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LYDGATE’S FALL OF PRINCES

EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY Extra Series, No. CXXI 1924 (for 1918)

Price 15s.

Of the edition of Lydgate’s “ Fall of Princes ” printed by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 400 copies have been generously presented by the Trustees to the Early English Text Society.

After a woodcut by Hans Weiditz In H. Ziegler’s German translation of Boccaccio’s De casibus, published by Steiner in Augsburg, Feb. 27, 1545, fol. ii. verso. The woodcut is one of 261 completed by Weiditz in the years 1519-20, and first published in the“ Trostspiegel,” Steiner, Augsburg, 1532. (See Dodgson, Catalogue of Early German and F'lemish Woodcuts in the British Museum, II. pp. 144, 157.) Approximately original size, 157x100.

LYDGATE’S

FALL OF PRINCES

EDITED BY

DR. HENRY BERGEN

PART I

PRESENTED TO THE EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY BY THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON

LONDON

PUBLISHED FOR THE EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY BY HUMPHREY MILFORD, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMEN HOUSE, WARWICK SQUARE, E.C.

1924

VICTORIA COLLEGE LIBRARY VICTORIA, B. C.

LYDGATE’S FALL OF PRINCES

PART I.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE, THE METRE, BOCCACCIO’S AND LAURENCE’S PREFACES, Etc.

BOOKS 1. AND II.

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CONTENTS OF PART I.

Introductory Note

The Metre

Boccaccio’s and Laurence’s Prefaces, etc. . .

Book I

Book II

if

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7

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JO

ix-xxvii

xxviii-xivi

xlvii-lxv

1-199

200-328

ERRATA

On page 174, line 6172, paiisynge is a more correct reading than paryschyng.

On page ^26, line 35i4> for Lacedemonios, read Lacedemonois.

On page 815, line 1453, for impreuable read im- prenable.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

It was probably not long after May 143 ^ that Lydgate began his “ F all of Princes,” ^ at the request of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who was lieutenant and warden of England from April 1430 to early January 1432 during the absence of Henry VI. in France.^ The mention of Gloucester’s prowess against heretics (Prologue, 400-413) no doubt refers, as Miss Hammond has suggested,^ to the suppression of the Lollard risings at Oxford, Salisbury and London in the spring of 1431, and perhaps to Gloucester’s presence “at the beheading, at Oxford, of a small band of men led by the balllfF of Abingdon,” in May 1431.^ We do not know the date of the com- pletion of the work, but as Lydgate complains of his age, “more than three score years,” in Book VHL (he was sixty- five in 1436), and was engaged on the “Life of Albon and

^ There has been confusion in regard to the title of the book: some students write “falls” and others “fall”; one or two have on occasion used both forms. Tottel’s title-page seems to have been responsible for the plural, as Wayland printed “tragedies” in his title and “fall” in the heading of the table of con- tents, and Pynson “fall” (falle) in the titles and colophons of both his editions. Among others who have followed Tottel are Thomas Arnold, Henry Morley, Ten Brink, Koerting, Schick (who prefers “falles”), A. W. Ward, Courthope, Saintsbury, and Lee (art. Lydgate, Diet. Nat. Blog.). G. Ellis, Hazlitt’s Warton, Taine, David Laing, Hortis, MacCracken, Miss Hammond, the Diet. Nat. Blog, (art. Humphrey of Gloucester), and practically all catalogues of MSS., includ- ing Ward, have “fall.” R. Lane Poole prints “falls” on p. 229 of his edition of Bale, Oxford, 1902, and “fall” on pp. 228 and 231; E. Gordon Duff, “falls” in Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit., II. 321, and “fall” elsewhere in his bibliographical works. Earlier writers, such as William Baldwyn (preface to “Mirror of Mag- istrates,” ed. 1563), and Edward Phillips {Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum, ed. Brydges, 1800), and Thomas Gray have “fall”; Watt quotes “falls” from Tottel; but Tottel himself printed “fall” in the heading of his table of contents and in the colophon, fol. ccxvill verso. I have used “fall” because there is no doubt that Lydgate himself called his book “The Fall of Princes.” He refers directly to it in lines VI. 304 and IX. 3622, and in the same terms to Boccaccio’s original, I. 51, 77, 270, 471, III. 133, VI. 231, and to Chaucer’s “Monk’s Tale” of the same title, I. 249 and IX. 3422. He also used “fall” as a subject of general interest (in reference to the opinions of Andalus dl Nigrl), III. 174. “Fallys” he uses once as a subject of general Interest, IX. 3450, and, so far as I have been able to discover, four times in reference to the the “fallis” of specific princes.

