by Huchown? Would he accord the proper tribute to the genius of Dunbar; would he estimate what poetry owes respectively to James I., Henry the Minstrel, Robert Henryson, and Gavin Douglas? In our prose literature, would he comment on the great importance of Pecock’s memorable work, of Fortescue’s two treatises, of the _Paston Letters_, of Caxton’s various publications? How would he deal with the one “classical” work of the century, Malory’s _Morte d’Arthur_? Now, of Lydgate, “to enumerate whose pieces,” says Warton, “would be to write the catalogue of a little library,” it is not too much to say that he was one of the most richly gifted of our old poets, that as a descriptive poet he stands almost on the level of Chaucer, that his pictures of Nature are among the gems of their kind, that his pathos is often exquisite, “touching,” as Gray said of him, “the very heartstrings of compassion with so masterly a hand as to merit a place among the greatest of poets.” His humour is often delightful, and his pictures of contemporary life, such as his _London Lickpenny_ and his _Prologue to the Storie of Thebes_, are as vivid as Chaucer’s. In versatility he has no rival among his predecessors and contemporaries. Gray notices that, at times, he approaches sublimity. His style often is beautiful,--fluent, copious, and at its best eminently musical. The influence which he exercised on subsequent English and Scotch literature would alone entitle him to a prominent position in any history of English poetry. But the handbooks think otherwise, and he occupies just three pages in M. Jusserand’s work, the only estimate of his work being confined to the assertion that “he was a worthy man if ever there was one, industrious and prolific,” etc., and the only criticism is the remark that his “prosody was rather lax.” And this is how poor Lydgate fares at our historian’s hands. To Hoccleve are assigned just one page and a few lines. Hardyng figures only in the bibliography at the bottom of a page. The ballads are despatched in fifteen lines. Hawes’ _Pastime of Pleasure_, memorable alike both for the preciseness with which it marks the transition from the poetry of mediævalism to that of the Renaissance, for its probable influence on Spenser, and for its intrinsic charm, its pathos, its picturesqueness, and its sweet and plaintive music, is curtly dismissed, as the handbooks dismiss it, as “an allegory of unendurable dulness.” If M. Jusserand would throw aside the manuals and turn to the original, he would probably see reason to modify his verdict. Our author’s breathless gallop through the Scotch poets, to whom he allots nine pages, can only be regarded with silent astonishment by readers who happen to known anything about those most remarkable men. Huchown is not so much as mentioned. The amazing nonsense which he writes in summing up Dunbar, we will transcribe, _ut ex uno discas omnia_: