One of the most prolific poets known to English literature, and esteemed the greatest of his age. Was born, at Lydgate near Newmarket, about 1370. Was a monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St. Edmund’s, and became successively sub-deacon, deacon, and priest. Studied in Oxford and traveled in France and Italy. Upon his return established a school in his monastery. Received a pension in 1439. Died about 1451. Works, Ritson enumerates two-hundred-fifty-one, without finishing his catalogue. The most important are “Storie of Thebes;” “Fall of Princes;” “Troy Book” (first printed by Pynson in 1513); “The Life of Our Lady” (printed by Caxton in 1484); “The Dance of Death;” “The Temple of Glas” (printed by Caxton 1479?), ed. Schick (Early English Text Society, 1891). Halliwell edited a selection from the minor poems in 1840.

  The most dulcet sprynge of famous rhetoryke.

  Lamentyng Lidgate, lurking emong the lillie(s), with a bald skons, with a garlande of willowes about his pate: booted he was after sainct Benets guise, and a blacke stamell robe, with a lothlie monsterous hoode hangyng backwarde, he stoopyng forwar, bewailyng every estate with the spirite of prouidence; forseyng the falles of wicked men, and the slipprie seates of Princes; the ebbyng and flowyng, the risyng and falling of men in auctoritie, and how vertue do advaunce the simple, and vice overthrow the most noble of the worlde.

  Neere in time vnto him was Lydgate a Poet, surely for good proportion of his verse, and meetely currant style, as the time affoorded comparable with Chawcer, yet more occupyed in supersticious and odde matters, then was requesite in so good a wytte: which, though he handled them commendably, yet the matters themselues beeing not so commendable, hys estimation hath beene the lesse.

  Lydgat a translatour onely and no deuiser of that which he wrate, but one that wrate in good verse.

  He was another disciple and admirer of Chaucer, and it must be owned far excelled his master, in the article of versification…. His verses were so very smooth, and indeed to a modern ear they appear so, that it was said of him by his contemporaries, that his wit was framed and fashioned by the Muses themselves.

  I do not pretend to set him 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. He wanted not art in raising the more tender emotions of the mind, of which I might give several examples…. I stop here, not because there are not great beauties in the remainder of this epistle, but because Lydgate, in the three last stanzas of this extract, has touched the very heart-springs of compassion with so masterly a hand, as to merit a place among the greatest poets.

  Had the reputation of a person much accomplished by his travels into Italy, and France; and besides several things of his, of polite argument in prose, was much esteemed for what he wrote also in verse; as his Eglogues, Odes, Satyres, and other poems.

  He is the first of our writers whose style is cloathed with that perspicuity in which the English phraseology appears at this day to an English reader. To enumerate Lydgate’s pieces, would be to write the catalogue of a little library. No poet seems to have possesssed a greater versatility of talents. He moves with equal ease in every mode of composition. His hymns, and his ballads, have the same degree of merit: and whether his subject be the life of a hermit or a hero, of saint Austin or Guy earl of Warwick, ludicrous or legendary, religious or romantic, a history or an allegory, he writes with facility. His transitions were rapid from works of the most serious and laborious kind to sallies of levity and pieces of popular entertainment. His muse was of universal access; and he was not only a poet of his monastery, but of the world in general. If a disguising was intended by the company of goldsmiths, a mask before his majesty at Eltham, a maygame for the sheriffs and aldermen of London, a mumming before the lord mayor, a procession of pageants from the creation for the festival of Corpus Christi, or a carol for the coronation, Lydgate was then consulted and gave the poetry.

  “The Story of Thebes,” which Speght has printed in his edition of Chaucer, and which was intended as a continuation of the Canterbury Tales, contains some poetical passages, which Mr. Warton has extracted. But Lydgate’s style, though natural, and sometimes rich, does not possess that strength and conciseness which is observable in the works of his master. It is dangerous for a mere versifier to attempt the completion of a plan which has been begun by a poet. Lydgate’s poem is not long; but it is possible to be tedious in a very small compass.