2 Prologue, 372 ff. 3 Anglia, 38. 133-136. * Anglia, loc. cit.

IX

X

Introductory Note

Amphabel in 1439, it is quite possible that, as Professor Schick conjectures, it was finished in 143^ I439j^ perhaps before the

end of 14385 there was at least a partial interruption 14335 while Lydgate was engaged in writing the “Legend of St. Edmund and Fremund’’ at the command of Abbot William Curteys, during and after a visit of Henry VI. to St. Edmund s Bury, which lasted from Christmas 1432 to Easter 1433-'

The “Fall of Princes” consists of 36,365 lines of decasyllabic verse arranged in seven and eight line stanzas,® rhyming ahahbcc (rhyme royal) and ababbcbc, and is a paraphrase of Des Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes^ Laurence de Premierfait’s second, amplified version in French prose of Giovanni Boccaccio^s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium.^ The original Latin prose work was written by Boccaccio between 1355 and 1360 and dedicated to his friend, the chevalier Mainardo dei Caval- canti, because “no emperor, king, prince or pope” seemed to him worthy of his regard; and although a revised and some- what augmented edition was issued at a later date (probably before 1374), we are here concerned with the earlier text, which is the one Laurence used in making his translation.® The De Casibus might, as Henri Cochin suggests,® be called a history of Fortune; for it is a collection gathered throughout the centuries describing the most memorable and crushing

^ Temple of Glas, p. evil.

2 Legend of St. Edmund and Fremund, 1. 187 fF. Temple of Glas, p. evi Th^ere are but few eight-lme stanzas. See the Envoys on Arsinoe, Antio- chus, the Scipios, Herod, and Charles of Anjou; the Chapitle of Fortune; the Last Envoy, addressed to Humphrey, and the Words of the Translator to his Book (IV. 3445, V. 1590, 1846, VII. 246, IX. 2017, 3239, 3541, 3589).

We sornet.mes meet with the title, De Casibus Virorum et Feeminarum lUustrium, but as Paul Durrieu has pointed out in his Le Boccace de Munich Munich, 1909, p. 19, the word virorum was used in the general sense of human beings, or, as we say, “people.” (Parmi les ecrits latins de Boccace celui qui eut de beaucoup la plus grande notoriete fut le traite intitule De Casibus virorum illusirium, le mot casibus repondant a la vieille expression fran^aise cas, signifiant vicissitude de fortune, et le mot virorum etant entendu dans le sens general de genre humain, ce qui fait que le titre De Casibus viro- rum illustrium est devenu, dans le fran^ais du XV« sikle, Des Cas des nobles hommes et femmes.) nooies

See Henri Hauvette, Boccace, Ftude Biographique et Litteraire, Paris Henri Cochin, Boccace, £,tudes Italiennes, Paris, 1889, p. 122.

XI

Introductory Note

blows dealt by fate to the illustrious personages of mythology and history, and written, as the author himself said,^ with the object of teaching princes the virtue of wisdom and modera- tion by holding up to them the example of misfortunes pro- voked by egotism, pride and inordinate ambition.^ The form is the familiar one of a vision or dream, the author represent- ing himself at work in his study, while the “famous unfortu- nates” pass before him in succession, and each tells the story of his fall. Some are presented to Boccaccio by the goddess Fortuna as those to whom she had at one time shown her favour and afterwards thrown from her wheel; others enter unannounced and clamour to be allowed to speak; and there are several who take part in excited conversations with one another or with the author, as in the chapters on Atreus and Thyestes; Messalina, Tiberius and Caligula; and Brun- hilde. Occasionally, Boccaccio himself contributes a tale by way of illustration, and several stories are told by Fortuna;^ and the work is filled with ironical remarks on the vicious stupidity of those to whom fate has given power over the lives of their fellow men. The Latin book is more dramatic and of greater literary value than either Laurence’s or Lydgate’s translation. The dedicatory epistle to Mainardo dei Caval- canti, written in 1363,^ and Boccaccio’s preface were translated by Laurence, but the former appears as such only in his first and more literal version; and although he worked parts of it into the preface of his second version, very little was pre- served by Lydgate, who also omitted the long dedication by Laurence to the Duke of Berry.

At the present day Boccaccio is known best as the earliest and greatest master of Italian prose, as the author of charming lyrical poems and interludes, and of the first heroic epic in the language; he is hardly known at all as the moralist, historian and man of science of the prose Latin works, De Genealogia Deorum, De Claris Mulieribus, De Montibus, and De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, all of which were compiled or written during the latter part of his life. The history and natural

^ See Boccaccio’s preface, “ Exquirenti mei” etc., p. xlvli. below.

* Comp. Boccaccio’s preface and Hauvette, loc. cit., p. 347.

* See the beginning (first few hundred lines) of Book VI.

* See Hauvette, p. 392.

