John Lydgate

Illustration from John Lydgate's Siege of Troy. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

John Lydgate of Bury (?1370-1451?) was a monk and an English poet.

Life

Overview

Lydgage, born in Suffolk, was ordained a priest in 1397. After studying at Oxford, Paris, and Padua, he taught literature in his monastery at Bury St. Edmunds. He appears to have been a bright, clear-minded, earnest man, with a love of the beautiful, and a faculty of pleasant, flowing verse. He wrote copiously and with tiresome prolixity whatever was required of him, moral tales, legends of the saints, and histories, and his total output is enormous, reaching 130,000 lines. His chief works are Troy Book (1412-1420), written at the request of Henry V when Prince of Wales, The Falls of Princes (1430-1438), and The Story of Thebes (circa 1420). These books were printed in 1513, 1494, and around 1500 respectively. Lydgate also wrote many miscellaneous poems. He was for a time Court poet, and was patronised by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester; but the greater part of his life was spent in the monastery at Bury St. Edmunds. He was an avowed admirer of Chaucer, though he largely follows the French romancists previous to him.

Youth

Lydgate was born at the village of Lydgate, some 6 or 7 miles from Newmarket. It is, however, with the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds that he is chiefly associated. Probably he was educated at the school attached to the monastery, and in his Testament he has drawn a lively picture of himself as a typical orchard-robbing boy, who had scant relish for matins, fought, and threw creed and paternoster at the cock.

Career

He was ordained sub-deacon in 1389, deacon in 1393, and priest in 1397. These dates are valuable as enabling us to fix approximately the date of his birth, which must have occurred somewhere about 1370. Lydgate passed as a portent of learning, and, according to Bale, he pursued his studies not only at both the English universities but in France and possibly Italy. Koeppel (see Lanrents de Premierfait und John Lydgates Bearbeitungen 'von Boccaccios De Casibns, Munich, 188 5) has thrown much doubt on this statement as regards Italy, but Lydgate knew France and visited Paris in an official capacity in 1426.

Lydgate had a consuming passion for literature, and it was probably that he might indulge this taste more fully that in 1434 he retired from the priorate of Hatfield Broadoak (or Hatfield Regis), to which he had been appointed in June 1423. After 1390, while still a young man, he made the acquaintance of Geoffrey Chaucer, with whose son Thomas he was on terms of considerable friendship. This friendship appears to have decided Lydgate's career, and in his Troy-book and elsewhere are reverent and touching tributes to his "master." The passages in question do not exaggerate his obligations to the "well of English.”

The Troy-book, undertaken at the command of Henry V, then prince of Wales, dates from 1412-1420; the Story of Thebes from 1420-1422; and the Falls of Princes towards 1430. His last work was Secreta Secretorum; or, Secrets of old philosophers, rhymed extracts from a pseudo-Aristotelian treatise.

Bale is the authority for another assertion that figures in what has been aptly termed the poet's "traditional biography:" that Lydgate, on completing his own education, kept school for the sons of noblemen and gentlemen. This "traditional biography" prolongs his life to 1461, but it is quite improbable that he lived many years after 1446, when Abbot Curteys died and John Baret, treasurer of Bury, signed an extant receipt for a pension which he shared with Lydgate, and which continued to be paid till 1449. If it be true, as Bishop Alcock of Ely affirms, that Lydgate wrote a poem on the loss of France and Gascony, it seems necessary to suppose that he lived 2 years longer, and thus indications point to the year 1451, or thereabouts, as the date of his death.

Writing

John Lydgate

Lydgate is a most voluminous writer. The Falls of Princes alone comprises 7000 stanzas; and his authentic compositions reach the enormous total of 150,000 lines. He certainly possessed extraordinary versatility, which enabled him to turn from elaborate epics to quite popular poems like the "Mumming at Herdord," "A Ditty of Wamenkr Horns," and "London Lickpenny." The humor of this last is especially bright and effective, but, unluckily for the author, the piece is believed to have been retouched by some other hand.

