nobody mor your humble servant than I am.

"MONMOUTH."

C.

* * * * *

LYDGATE AND COVERDALE, AND THEIR BIOGRAPHERS.

Dan John Lydgate, as Warton truly observes, was not only the poet
of his monastery, but of the world in general. Yet how has he been
treated by his biographers? Ritson, in his _Bibliographia Poetica_,
says, "he died at an advanced age, after 1446." Thomson, in his
_Chronicles of London Bridge_, 2nd edition, p. 11., says, "Lydgate
died in the year 1440, at the age of sixty;" and again, at p. 164. of
the same work, he says, "Lydgate was born about 1375, and died about
1461!" Pitt says that he died in 1482; and the author of the _Suffolk
Garland_, p. 247., prolongs his life (evidently by a typographical
blunder), to about the year 1641! From these conflicting statements,
it is evident that the true dates of Lydgate's birth and decease are
unknown. Mr. Halliwell, in the preface to his _Selection from the
Minor Poems_ of John Lydgate, arrives at the conclusion from the
MSS. which remain of his writings, that he died before the accession
of Edward IV., and there appears to be every adjunct of external
probability; but surely, if our record offices were carefully
examined, some light might be thrown upon the life of this industrious
monk. I am not inclined to rest satisfied with the dictum of the
Birch MS., No. 4245. fo. 60., that no memorials of him exist in those
repositories.