Introductory Note

science of the fourteenth century have little Interest for us now except as antiquarians; the moral .and political doctrines of De Casibus are commonplace and could hardly have been considered very remarkable even at the time they were written, and its art, in spite of its dramatic form and the power of its bitter satire, is not distinguished enough to hold it above the level of the books that perish for all but a few curious stu- dents and collectors. But from the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century the case was very different. Although the Decameron had been translated into French by Laurence in 1411, there was no public then capable either of comprehend- ing its historical importance or appreciating its style; and the indelicacy of a few of its stories, no greater than that of many other popular tales of the time, was certainly not such as to cause any great commotion except in ecclesiastical circles, outraged far less by indecency than by the satire of the priesthood. So It was inevitable that, as far as his contemporaries and imme- diate successors were concerned, Boccaccio’s fame as a writer should rest chiefly on his Latin works; and it was as a moral- ist and man of profound learning that he was best known and respited. To judge by the number of existing manuscripts, the De Casibus had an exceedingly large circulation. It was the sort of book that would especially appeal to the great personages of the time: it told about people just like them- selves; and although very naturally it taught them nothing — as if the impulses and desires of men were controlled by ^ther precept or example —it at any rate interested them.

ey were all exposed to the vicissitudes of fortune, and, the world being then very much as it is to-day, many of them became victims of the same disasters that had afflicted and destroyed their predecessors; ^ and it was no doubt a source

En plus d une occasion, dans les deux cents annees qui ont suivi la compo- sition de cet ouvrage, le De^ Casibus a pu servir de reconfort moral a des mal- heureux Pour ne citer qu un exemple, nous savons qu’au XV" siecle le due Charles d Orleans, retenu prisonnier en Angleterre, se fit envoyer pour charmer les loisirs de sa captivite un exemplaire du traite de Boccace. — Durrieu

UR hr r Cabinet des manusc rude

la. Bibliotheque nationale, Pans, 1868-1881, I. p. 106 Even In th,. rr.\AA\ c

the sixteenth century, Hieronymus ZiegleV, ed^it^ td ^TnsTator oTtht^J

Casibus, an able man and no pedant, wrote, “Ich habe nie etwas gelesen was

Tar^ gewahrt.”- Marcus Landau, Boccaccio, Stutt-

Xlll

Introductory Note

of consolation to some of them, when their hour of trial came, to read about the tribulations of others. And as many of these great people were unable to read Latin, it is quite evident that Laurence was certain of a large and influential public for his translation.

Laurence,^ who took his name from the village of Premler- falt near Arcis-sur-Aube, was clerk of the diocese of Troyes, a competent writer in French and a Latin scholar, and in the eyes of his contemporaries a poet and orator of distinction. He seems to have made his living chiefly by translating, and his first and more literal version of De Casibus was finished on November 13, 1400, and dedicated to Duke Louis of Bour- bon. At about this time he became a confidential advisor and clerk to Jean Chanteprime, conseiller du roi de France. In 1405 he translated Cicero’s De Senectute into French for Duke Louis of Bourbon. Between 1405 and 1409 he translated De Amicitia and completed his second version of De Casibus ^ for the Duke of Berry while living in the house of Bureau de Dammartin, tresorler de France. During the years 1411-14 he translated the Decameron, and in 1417 Aristotle’s Eco- nomics; a version of Martin Dumlense’s De quatuor virtutibus is also attributed to him. He died in Paris in 1418, “annee terrible de massacres, d’epidemie et de misere,” and was burled in the Cimetlere des Innocents.^

Of Laurence’s first version there are but few manuscripts ^ and only two printed editions, that of Colard Mansion, Bruges, 1476, and the Lyons edition of 1483. Considering the atti- tude of translators of his time to their originals, it is a comparatively complete and straightforward rendering, and

^ For the above details in regard to Laurence I am indebted to A. Hortis, Studi suite opere latine del Boccaccio, Trieste, 1879, p. 618 fF.; Durrieu, loc. cit., p. 19 fF. See also Hauvette, De Laurentio de Primofato (thesis), Paris, 1903, and Recherches sur le “ De Casibus virorum illustrium” de Boccace, Paris, 1901 {Extrait du volume “ Entre camarades” publie par la Societe des anciens eleves de la Faculte des Lettres de I’Universite de Paris).

2 Cy fine le llure de Jehan Boccace des cas des nobles hommes et femmes translate de latin en Francois par moy laurens de premierfait clerc du diocese de troies et fut complie ceste translacion le XV*^ jour d’auril mil IIII et IX. Cest assauoir le lundi apres pasques. — Varicrus MSS. Some add the word “closes” to “pasques.”

® Durrieu, p. 21.

* In the British Museum, Additional 11,696 and Harley 621.