  Voluminous, prosaick, and driveling monk…. In truth, and fact, these stupid and fatigueing productions, which by no means deserve the name of poetry, and their stil more stupid and disgusting author, who disgraces the name and patronage of his master Chaucer, are neither worth collecting (unless it be as typographical curiositys, or on account of the beautyful illuminations in some of his presentation-copys), nor even worthy of preservation…. How little he profited by the correction, or instructions of his great patron is manifest in almost every part of his elaborate drawlings, in which there are scarcely three lines together of pure and accurate metre.

  Has been oftener abused than read. As voluminous as Don Lopez de Vega, and often as dull as the worst-natured critics have not been displeased to find him; yet he abounds with passages that are either curious for their relation of manners, or for their true poetical feeling, or for the vigour and harmony of their versification. In this latter quality he is superior to Chaucer, and sometimes approaches him in his higher merit. He has not Chaucer’s felicity in selecting, nor his facility or spirit in describing, the characterising traits of the events which he exhibits; but he has sometimes a greater condensation of expression, if not of thought, and in general better rhythm in his versification.

  Lydgate is rather food for the Antiquary than the general reader; and without wishing him a place on the principal shelf of the “Old Man’s” library, I must rather insist upon his introduction into some obscurer corner of his Collection.

  Lydgate, his contemporary, was of a more sensitive cast. He even complained of critics, and his is the first mention of that race of men, so common in our day, as existing in England.

  An easy versifier, he served to make poetry familiar to the many, and may sometimes please the few. Gray, no light authority, speaks more favourably of Lydgate than either Warton or Ellis, or than the general complexion of his poetry would induce most readers to do…. Though probably a man of inferior powers of mind to Gower, has more of the minor qualities of a poet: his lines have sometimes more spirit, more humor, and he describes with more graphic minuteness. But his diffuseness becomes generally feeble and tedious; the attention fails in the schoolboy stories of Thebes and Troy; and he had not the judgment to select and compress the prose narratives from which he commonly derived his subject. It seems highly probable that Lydgate would have been a better poet in satire upon his own times, or delineation of their manners; themes which would have gratified us much more than the fate of princes.

  The delectable catalogue of his writings, great and small, exceeds two hundred and fifty; and may not yet be complete, for they lie scattered in their manuscript state. A great multitude of writings, the incessant movements of a single mind, will at first convey to us a sense of magnitude; and in this magnitude, if we observe the greatest possible diversity of parts, and, if we may use the term, the flashings of the most changeable contrasts, we must place such a universal talent among the phenomena of literature…. Alas! apologies only leave irremediable faults as they were. The tediousness of Dan Lydgate remains as languid, his verse as halting, and “Thebes” and “Troy” as desolate, as we found them!

  An elegant poet—“poeta elegans”—was he called by the courteous Pits,—a questionable compliment in most cases, while the application in the particular one agrees not with that same. An improver of the language he is granted to be by all; and a voluminous writer of respectable faculties, in his position, could scarcely help being so: he has flashes of genius, but they are not prolonged to the point of warming the soul,—can strike a bold note, but fails to hold it on,—attains to moments of power and pathos, but wears, for working days, no habit of perfection. These are our thoughts of Lydgate; and yet when he ceased his singing, none sang better; there was silence in the land.

  He accumulates, to wearisomeness, both thoughts and words. But he has an earnestness which often rises into enthusiasm, and which gives a very impressive air to the religious pieces that make up a majority of his minor poems. Although his originality of invention is small, he sometimes works up borrowed ideas into exceedingly striking combinations. His descriptions of scenery are often excellent.

  Lydgate is, so far as we know, the first British bard who wrote for hire. At the request of Whethamstede, the Abbot of St. Alban’s, he translated a “Life of St. Alban” from Latin into English rhymes, and received for the whole work one hundred shillings.

