It will be gathered by this time that I hold no brief for what we must call the court poetry of the fifteenth century, that is to say, the compositions by which poets from Lydgate to Skelton sought to ingratiate themselves with noble patrons and to prove their title to immortality. When they were off their guard they wrote much better. The reminiscences of the gay days of his youth stirred Hoccleve's muse to unwonted vivacity. In the _London Lick-penny_ Lydgate, if Lydgate's it be, wrote humorous satire with success. Skelton himself, though in his (much too respectfully spoken of) play _Magnificence_ he could flounder with the worst of his predecessors, in his light and railing rhymes was nimble enough, and ranged easily from vigorous invective of Wolsey to pretty panegyrics of fair ladies. Now and again also these good souls ceased their search for polysyllables, looked at some fair face or pleasant landscape, and came near to a natural description. Now and again, too, when they were on their knees (it is only in prayers intended for other people that long words seem appropriate), they got down to a phrase of simple beauty. And meanwhile in the country in general, we may be sure, many simple rhymesters were keeping up old traditions; and if some diligent student would begin gleaning from the earlier miscellanies with the industry and insight by which Mr. A.H. Bullen extracted so rich a harvest from the Elizabethan song-books, surely he also would not go unrewarded. That the touch which we find in the religious poems of an earlier date in the Vernon MS. had not been wholly lost is witnessed by some favourite lines of mine from a book called _Speculum Christiani_, printed by Machlinia about 1485, and sometimes attributed to John Wotton-- 'Mary mother, well thou be! Mary mother, think on me; Maiden and mother was never none Together, Lady, save thee alone. Sweet Lady, maiden clean, Shield me from ill, shame and teen; Out of sin, Lady, shield thou me. And out of debt for charity. Lady, for thy joyes five, Get me grace in this live, To know and keep over all thing, Christian faith and God's bidding. And truely win all that I need To me and mine clothe and feed. Help me, Lady, and all mine; Shield me, Lady, from hell pine; Shield me, Lady, from villainy And from all wicked company.' By the side of this religious verse is there any need to quote more than a stanza from the _Nut Brown Maid_ just to remind us what the secular poets could do? 'Be it right or wrong, these men among, on women do complain, Affirming this, how that it is a labour spent in vain To love them well; for never a del they love a man again; For let a man do what he can their favour to attain, Yet if a new to them pursue their first true lover than Laboureth for nought and from her thought he is a banished man.'