XIV

Introductory Note

includes Boccaccio’s dedicatory epistle to Mainardo dei Caval- canti. In his second version Laurence enlarged his earlier work, extending it to more than double its original length by the addition of geographical and historical notes and explana- tions, interpolating all manner of odd pieces of information from the books he had read — Justin, Florus, Livy, Vincent, Valerius Maximus and others — with the result that much of the dramatic form and power of the original is lost. Although he omitted Boccaccio’s epistle to Mainardo, he nevertheless used parts of it as material for his own preface, and added a long dedication to the Duke of Berry, in which he discussed the question of man’s relation to fortune, the abuses of the church and priesthood, the conduct of the nobility and the condition of the agricultural labourers.^

As Durrieu points out, the work thus transformed became for the French reader “not only a subject for moral discussions and a suitable guidance for the restoration of courage in adversity, but a collection of facts and anecdotes, of curious information about countries and men, and almost a picture in perspective of universal history from Adam and Eve up to the middle of the fourteenth century.” It was considered to be an original work rather than a translation, and its success was great. Copied and recopied many times during the entire fifteenth century, it was printed in Paris by Jean du Pre in 1483, in the next year for Antoine Verard, again for Verard (n. d., but after 1503), by Michel le Nolr in 1515, by Nicolas Couteau in 1538, and finally superseded by a new version by Claude Witart, which appeared in 1578. Magnificent manuscript copies^ were in the possession of the last dukes of the house of Burgundy, from Jean sans Peur to Charles le Temeraire, of Jacques d’Armagnac, duke of Nemours, le Grand batard de Bourgogne, Queen Charlotte of Savoy, wife of

^ See p. liv. fF.

2 See Paulin Paris, Les Manuscrits Francois de la Bibliotheque du Roi, Paris, 1836-38; Leopold Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Im- fhiale (Nationale), Paris, 1868-81; Hortis, loc. cit., p. 933-938. The manu- scripts of Laurence’s second version in the British Museum are Royal 18. D. VII., Royal 20. C. IV., Royal 14. E. V., Add. 18,750 and Add. 35,321, of which the last mentioned has been described by Sir Edward Maunde Thomp- son in the Burlington Magazine, Vol. VII. (1905), pp. 198-210, with repro- ductions of six half-page miniatures.

XV

Introductory Note

Louis XL, Louis’ sister, Jeanne de France, duchess of Bourbon, his illegitimate daughter, Jeanne, countess of Rousillon, Jean d’ Orleans, count of Angouleme (grandfather of Francis L), Louise of Savoy (mother of Francis L), Catherine d’ Alen^on, Henry VII. of England, and many others.^ A beautifully illuminated codex was presented to the Duke of Berry towards the end of 1410 by Martin de Gouges, bishop of Chartres,* and there is a manuscript in the National Library, Munich (de- scribed by Durrieu in the work already referred to), with many large miniatures attributed to Jean Foucquet (1415-1485), the most distinguished French painter of the fifteenth century.

The Duke of Berry,’ for whom Laurence translated the De Casibus and Decameron, was born November 30, 1340, third son of king John 11. In 1356 he was created Count of Poitiers and made king’s lieutenant in southern France, and later on received the province of Languedoc. He sup- pressed a revolt of the peasants with barbaric severity, col- lected a fine of £15,000 from the states of the province, fought against the Flemings at Rosebeke in 1382, was active in sup- pressing the Parisian revolts, and by his bungling and pro- crastination is said to have caused the failure of a naval expe- dition planned against England in 1386. In 1389 Charles VI. went to Languedoc to investigate his uncle’s government, with the result that the duke was disgraced and his agent Betisac burnt. And although he was restored in 1401, he did not dare show himself in the province, but delegated his author- ity to Bernard d’Armagnac. He died in Paris, June 15, 1416, “leaving vast treasures of jewelry, objects of art, and especially of illuminated MSS., many of which have been preserved.” ^

^ Comp. Durrieu, p. 24. 2 Hortis, loc. cit., p. 621.

® See L. Raynal, Histoire du Berry, Bourges, 1845.

* Encyclo'pcedia Britannica, article on the Duke of Berry. Hiver de Beau- voir says in his La Librairie de Jean Due de Berry au Chateau de Mehun-sur- Tevre, Paris, i860, p. i, “Jean, due de Berry, frere de Charles V, fut le prince le plus magnifique de son temps, s’inquietant peu des moyens des qu’il s’agis- sait de batir, et sourtout d’amasser des reliquaires et des joyaux d’eglise, pour lesquels sa passion alia jusqu’a ia manie.” And in Leopold Delisle, loc. cit., I. p. 58, we read, “On savait partout, en France et meme a I’etranger, le bonheur que le due de Berry eprouvait a posseder des livres et la munificence avec laquelle il recompensait les cadeaux qui lui etaient faits. Aussi s’empressait- on de lui ofFrir des volumes dont la beaute devait flatter les plus delicat des bibliophiles du XIV® et du XV® siecle.”

