We turn to the end of the tenth _Æneid_ and we find him introducing six lines which have nothing to correspond with them in the original. And this is a translator who “does not embroider on his text”! It is perfectly plain that Professor Saintsbury has criticised and commented on a work which he could never have inspected. The same ignorance is displayed in the account of Lydgate. He is pronounced to be a versifier rather than a poet, his verse is described as “sprawling and staggering.” The truth is that Lydgate’s style and verse are often of exquisite beauty, that he was a poet of fine genius, that his descriptions of nature almost rival Chaucer’s, that his powers of pathos are of a high order, that, at his best, he is one of the most musical of poets. We have not space to illustrate what must be obvious to any one who has not gone to encyclopædias and handbooks for his knowledge of this poet’s writings, but who is acquainted with the original. It will not be disputed that Gray and Warton were competent judges of these matters, and their verdict must be substituted for what we have not space to prove and illustrate. “I do not pretend,” Gray says, “to set Lydgate on a level with his master Chaucer, but he certainly comes the nearest to him of any contemporary writer that I am acquainted with. His choice of expression and the smoothness of his verse far surpass both Gower and Occleve.” Of one passage in Lydgate, Gray has observed that “it has touched the very heart strings of compassion with so masterly a hand as to merit a place among the greatest poets.”[14] Warton also notices his “perspicuous and musical numbers,” and “the harmony, strength, and dignity” of his verses.[15]