Our bonnie bairn's there, John! To the land o' the leal. But sorrow's sel' wears past, John! In the land o' the leal. O dry your glistening ee, John! To the land o' the leal. Now fare ye weel, my ain John! This warld's cares are vain, John ! We'll meet, and we'll be fain, In the land o' the leal. NOTES. ""the GEOFFREY CHAUCER, "the first finder of our fair language," father of English poetry" (so Occleve and Dryden), was the son of a London vintner. At first a page of Prince Lionel, he was afterwards in the service of King Edward the third, and befriended by the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt. His authenticated poems are a translation of the French Roman de la Rose (now lost-that still extant in a Northern dialect not his); the Complaint to Pity, the Book of the Duchess, and the Complaint of Mars, written about 1369-71; Troilus and Crescide, the Parliament of Fowls, the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women, and his greatest (unfinished) work, the Canterbury Tales. The Flower and the Leaf, generally printed as his, belongs to the next century; the Cuckoo and Nightingale also is not by him. Our two short poems are thought to be of his last days: the Good Counsel" written on his death-bed." ("The date usually assigned to Chaucer's birth, 1328, is inferred from the inscription on his monument in Westminster Abbey. This monument, an altar-tomb under a Gothic canopy, was not erected until 1556, when Nicholas Brigham, a small poet who reverenced the genius of Chaucer, built it at his own expense. But we know from Caxton that there was an earlier inscription on a table hanging on a pillar near the poet's burial-place; and Brigham can hardly have done otherwise than repeat on the new tomb the old record that Chaucer died on the 25th of October, 1400, and that his age was then seventy-two. This date is in harmony with what we know of Chaucer's life and writings."-HENRY MORLEY: A FIRST SKETCH OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.) Soothfastness is truthfulness; tickleness-insecurity; rede-counsel; a nall-a nail; deeme—judge; in buxomness—civilly and obediently; weive -forsake; certes but certainly unless; ellis-else; mote-must; stereguide, governor; frere-friar; mowen-able. HENRYSON: a schoolmaster of Dunfermline in Scotland. His chief performance is the Testament of Cresseid, a continuation of Chaucer's Troilus and Crescide. He wrote also Moral Fables of Æsop, in verse; and is notable as the author of our first pastoral—Robin and Mawkin, and one of our earliest ballads-the Bloody Sark. In his Garment of Good Ladies (as in other poems by Chaucer, Dunbar, Surrey, etc., in the present collection) the old spelling is retained wherever alteration would disturb the character or destroy the rhyme or rhythm. Else our text is in modern orthography: sometimes, as Mr. Main observes, "a wholesome test of poetic vitality." Gar mak till-have made for; no deeming deir-no judgment hurt ; sark-shirt or shift; perfyt-perfect; lasit-laced; lesam-lawful; maillies or mailyheis-eyelet holes; purfill'd-embroidered ; ilk—each; thole -withstand; patelet-a ruff, or part of the head-dress, of uncertain meaning; pansing-thought; hals-ribbon-neck-ribbon ; esperance— hope; shoon-shoes; sickerness-sureness; seill-happiness; set her so weil-suit her so well. DUNBAR the "Scottish Chaucer." His principal poems are the Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins; the Thistle and Rose (on occasion of the marriage of James the fourth of Scotland with the English Princess Margaret); and the Golden Targe (printed at the first Scottish press). A fiery satirist also. Imprent-imprint; leir-learn; perquier-therefore; from he be ken'd -when he is known; went-gone; discure-discover; garth—garden ; I of mene-I moan for, or lament; been-were or have been (been also used in old poetry for are, is, and be). WYATT: courtier, statesman, and poet. His poems first appeared, along with poems by Surrey and others, in Tottel's Miscellany, 1557, fifteen years after his death and ten years after the death of Surrey. The two poets are therefore generally coupled together, though Wyatt's work is earlier, and though there is no trace of any friendship. Surrey was the sometime companion of the poet's son, executed for conspiring in favour of Lady Jane Grey. My lute! awake! has been wrongly ascribed to Lord Rochfort. Grame-sorrowful anger; hert-heart; since ye know-after you know; ne-nor; withouten-without; boordes-jests; fain-glad; unquit—unrequited; plain-plaint; plaining-complaining. SURREY. Henry, Lord Howard (by courtesy