  Indeed he seems to have followed the manufacture of rhymes as a sort of trade, furnishing any quantity to order whenever he was called upon…. Though excessively diffuse, and possessed of very little strength or originality of imagination, is a considerably livelier and more expert writer than Occleve. His memory was also abundantly stored with the learning of his age; he had travelled in France and Italy, and was intimately acquainted with the literature of both these countries; and his English makes perhaps a nearer approach to the modern form of the language than that of any preceding writer.

  He had some talent, some imagination, especially in high-toned descriptions: it was the last flicker of a dying literature; gold received a golden coating, precious stones were placed upon diamonds, ornaments multiplied and made fantastic; as in their dress and buildings, so in their style…. When we can no more speak to the soul, we try to speak to the eyes. This is what Lydgate does, nothing more.

  He could write morality in the old court allegorical style; he could kneel at the foot of the Cross and offer to his God the sacrifice of a true outburst of such song as there was in him. John Lydgate was not a poet of great genius, but he was a man with music in his life. He was full of a harmony of something more than words, not more diffuse than his age liked him to be, and, therefore, with good reason, popular and honoured among English readers in the fifteenth century.

  He was long accepted, and is even now occasionally accepted, at a valuation which was put upon him at a period when there was not a sufficient quantity of literature in the language to make men very discriminating about its quality. I am aware that he was spoken of respectfully by a man of genius such as was Gray, and was not disrespectfully spoken of by a woman of genius such as was Mrs. Browning. It only proves that, in spite of the dictum of Horace, there are middling verses which the immortals do not despise…. There was apparently no topic upon which he was not ready to express himself at a moment’s notice. He produced, in consequence, a good deal of matter which it presumably gratified him to write; though it seems inconceivable that there was ever a state of the human intellect in which gratification could have come to any one from its perusal. In his versification there is no harmony, no regular movement. In his expression, he had gained facility at the expense of felicity. He is one of those noted, or rather notorious, authors whose fame, such as it is, rests not upon their own achievements, but upon the kindness with which others have been induced to look upon their achievements. There is, accordingly, no necessity of reading his works resting upon any one save him who has to make a professional study of English literature. For this unfortunate being the dead past, so far from being able to bury its dead, is not even able to bury its bores.

  The more arid Occleve goes securely on his way, and we read his verses with a quiet pleasure; Lydgate, endowed by nature with a much more musical soul, appears to stumble every moment, so that in reading him we feel again and again as if thrown out of the saddle…. In his poems there is much that is good, and even excellent of its kind. He is, however, so very variable that he has scarcely produced any work of greater length, and only a few short ones, which leave a pure, uniform impression. He never acquired any original style, but rather a sort of mannerism, in which he at length appears to have taken a sort of pleasure, and in which at least he could express his thoughts as rapidly as water from a sponge.

  A worthy man, it seems, if ever there was one, and industrious, and prolific, above all prolific, writes according to established standards, tales, lays, fabliaux satires, romances of chivalry, poetical debates, ballads of former times, allegories, lives of the saints, love poems, fables; five thousand verses a year on an average, and being precocious as well as prolific, leaves behind him at his death a hundred and thirty thousand verses, merely counting his longer works. Virgil had only written fourteen thousand.

  It is not probable that the entire works of Lydgate will ever be made accessible to readers, nor is it to be conceived that they would reward the labours of an editor. But although it must be repeated that Lydgate is an author of inferior value, excessively prosy and long-winded, and strangely neglectful both of structure and of melody, a selection could probably be made from his writings which would do him greater justice than he does to himself in his intolerable prolixity. He has a pleasant vein of human pity, a sympathy with suffering that leads him to say, in a sort of deprecating undertone, very gentle and gracious things. He is a storehouse of odd and valuable antiquarian notes.

  Lydgate’s most agreeable poems are certainly those in which he speaks about himself. In his “Testament” and his “London Lackpenny” he has given us some suggestive glimpses of his life and character; and he will sometimes rest in the midst of his translations, to relieve his weariness by a moment’s gossip with the reader. These green oases are so welcome, in the midst of the desert of dulness surrounding them, that the traveller, refreshed by the little spring of garrulous doggerel, is inclined to celebrate it as a fountain of pure poetry. This however is mistaken gratitude.