XVI

Introductory Note

He was fiercely satirized in Le Songe vhitahley an anonymous pamphlet of the fifteenth century, for, as Henri Moranville tells us, in order to satisfy his expensive tastes, “le due de Berry, dans les lieutenances royales qui lui furent confiees, n hesita jamais a accabler d’exactions de tous genres les popu- lations soumises, bien malgre elles, a son autorite. Aussi la reputation de ce prince etait-elle execrable de son temps; on n’ignorait point ses gouts dispendieux et on les haissait,

parce qu’on en soufFrait cruellement Apres lui avoir retire

tres justement la lieutenance en Languedoc a la suite de scan- dales financiers, ou Betisac avait paye pour son maitre, on ayait eu le tort de la lui rendre. Aussi, n’ayant plus de frein, depensait-il enormement, ruinant le domaine, absorbant le revenu des aides; I’argent fondait litteralement entre ses mains et^ ennchissait d’indignes favoris. Froissart a raconte qu’il s’etait pris d’une inexplicable affection pour un tailleur de chausses; le Songe veritable parle d’un paveur. ” ^

Laurence s long dedication, in which he expresses his indig- nation aroused by the abuses of the church, the bad behaviour of the nobility and the sufferings of the agricultural labourers, must have had a peculiar interest for the Duke of Berry; although it is quite probable that he read it much as it pleases’ one to think that the good Duke Humphrey, who appears to have been equally egoistic, avaricious, untrustworthy, intriguing and dissolute, read Lydgate’s gravely offered moral and polit- ical wisdom, with serious and wholly detached interest. It is an irony of Boccaccio’s fate that the translations of his De Casibus should have been dedicated to two such men It is also obvious that both the French and the English versions differed greatly from the original, no less in spirit than in style. As already mentioned, Boccaccio’s book was not only more dramatic and concise, but, in spite of its pretentious and artificial manner, which was fashionable at the.time, a far more powerful and able work, the work of a great man. The chief effect of Laurence’s remarkable capacity for making in- terpolations was only to impair the literary value of the origi- nal, however much it may have added to its interest for con-

, pamphlet politique

du XI Memoir es de la Societe de I'Histoirede Pari:

France, Vol. XVII. (1890), Paris, 1891, p. 227.

d’ un parisien et de I’ Ile-de~

XVll

Introductory Note

temporary readers; and Lydgate, his translator, suffering under the same inability to let well enough alone, might have made matters still worse had it not been for his choice of verse instead of prose, his echoes of Chaucer, and the occasional intrusion of his by no means unsympathetic personality. As it is, Lydgate’s version is very superior to that of Laurence and can at least be looked upon as the work of one who, had he written less, might have been an artist, an implica- tion into which there was never any danger of Laurence’s falling.^

In regard to the spirit of the three authors, especially their reaction to their environments, it can be said with reasonable certainty that Laurence was not much of an idealist or very distinguished intellectually: he added no original thought to the work, except perhaps his prefaced plea for the agricul- tural labourers, who, as we know, were so badly treated as to endanger their efficiency; and if this plea was the utterance of a kind heart, as no doubt it was, rather than an expression of precocious utilitarianism, nevertheless his loyalty and reverence for the great personages of the day were no less unquestioned than his approval of the social and political system under which they lived; and his willingness to kick the dead lions of the past, after Boccaccio had kicked them, both dead and alive, hardly betrayed a disposition to rashness. Still, he did not hesitate to condemn in general terms what he considered wrong, and took advantage of every occasion to lament the tyranny and avarice of the feudal lords, laity and ecclesias- tics, and the unhappy condition of the people; and although he appears occasionally to have reproved the nobility (with- out being too specific), his tone is moderate, supplicating, seldom admonitory; his wish was to serve and instruct, and he never grew weary of telling his princes that neither their position nor their lives would be secure unless they were willing

^ “Tuttoche il Lydgate modestamente si contentasse d’essere tenuto per traduttore del Premierfait, il suo lavoro puo dirsi opera originale. Egli aveva anima da poeta, e lo manifesta gia I’ardito pensiero di tradurre in versi un’ opera di prosa. Da poeta, egli modifica, come piu gli torna, I’ordine de’ capi- toH, e allarga e ravviva il testo francese, abbastanza prosaico, che gli sta di- nanzi. Un concetto filosofico egli abbellisce con leggiadre similitudini tolte per lo piu da’ fiori o dalle gemme; le storie e le leggende rende piacevoli con parti* colarita immaginose, poetiche,” etc. — Hortis, p. 649.