Cursed with such immoderate fiuency Lydgate could not sustain himself at the highest level of artistic excellence; and, though imbued with a sense of the essentials of poetry, and eager to prove himself in its various manifestations, he stinted himself of the self-discipline necessary to perfection of form. As the result the bulk of his composition is wholly or comparatively rough-hewn.

That he was capable of better work than is suggested by his average is shown by 2 allegorical poems, the Complaint of the Black Knight and the Temple of Glass (once attributed to Hawes). In these he reveals himself as a not unworthy successor of Chaucer, and the pity of it is that he should have squandered his powers in a futile attempt to create an entire literature.

The themes of all his more ambitious poems can be traced to Chaucerian sources. The Story of Thebes, for instance, was doubtless suggested by the “romance” which Cressida and her companions are represented as reading when interrupted by Pandarus (Troilns and Cressida, II. xii.-xv'i.). The Falls of Princes, again, is merely the Monk's Tale writ large. The longer efforts partake of the nature of translations from sundry medieval compilations like those of Guido di Colonna and Boccaccio, which are in Latin.

For a couple of centuries Lydgate's reputation equalled, if it did not surpass, that of his master. This was in a sense only natural, since he was the real founder of the school of which Stephen Hawes was a distinguished ornament, and which "held the field" in English letters during the long and dreary interval between Chaucer and Spenser.

An obvious defect of this school is excessive attachment to polysyllabic terms. Lydgate is not quite so great a sinner in this respect as are some of his successors, but his tendency cannot be mistaken, and John Metham is amply justified in his censure-

John Lydgate, sometime monk of Bury,

His books indited with terms of rhetoric

And half-changed Latin, with conceits of poetry.

Pedantry was an inevitable effect of the early Renaissance. French literature passed through the same phase, from which indeed it was later in emerging; and the ultimate consequence was the enrichment of both languages. It must be conceded as no small merit in Lydgate that, in an age of experiment he should have succeeded so often in hitting the right word.

Thomas Warton remarks on his lucidity. Since his writings are read more easily than Chaucer's, the inference is plain: that he was more effectual as a maker of our present English. In spite of that, Lydgate is characteristically medieval - medieval in his prolixity, his platitude, his want of judgment and his want of taste; medieval also in his pessimism, his Mariolatry and his horror of death.

These attributes jarred on the sensitive Ritson, who racked his brains for contumelious epithets such as "stupid and disgusting," "cart-loads of rubbish,", etc.; and during the greater part of the 18th and 19th centuries Lydgate's reputation was at its lowest ebb. Recent criticism has been far more impartial, and almost too much respect has been paid to his attainments, especially in the matter of meter, though Lydgate himself, with offensive lightheartedness, admits his poor craftsmanship.

Lydgate's most doughty and learned apologist is Schick, whose preface to the Temple of Glass embodies practically all that is known or conjectured concerning this author, including the chronological order of his works. With the exception of the Damage and Destruction in Realms (an account of Julius Caesar, his wars and his death) they are all in verse and extremely multifarious - narrative, devotional hagiological, philosophical and scientific, allegorical and moral, historical, satirical and occasional.

Critical introduction

by Thomas Arnold

Lydgate seems to have been stimulated to write partly by the example and renown of Chaucer, partly by a predilection for the French poets of that day — Christine de Pisan, Machault, Granson, &c.— and the desire to emulate them. He was a monk of that monastery of St. Edmund king and martyr, at Bury, into the interior life of which Jocelyn de Brakelonde, much helped by his modern editor, 1 has enabled us to look so clearly. But Abbot Hubert and Abbot Samson had laboured and gone to their account more than two centuries before, and though his rule remained the same, the conditions of life were much changed in the interval, even for a monk of Bury. In particular, the dazzling and distracting images of Literature besieged his cell, and haunted his thoughts, with a persistency unknown at the earlier period. Then the vernacular literatures were in their infancy, and sober Latin was the ordinary dress of a cultivated man’s thought; now, in France and Italy, and in England, numerous works, bearing the imprint of the newest spirit of the day, decked also with sallies of wit and beautiful imagery which came directly from the heart and brain, through the familiar mother-tongue, were circulating amongst and influencing all who could think and feel.

