The testimony borne to the character of Henry of Monmouth by the poet Occleve[310] is more indirect than Lydgate's, but not on that (p. 331) account less valuable or satisfactory. Occleve represents himself as walking pensive and sad, in sorrow of heart, pressed down by poverty, when he is met by a poor old man who accosts him with kindness. The poet then details their conversation. He communicates to the aged man, whom he calls father, his worldly wants and anxiety; who, addressing him by the endearing name of son, endeavours to suggest to him some means of procuring a remedy for his distress. His advice is, to write a poem or two with great pains, and present them to the Prince, with the full assurance that he would graciously accept them, and relieve his wants. They must be written, he says, with especial care, because of the Prince's great skill and judgment; whilst of their welcome the Prince's gentle and benign bearing towards all worthy suitors gives a most certain pledge. If Occleve deserves our confidence, Henry, in the estimation of his contemporaries, even whilst he was yet Prince of Wales, had the character of a gentle and kind-hearted man; one whose "heart was full applied to grant," and not to send a petitioner empty away. Instead of his revelling amidst loose companions at the Boar in East-Cheap, his contemporaries thought they should best meet his humour, if they supplied him with a "tale fresh and gay,"[311] for his study when he was in his own chamber, and (p. 332) was still. So far from thinking that an author would suit his taste by furnishing any of those works which minister what is grateful to a depraved mind, their admonition was, to write nothing which could sow the seeds of vice. They deemed him, if any one, able to set the true value on a literary work; and felt that, if they purposed to present any production of their own for his perusal and gratification, they must take especial pains to make it really good. They had formed, moreover, such an opinion of his high excellence, and his abhorrence of flattery, that they thought a man had better undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem than be guilty of any indiscretion in this particular. Let any impartial person meditate on these things; let him (p. 333) carefully read the extracts from Lydgate and Occleve which will be found in the Appendix; and remembering on the one hand that they were poets anxious to obtain the favour of the court, and on the other that no single act or word of vice, or insolence, or levity, is recorded of Henry by any one of his contemporaries, let him then, like an honest days-man, pronounce his verdict. [Footnote 310: Thomas Occleve, or Hoccleve, was Clerk of the Privy Seal to Henry IV; many small payments to him in that character are recorded in the Pell Rolls. He was probably born in the year 1370, and lived to be eighty years of age.]