XVlll

Introductory Note

safety People and preserve them in their well-being and

Boccaccio studied his princes from a wholly different point of view They were to him objects of hostility and bitter

neither sympathy nor respect.^ As he said in his dedicatory Epistle to Mainardo, there was none iving, pope, emperor, or Icing, to whom he cared to dedicate his book They made him sick.= And he believed that as a result of their luxury, magnificence and pride, their avarice, idleness and licentiousness, their hatred of one another and desire for revenge, all honesty, justice and virtue were lost, and that by the example of their superiors the people were contaminated and led into evil customs.-' So he wrote, hoping ring the erring to the right path, to suppress vices, to rouse the indolent from their slumber, and to incite all men

* Hortis, p. 627.

silmin niti pessimum, & pessimis operibus delectar? ^ ^

cam segnem, torpentem, desidemque video re^em A' Pubh-

tamquam domino fidem seruabo.? absit. HostiS

capessere, insidias tendere vires nnnnn.sr • coniurare, arma

&omnino necessarium Cum nulla fere d sanctissimum est,

guine: durum quipped & imprabde to me V

trent quantum libet reees si renriec ^ "mentis imuriam reportare. Recalci-

ss::,::;.?-:. "S'srs?t3£-r;

XIX

Introductory Note

to virtue; but unlike Laurence and Lydgate, he wrote not for the personal advantage of the princes, for whose benefit his translators believed their subjects existed, but for the welfare of the community.^

Boccaccio was also responsible for an attack on women in the eighteenth chapter of Book IL, In Alulieres, which deserves more than passing reference. We know that invectives and satires of women were especially popular during the Middle Ages. Stories, many of them of oriental origin, such as were included m collections like the Disciplina Clericdlis of Petrus Alfunsi (baptised m iio6), the influence of asceticism, of sentiments similar to those expressed in the latter part of the third chapter of Isaiah, and of writers like the thirteenth century Franciscan, Brother Jacopone da Xodi,^ whose Lauda viii., “O femene, guardate,” is still delightful to read, helped to create an atmosphere in which Boccaccio found himself even more at home than Guido delle Colonne, author of the “Troy Book,” had been a century earlier. For towards the end of 1354) ^ few years before the De Casibus was begun, he at the age of forty-one was most unkindly rebuffed and ridi- culed by a young widow to whom he had been imprudent enough to write declaring his affection. At first, as Hauvette tells the story, he was overcome with mortification, and fancied that he could see the passers-by pointing their fingers at him in the street — he could even hear their smothered laughter — for the rebuff had included personal remarks of a gross nature, and he was grey and precociously stout; but as time went on his mortification gave way to anger, which, according to

1 “II Boccaccio, cittadino dl una libera repubblica, da lungo dlmentlco del feudalismo, aveva co’ propri occhi veduto il mal governo de’ prmcipi d’ allora, e la cacciata di uno che aveva tentato di farsi tiranno in Firenze. Dallo studio amoroso e intelligente dell’antichita latina egli aveva acquistato un modo di pensare democratico e pagano, che s’accordava mirabilmente col suo amore d’indipendenza. Il Premierfait legge tutti gli autori, ma de’ profam e classici s’appropria le notizie, non il modo di pensare. I suoi libri erano chiesti e letti dai principi; ma nelle opere del Boccaccio, piu spesso che panegirici, i prm- cipi potevano leggere la propria satira.’’ Hortis, p. 626. ^

2 For Brother Jacopone, see two admirable articles in the Times Literary Supplement” of April 15 and December 23, 1920. The Laude have been edited by Giovanni Ferri and published by the Societa Filologtca Romana, Rome, 1910, as well as in the series Scrittori Fltaha, Bari, 1915, and there are translations, together with the texts, of many of them in Evelyn Underhill’s “Jacopone da Todi,” London, 1919*

XX

Introductory Note

Haiivette, “ fut tres vif, et se manifesta tout d’abord par un immense desir de vengeance.” So he sat down and wrote his Corhaccioy an unimaginative and unpleasantly interesting book, and was apparently still very angry when he wrote the In Mulieres chapter of the De Casibus, in which, returning to the same subject, he presents us with another instructive, if one- sided, description of the artifices employed for various purposes by the women of fashion of his time. However, as we have seen, he did not spare the men, nor, for that matter, did Brother Jacopone; their blows were equitably distributed.