Earl Surrey during the life of his father, the Duke of Norfolk), was executed, for some trivial offence, by Henry the eighth. He translated the second and fourth books of Virgil's Æneid into (the first English) blank verse; paraphrased some Psalms and part of Ecclesiastes; and wrote sonnets and other short poems, given with Wyatt's in Tottel's Miscellany: his rank probably the reason for his name alone appearing on the title-page. Sayn-say; moe-more; sith-since; eke-also; make-mate; smale -small; mings-mingles, mixes; worne-denied, rejected. VAUX is known only for two poems in Tottel's Miscellany and fourteen in the Paradise of Dainty Devices, a similar collection in 1576 from which our poem is taken. GRIMOALD, Grimaold, or Grimald, also one of Tottel's contributors, wrote a play of Troilus and Cressida; John the Baptist, a tragedy, in Latin; and a "Latin" paraphrase of Virgil's Georgics. JOHN HEYWOOD: chief inventor of the moral plays called Interludes, because played in the intervals of banquets. A noted epigrammatist also. He published in 1546 a Dialogue of Proverbs, arguing for and against marriage either with a poor girl or a rich widow. In later editions of this some six hundred Epigrams were added. He wrote also a long poem, the Spider and Fly, in praise of Queen Mary and defence of the Romish Church. He was a great favourite of Mary and of Henry the eighth, esteemed for his wit and skill in singing. HARINGTON: plain John, the father of Sir John (translator of Ariosto). These verses are addressed to Isabella Markham (afterward his wife) "when I first thought her fair as she stood at the Princess' window in goodly attire": the Princess to become Queen Elizabeth. They are printed in Park's Nuge Antique, in a mixed collection of papers, prose and verse, by Sir John Harington and others; and there stated to be from a MS. of John Harington dated 1564. The date can be only that of the transcription. Other poems by the elder Harington to Isabella Markham in the same collection bear date of 1549. There can be little doubt of the right ascription of them all, though they may have been polished by the collector, or transcriber, who confesses in a note to one poem that "the quaint phraseology in the original copy occasioned some liberties to be taken with it." GASCOIGNE. The date of his birth should perhaps be much earlier, as he himself speaks of his "crooked age and hoary hairs." He wrote the Steele Glas, a satire; Posies (Flowers, Herbs, Weeds); a prose comedy after Ariosto, called The Supposes; and was part-author of a tragedy. Wot is know; fere-companion. GOOGE: also Goche, Goghe, Gouche. "Eglogs, Epitaphes, and Sonettes." VERE. Ellis gives a list of twenty-one poems by him, scattered through the Miscellanies. BRETON. His poems amatory and religious: but lately collected by Dr. Grosart, who gives 1542-3 as date of his birth. The Rev. Thomas Corser has it 1551-2. Breton is said to have written not less than fifty volumes (or pamphlets) of prose or poetry. Yode is went, or walked; dole-woe; leese-lose. RALEIGH. The Lie, called also the Soul's Arrant, has been attributed to Francis Davison, Sylvester, and others; but now rests with Raleigh, though certainly not written by him "the night before his execution" in 1618, nor during his long cruelly unjust imprisonment from 1603 to 1616. It is found in a manuscript collection of poems, dated 1596, in the British Museum. But few of the poems called his can be satisfactorily authenticated. Part of a long poem to Cynthia, alluded to by Spenser, has been lately recovered and printed by the Rev. John Hannah. Arrant-errand; the Estate-the State; tickle-ticklish; conceit-conception; spright-spirit. SPENSER, the friend of Raleigh, spent most of his manhood in Ireland, employed by the government, at first as Secretary to Lord Grey, the Queen's Deputy. His Shepherd's Calendar appeared in 1580; the first three books of his Faery Queen in 1590, and three more in 1595-6. In 1598 his house, Kilcolman Castle, county Cork, was sacked by the Irish, and he narrowly escaped to England, where in the same year he died, leaving his great poem incomplete. The Prothalamion was written in honour of the marriage on the same day of two sisters, daughters of the Earl of Worcester; the Amoretti, a series of eighty-nine sonnets, are his own love-poems; and for his own marriage he wrote the Epithalamion, that "intoxication of ecstasy, ardent, noble, and pure," as Hallam justly calls it. Glister-glisten: flasket-probably flask; featously-cleverly; eftsoons -presently; assoil-make clean; gan-began; whilome-formerly; a |