Lydgate, who by his own account had little vocation for the cloister, whose boyhood had been mischievous, his youth lazy and riotous, and his early manhood disedifying, for a long time cared little about St. Edmund and the special duties of the monastic life. He had an intense admiration for Chaucer, and his first large work seems to have been The Storie of Thebes, which he represents as a new Canterbury tale, told by himself soon after his joining the company of pilgrims at Canterbury. It is founded on the Thebaid of Statius and the Teseide of Boccaccio, and written in the ten-syllable rhyming couplet which Chaucer had used with such effect in "The Knightes Tale". The prologue is spirited, but when the body of the poem is reached the attention soon flags. Chaucer versifies with facility, and also with power; Lydgate has the facility without the power.

His next considerable work, on the story of Troy, was undertaken about 1412, at the request of Prince Henry (afterwards Henry V), and finished in 1420. The prince desired that the "noble storye" of Troye should be as well known in England as elsewhere, and as well written in English—

‘As in the Latyn and the Frenshe it is.’

Troy was then regarded as the antiqua mater of every European nation. It would therefore seem very fitting, that since Wace and his English translators, following Geoffrey of Monmouth, had given in the vernacular the story of the original Trojan settlement of England under Brutus the great-grandson of Aeneas, the moving vicissitudes of the city to which Brutus and Aeneas belonged should also now be told in English. This poem is in five books, and written, like The Storie of Thebes, in the ten-syllable couplet. It is founded on the Latin prose history of Troy by Guido di Colonna, a Sicilian jurist of the thirteenth century. The austere old layman wrote many things to the disadvantage of the fair sex which are painful to the politeness of the monk, who declares that he translates them unwillingly, and would give their author, were he alive, a ‘bitter penance’ for his crabbed language. In the third book, where the story of Troilus and Cressida is introduced, Lydgate seizes the opportunity of paying an ardent tribute of praise, love, and admiration to his ‘maister Chaucer,’ who had chosen that subject for a poem. 2

The versification of Lydgate, in this Troy-book and in The Storie of Thebes, as well as in his numerous shorter pieces, is extremely rough. If the structure of the lines is attentively considered, it will be seen that he did not regard them as consisting of 10 syllables and 5 feet, or at least that he did not generally so regard them, but rather as made up of 2 halves or counterbalancing members, each containing 2 accents. Remembering this, the reader can get through a long passage by Lydgate or Barclay with some degree of comfort; though, if he were to read the same passage with the expectation of meeting always the due number of syllables, his ear would be continually disappointed and annoyed.

This vicious mode of versification was probably a legacy from the alliterative poets, whose popularity, especially in the north of England, was so great that their peculiar rhythm long survived after rhyme and measure had outwardly carried the day. Not to mention Layamon’s Brut, where we see a curious mixture of rhyme and alliteration,— the former, as the poem proceeds, gradually edging out the latter,— romances and other pieces of much later date can be pointed out, in which not only rhyme and measure but even the stanza form is adopted (for instance, in the Anters of Arthur, published by the Camden Society, 1842), yet still alliteration is carefully practised, and the syllabic lawlessness which the alliterator held to be his privilege, maintained. In the South of England, where the influences of French and Italian literature were more powerful, alliteration was repudiated; thus we find Chaucer making his ‘Persone’ say,—

‘I am a sotherne man,

I cannot geste, rom, ram, ruf, by my letter.’

‘To geste’ meant to write in alliterative style, because of the great number of romances or gestes so written which were then in circulation.