The attitude of Lydgate to his surroundings, and especially to his princes, was quite different from that of either Boccac- cio or Laurence. Although always ready to counsel and advise, and, when he considered it necessary, to admonish, he was never rude, like Boccaccio, nor servile, like Laurence, but wrote throughout as a man of the world, an aristocrat and courtier, whose contempt for the political capacity of the people was exceeded only by Boccaccio’s scorn for the political and moral accomplishments of their sovereigns. He omitted most of Boccaccio’s censure of the clerics, which Laurence had allowed to remain in his versions, and showed himself by his fierceness to heretics much less tolerant in religious matters than the great Italian. Neither foolish nor ill-bred enough to take his “manly and wise patron to task for his infidelities and excesses, he nevertheless stood out firmly enough for the domestic virtues and did not hesitate to tell princes, at least in the abstract, to lead sober, industrious lives and to set aside their concu- bines.i Murder, poison, bloodthirstiness and tyranny (p. 310), deceit (p. 323), dishonesty (p. 416), slander and hasty belief in it (p. 126), pride (pp. 38, 170), suspicion, ingratitude (p. 655), bad behaviour to the church (p. 278), covetousness (p. 432), and vulgar materialism (p. 399), are among the things which he mentions with special reprobation in his envoys.

In spite of his expiessed opinion that the people were there chiefly for the personal advantage of their rulers, 2 he never- theless believed that if a man of humble origin is ordained bv God to be a king he will succeed in overcoming the resistance of all earthly princes; ^ for nobility is by the grace of God and

^ Pp. 299, 360.

® See the stories of Nimrod, I.

^ Comp., for example, I. 1393. 1282, and Cyrus, III. 2962.

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not by blood, and poverty is no bar to royalty; nor can any- thing good ever come of an evil stock. His attitude towards women remains the same as it was in the “Troy Book: ” some of Boccaccio’s remarks he leaves out; for others he apologises. It must be remembered, however, that Boccaccio also qualified his apparently sweeping assertions, and that not only the senti- ments expressed on pages i88 and 189, but the very words, are his as well as Lydgate’s. An old and not very brilliant jest on marriage makes its appearance apropos of the story of Orpheus; but it evidently pleased Lydgate and his readers (the lines are marked in approval in several MSS.), just as Dr. Thomas Lisle’s version is said to have pleased Benjamin Franklin, and, as we have reason to believe, it pleases certain of the public to-day.^

Although Lydgate’s work was much admired by his con- temporaries and immediate successors and enjoyed at least one hundred and fifty years of popularity, no one in more recent times, so far as I am aware, except Thomas Gray in his “Remarks,” who was hardly enthusiastic, and Mrs. Brown- ing, 2 who approved of him for other than purely aesthetic reasons, has given him much praise as an artist. A writer who-- usually contrives to spoil even his most felicitous passages before he has done with them, who systematically pads out his lines with stock phrases and rhyme-tags, and pours out ■unending streams of verse during apparently the whole of a very long life, cannot well be taken seriously as one of the great poets. We search his works in vain for evidence either of imagination or originality, of sympathetic insight into char- acter, sensibility, delicacy of feeling or a fine instinct for form; nor is he distinguished for more purely intellectual qualities. On occasion he shows that he has power and rises to a sombre dignity of manner, well seen in parts of the “Fall of Princes”® and in the Daunce of Machabree^ and this, together with a strain of melancholy, which was in the air at the time and a few years later inspired Fran9ols Villon to his finest

^ For Dr. Thomas Lisle and “The Power of Music,” see “The London Mercury,” Vol. V., p. 295. For a modern instance, see the “At Random” column of “The Observer,” February 27, 1921.

2 In “The Book of the Poets.” Comp. Schick, p. civil.

* See the Envoy on Rome, 11. 4460, the Envoy on Caesar, especially the latter part, VI. 2871, the Envoy on Charles of Anjou, IX. 2017, and the Chapter and Envoy on King John of France, IX. 3134.

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work, IS perhaps his strongest point. No doubt in his day he was highly commended for both pathos and humour; but the latter when not unconscious is as a rule little more than clumsy playfulness, and the former too obvious and exagger- ated to make any deep impression on the reader (although Thomas Gray seems to have thought highly of it),i and neither is sufficient to make a poet. However, considering his intel- lectual environment, his position, and his public, he surely did all that can reasonably be expected of him. The rude men of action of the time were slow-witted and uneducated; even the clerks, if we are to judge, as we must, by their literary per- formances, were a singularly prosaic lot, and taste was evi- dently unknown in their circles. As Gray remarked, “it is a folly to judge of the understanding and of the patience of those times by our own. They [the reading public] loved,

I will not say tediousness, but length and a train of circum- stances m a narration.” They got both in the “Fall of Princes.” Even Boccaccio laid aside much of his genius when he began to write histories for the edification of the men of the world of his day; and whatever qualities of greatness the work possesses lie rather in the hammer blows of its subject-matter than in the art either of the author or of his translators.

