The other modern critics--Ritson, Percy, and Ellis--had but a slight knowledge of DAN[5] LYDGATE. They have generally acted on the pressure of the moment, to get up a hasty court of _Pie-poudre_--that fugitive tribunal held at fairs--to determine on the case of a culprit even before they could shake the dust off their feet. But time calls for an arrest of hasty judgments, or brings forward some illustrious advocate to reverse the judicial decision, or set forth the misfortunes of the accused. Two, most eminent in genius, stand by the side of the monk of Bury--COLERIDGE and GRAY. Coleridge has left us his protest in favour of Lydgate, for he deeply regrets that in the general collection of our poets, the unpoetic editor "had not substituted _the whole of Lydgate's works from the manuscript extant_, for the almost worthless Gower."[6] Gray alone has taken an enlarged view of the state of our poetry and our language at this period. When that master-spirit abandoned the history of our poetry from his fastidious delicacy or from his learned indolence, because Warton had projected it, English literature sustained an irreparable loss.[7] In Gray surely we have lost a literary historian such as the world has not yet had; so rare is that genius who happily combines qualities apparently incompatible. In his superior learning, his subtle taste, his deeper thought, and his more vigorous sense, we should have found the elements of a more philosophical criticism, with a more searching and comprehensive intellect, than can be awarded to our old favourite, THOMAS WARTON. In the neglected quartos of GRAY we discover that the poet had set earnestly to work on the archæology of our poetry; we also find in his works those noble versions of the northern Scalds, and the Welsh bards, which he designed to have introduced into his history; thus to have impressed on us a perfect notion of a national poetry, by poetry itself; a rare good fortune which does not enliven the toil of prosaic critics or verbal interpreters. Gray had found the manuscripts of Lydgate at Cambridge, and has made them a vehicle for the most beautiful disquisitions. On a passage in Lydgate, the poet-critic developes a curious occurrence in the history of the poetic art--namely, that proneness to minute circumstances which lengthens the strains of our elder poets, and which the impatience of modern taste rejects as tediousness; yet this will be found to be "the essence of poetry and oratory." This topic is important; and as I can neither add nor dare to take away from this perfect criticism, I submit to the task of transcribing what I am sure will come to most of my readers in all its freshness and novelty. Our ancient poet seems to be apologising for telling long stories, which he asserts cannot be told "in wordes few"--