Lydgate’s last notable work was The Falls of Princes, founded on a French version of the Latin treatise by Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. It is dedicated to Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, brother to Henry V, whom he speaks of as dead, and mentions his having written his Troy-book at his desire. The subject of this vast poem, which is in nine books, and was printed in folio in 1558, may be gathered from the old title-page, which runs, "The Tragedies gathered by Jhon Bochas of all such Princes as fell from theyr Estates throughe the Mutability of Fortune since the creation of Adam until his time; wherin may be seen what vices bring menne to destruccion, wyth notable warninges howe the like may be avoyded. Translated into English by John Lidgate, Monke of Burye." The Monk’s Tale of Chaucer proceeds on the same lines; and a company of Marian or Elizabethan poets, Sackville, Baldwin, Ferrers, &c., working out the same idea, but with a more distinct ethical purpose, produced that stupendous but forgotten work, the Myrrour for Magistrates. In this work Lydgate adopted the 7-line stanza so much employed by Chaucer, and also seems to have taken more pains than before to emulate the rhythmic excellence of his master’s work. Hence the Falls of Princes is, of his 3 principal poems, by far the most readable. In the beginning of the 8th book he complains of age and poverty; and a minor poem, written while he was employed on this work, is in the form of a letter to the Duke of Gloucester, saying that his "purs was falle in great rerage" (arrears), and asking for money.

In his old age the genius loci, and the saintly memories which clung round the monastery, appear to have influenced the poet more than in his youth. We find him composing a metrical ‘Life of St. Edmund,’ which still reposes in MS., and writing the ‘Legend of St. Alban’ for the monks of that famous monastery.

Of his minor poems a large and not uninteresting selection was edited for the Percy Society by Mr. Halliwell. They are mostly written in an octave stanza, not the ottava rima, but one in which the 2nd rhyme embraces the 4th, 5th and 7th lines, whilst the 3rd rhyme connects the 6th and 8th. A considerable number are in the rhyme royal, or 7-line stanza. Some of them are satirical, not to say cynical; several are descriptive; but the majority are either versions of French or Latin fabliaux, or moralizing pieces based on proverbs and old saws.

There is much that is vivid and forcible in the picture of the manners and humours of London and Westminster given in "London Lickpenny". "Pur le Roy" may remind us of the effusions of Elkanah Settle the city poet, unmercifully ridiculed by Pope in the Dunciad. If it may certainly be attributed to Lydgate, it proves that he was living in 1433, in which year occurred the visit of Henry VI to London after his coronation, when the citizens received him with extraordinary demonstrations of joy and loyalty. The pageants, dresses, uniforms, speeches, &c., are described by the poet with a wearisome minuteness.

It is unlikely that Lydgate lived long after writing this poem, but the exact year of his death has never been ascertained. It happened while he was engaged in translating into rhyme royal a French version of the supposed work of Aristotle, addressed to Alexander, which is variously entitled On the Government of Princes, The Secret of Secrets, and The Philosopher’s Stone. At the head of one of the MSS. of this work (which has never been printed) there is a small picture of Lydgate: he is represented as an old man, dressed in the black habit of the Benedictines, and tendering, bare-headed and on his knees, his book to some august personage above him, who is meant either for Henry VI or St. Edmund the patron of his monastery.

Recogniton

His poem "Vox Ultima Crucis" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Quotations

• "Who lesith his fredam, in soth, he lesith all."
  —an old proverb Lydgate included in his moral fable The Churl and the Bird
• Lydgate wrote that King Arthur was crowned in "the land of the fairy", and taken in his death by four fairy queens, to Avalon where he lies under a "fairy hill", until he is needed again.

Recognition

The Oxford English Dictionary cites Lydgate with the earliest record of using the word "talent" in reference to a gifted state of natural ability.

Lydgate is also credited with the first known usage of the adage "Needs must" in its fullest form: "He must nedys go that the deuell dryves” in his Assembly of the Gods. Shakespeare later uses it in All's Well That Ends Well.

In popular culture

• Lydgate is a character in a 2003 mystery novel The Bastard's Tale, by Margaret Frazer, which takes place in Bury St. Edmunds in 1447.