On the other hand, the “Fall of Princes” is a document of considerable historical and philological importance. Taken together with the original Latin and Laurence’s French trans- lation, It does indeed illumine the intellectual life of its day,2 if only faintly, for the thought reflected on the pages of both Laurence and Lydgate is unfortunately that of a very narrow and conservative group and cannot be considered as represen- tadve of the best minds of the time. The most that may be said of either of them is that he was able to recognize that, in general, men reap what they have sown.

From the philological point of view the book is of interest, m part because we may assume that the language in which It was written is the English of the most highly educated classes ot Its period, m part because, just as in the case of the “ Troy

^ Gray says that Lydgate, in heart-springs of compassion with the greatest poets.”

* Comp. Hortis, p. 654.

the Epistle of Canace, “has touched the very so masterly a hand, as to merit a place among

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Book,” many words borrowed early in the fifteenth century from the French make their first documented appearance on its pages. Practically the entire literature of the “ Fall of Princes ” has yet to be investigated. There is no modern edition either of Boccaccio or of Laurence; neither the one nor the other has been printed since the sixteenth century; no adequate study of their sources has been published; and except for Dr. Koeppel’s short essay, ^ we have no account of Lydgate s sources or of the influence of his work on succeeding writers. The most recent edition of the “ Mirror for Magistrates is Haslewood’s of 1815.

The text of the present edition is based on MS. Bodley 263 (B), collated throughout with the British Museum MSS. Royal 18. D. iv. (R) and Harley 1245 (H), and in part (especially in regard to doubtful points) with MSS. Royal 18. B. xxxi. (R 3), Harley 4203 (H 5), and the Rylands- Jersey MS. (J). Use has also been made of Sloane 4031, Add. 21,410, the Phillips-Garrett MS. in the Library of Princeton University, and TottePs print, which, considering the time of its publication, is most excellent and derived from a good manuscript. The ** Envoy to Gloucester (IX. 33®3~354®)> the “Last Envoy” (IX. 3541-3588), and six stanzas missing from the story of Lucrece (H. 1058-1099) have been supplied from Harley 1766, a unique abridged but early MS., and one stanza of the Villon-like “Envoy on Rome” (H. 4460 flf.) is from Tottel, collated with the Phillips-Garrett MS.

In preparing the text for the press I have supplied capital letters when necessary and punctuated according to moderp usage; but I have not noted blunders or slips of the pen that were subsequently corrected by the original copyist unless they are of special interest. All alterations in spelling by the editor are noted, with one exception: the awkward form “wordly” of the Bodley copyist, for which I have con- sistently substituted “worldly”; and all other changes in the text are marked by asterisks. The numerous hooks and flour- ishes of the scribe, which, when they signify only a final e (and often they are quite meaningless), have not as a rule been expanded unless the e is of more than graphical sig- nificance. For the crossed /?’s, k's, Vs and double /’s, I have

1 Munich, 1885.

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substituted plain letters, except when the horizontal stroke actually stands for a contraction, as, for example, “Boch’* with crossed h — Boch^j, “who” and “hy” with h’s crossed = whom and hym, “makyg” with crossed k = makyng. The crossed / is usually a contraction for a following e, as is also the crossed double 1; the latter, which is commonly used in manuscripts of the period to represent lies, is rarely, if at all, employed for that purpose in B. The occasional horizontal • strokes over m’s and n’s and u’s are as a rule omitted to avoid confusion, and expanded only when actually necessary, as is certainly not the case in such words as Chaucer, up, favour, or dismembred.

In the following brief survey of the contents of the “ Fall of Princes ” the references are to the pages, and passages of special interest or charm are marked with asterisks.

Book 1. Prologue; ♦Adam and Eve, 13; Nimrod, 28; ♦Against the Pride of Princes, 36; Saturn and the Process of Time, 39; Zoroaster, Ninus, Moses, 42; Ogygus, Isis, 45; Erysichthon, Danaus, Philomela and Procne, 49; Cadmus, 51; .^etes, Jason, Theseus, Scilla, Nisus, 60; Sisera, Deborah, Gideon, 79; Jabin, 86; (Edipus, 87; * Atreus and Thyestes, 106; The Story of Theseus, 118; ♦ Envoy on Hasty Credence, 126; Facetious defence of Woman accused by Bochas of unstableness, 132; On the Suspicion and Dread of Lords, 134; Althaea and Meleager, 136; Hercules, 141 (lines 5104 IF. are excellent); Narcissus, Byblis, Myrrha, Orpheus (play- ful lines about inarriage), 156; Marpessa, Priam and Troy Book, 166; *Against the Pride of Those who Trust in Riches, 170; * In Praise of Poverty, 172; * Samson, 179; * Chapter on the Malice of Women, 184; Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, 190; Canace and Macareus, 193; * The Letter of Canace, 194.

Book 11. Saul, 204; On the Virtue of Obedience, 214; Reho-