Londoner; Polydore Vergil, an Italian; and Bernard André, a Frenchman.

Robert Fabyan, son of John Fabyan, of a respectable Essex family, was born in London, and apprenticed to a draper; he became a member of the Draper's Company, Alderman of the Ward of Farringdon Without, and, in 1493, served in the office of sheriff. In September, 1496, in the mayoralty of Sir Henry Colet, Robert Fabyan was chosen, with the Recorder and certain commoners, to ride to the king "for redress of the new impositions raised and levied upon English cloths in the archduke's land," namely, the newly-appointed Philip's charge of a florin for every piece of English cloth imported into the Low Countries; a charge withdrawn in July, 1497. Soon afterwards Fabyan was an assessor upon London wards of the fifteenth granted to Henry VII. for his Scottish war. In 1502, Fabyan resigned his alderman's gown to avoid the expense of taking the mayoralty, for, although opulent, he had a large family. His wife, with four sons and two daughters, from a family of ten boys and six girls, survived him. He died in 1512.

Robert Fabyan was a good French and Latin scholar; and, in using monkish chronicles as material for his own compilation of history, was a devout adopter of the censures of all kings who were enemies to religious places. Of Becket he spoke as a