Publications

Major works

• The Temple of Glas (1403?). Manuscripts: Alain Renoir and C. David Benson (1980) list nine manuscripts; John Norton-Smith's 1966 text is based on Bodleian Library MS. Tanner 346. First publication: The temple of glas (Westminster: William Caxton, 1477?). Standard editions: The Temple of Glas, edited by Joseph Schick, EETS, e.s. 60 (1891; reprinted, 1924, 1973); also in John Lydgate: Poems, edited by Norton-Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 67-112, 176-191.
• Reson and Sensuallyte (circa 1408). Manuscripts: Bodleian Library MS. 3896 (Fairfax 16) and British Library MS. Additional 29729. Standard edition: Reson and Sensuallyte, edited by Ernst Sieper, 2 volumes, EETS, e.s. 84 & 89 (1901-1903; reprinted, 1965).
• The Life of Our Lady (1409-1411?). Manuscripts: Alain Renoir and C. David Benson list forty-seven manuscripts, the best of which (according to Norton-Smith) is Durham University MS. Cosin V.ii.16. First publication: tHis book was compyled by dan John lydgate ... in thonoure glorye & reuerence of the byrthe of our moste blessyd lady, mayde wyf, and moder of our lord Ihesu cryst, edited by William Caxton (Westminster: William Caxton, 1484?). Standard edition: A Critical Edition of John Lydgate's Life of Our Lady, edited by Joseph A. Lauritis, Ralph A. Klinefelter, and Vernon F. Gallagher, Duquesne Studies, Philological Series 2 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1961).
• Troy Book (1412-1420). Manuscripts: This long poem exists in more than twenty manuscripts; Henry Bergen's text (1906-1935) is based on British Library MS. Cotton Augustus A.iv, collated with British Library MS. Arundel 99 and Bodleian Library MSS. Digby 230 and Digby 232. First publication: The hystorye, Sege and dystruccyon of Troye (London: Richard Pynson, 1513). Standard edition: Troy Book, edited by Henry Bergen, 4 volumes, EETS, e.s. 97, 103, 106, and 126 (1906-1935; reprinted, 1973).
• The Siege of Thebes (1420-1422). Manuscripts: Alain Renoir and C. David Benson list thirty manuscripts; the standard EETS edition is based on British Library MS. Arundel 119. First publication: The Storye of Thebes (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1496?). Standard edition: The Siege of Thebes, 2 volumes, edited by Axel Erdmann and Eilert Ekwall, EETS, e.s. 108 (1911; reprinted, 1960) and e.s. 125 (1930; reprinted, 1973).
• The Serpent of Division (1422). Manuscripts: Alain Renoir and C. David Benson list five manuscripts of this prose treatise. Standard edition: The Serpent of Division, edited by Henry Noble MacCracken (London: Frowde / New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911).
• The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man (1426-1430). Manuscripts: British Library MSS. Cotton Vitellius C.xiii, Cotton Tiberius A.vii (a fragment), and Stowe 952; and Worcester Cathedral MS. C.i.8 (a fragment). Standard edition: Deguileville's Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, 3 volumes, edited by Frederick J. Furnivall and Katharine B. Locock, EETS, e.s. 77, 83 & 92 (1899-1904; reprinted, 1973).
• The Dance of Death (or The Daunce of Machabree) (1426-1430). Manuscripts: Alain Renoir and C. David Benson list fifteen manuscripts, eight with and seven without the five-stanza prologue; the standard EETS edition is based on Ellesmere MS. 26.A.13 (in the Huntington Library) and Lansdowne MS. 699 (in the British Library). Standard edition: The Dance of Death, edited by Florence Warren and Beatrice White, EETS, o.s. 181 (1931; reprinted, 1971).
• Fall of Princes (1431-1439). Manuscripts: Alain Renoir and C. David Benson list thirty-four manuscripts plus numerous manuscripts of extracts; Henry Bergen's text is based on Bodley MS. 263, collated throughout with British Library MSS. Royal 18.D.iv and Harley 1245, and in part with other manuscripts. First publication: Here begynnethe the boke calledde John bochas descriuinge the falle of princis ... (London: Richard Pynson, 1494). Standard edition: Fall of Princes, edited by Henry Bergen, 4 volumes (Washington, D.C.: The Carnegie Institution, 1923-1927); and EETS, e.s. 121-124 (1924-1927; reprinted, 1967).
• The Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund (1433). Manuscripts: Alain Renoir and C. David Benson list thirteen manuscripts. Edition: "John Lydgate's Saint Edmund and Saint Fremund: An Annotated Edition," edited by James I. Miller, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1967.
• The Lives of Saint Albon and Saint Amphabel (1439) Manuscripts: The poem exists in more or less complete form in five manuscripts; both standard editions are based on Lansdowne MS. 699 (in the British Library). First publication: Here begynnethe the glorious lyfe and passion of seint Albon prothomartyr of Englande / and also the lyfe and passion of saint Amphabel / whiche conuerted saint Albon to the fayth of Christe (St. Albans: J. Hertford, 1534). Standard editions: The Life of Saint Alban and Saint Amphibal, edited by J. E. van der Westhuizen (Leiden: Brill, 1974); The Life of Saint Albon and Saint Amphibalus, edited by George F. Reinecke, Garland Medieval Texts no. 11 (New York & London: Garland, 1985).
• Secrees of the Old Philosoffres (with Benedict Burgh) (1446?). Manuscripts: Alain Renoir and C. David Benson list twenty manuscripts; Steele's text is based on Sloane MS. 2464 (in the British Library). Standard edition: Secrees of the Old Philosoffres, edited by Robert Steele, EETS, e.s. 66 (1894; reprinted, 1973).
• The Testament of Lydgate (1448-1449). Manuscripts: The poem exists in whole or in part in about a dozen manuscripts; Henry Noble MacCracken's text is based on British Library MS. Harley 218. First publication: Here begynneth the testament of John Lydgate monke of Berry: which he made hymselfe / by his lyfe dayes (London: Richard Pynson, 1515?). Edition: The Testament of Dan John Lydgate, in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, edited by Henry Noble MacCracken, volume 1, EETS, e.s. 107 (1911; reprinted, 1962), pp. 329-362.

Collected editions

• Lydgate's Minor Poems: The two Nightingale poems" (edited by Otto Glauning). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1900.
• The Minor Poems of John Lydgate (edited by Henry Noble MacCracken, 2 volumes). EETS, e.s. 107 (1911; reprinted, 1962) and o.s. 192 (1934; reprinted, 1961).
• English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey (edited by Eleanor Prescott Hammond), pp. 77-187. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1927; Octagon, 1965.
• Poems (edited by John Norton-Smith). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1966.
• The Temple of Glass (edited by J. Allan Mitchell). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications (TEAMS Middle English Texts), 2007.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

See also

• Middle English poets
• List of British poets

References

•  Snell, Fredrick John (1911). "Lydgate, John". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 156-157. . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 7, 2018.

External links

Poems

• "Vox Ultima Crucis".
• Lydgate, John (1370?-ca. 1449) (1 poem) at Representative Poetry Online.
• John Lydgate 1370-1449 at the Poetry Foundation
• Lydgate in The English Poets: An anthology: Extracts from London Lickpenny, Extracts from The Dietary, or Rules for health, Extracts from Falls of Princes: Descriptions of the golden age
• John Lydgate at PoemHunter (5 poems)
• John Lydgate at Poetry Nook (27 poems)

Books

• Works by John Lydgate at Project Gutenberg
• John Lydgate at Amazon.com
• The Online Medieval Sources Bibliography cites printed and online editions of Lydgate's works
• [http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/lydgatebib.htm Selected works of John Lydgate

About

• John Lydgate in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• John Lydgate at NNDB
• This article displays text now in the public domain from the Catholic Encyclopedia. Original article is at:
• Lydgate, John in the Dictionary of National Biography
• John Lydgate at Luminarium (includes links to online texts)

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at: "[1]"