was used by Boccaccio for the first tale of the tenth day of his
"Decameron."

Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate were the old poetical triumvirate, though
Lydgate, who was about thirty years old when Chaucer died, has
slipped much out of mind. His verses on the adventures of the
Kentish rustic who came to London to get justice in the law courts,
and his words set to the action of an old piece of rustic mumming,
"Bicorn and Chichevache," here represent his vein of playfulness.
He was a monk who taught literature at Bury St. Edmunds, and was
justly looked upon as the chief poet of the generation who lived
after Chaucer's death.

Next follows in this volume a scrap of wise counsel to take life
cheerfully, from the Scottish poet, William Dunbar. He lived at the
Scottish Court of James the Fourth when Henry the Seventh reigned in
England, and who was our greatest poet of the north country before
Burns.

Next we come to the poets "who so did please Eliza and our James,"
and represent their playfulness by Drayton's "Dowsabell," and that
most exquisite of fairy pieces, his "Nymphidia," where Oberon
figures as the mad Orlando writ small, and Drayton earned his claim
to be the Fairies' Laureate, though Herrick, in the same vein,
followed close upon him. Michael Drayton, nearly of an age with
Shakespeare, was, like Shakespeare, a Warwickshire man. Empty
tradition says that Shakespeare died of a too festive supper shared
with his friend Drayton, who came to visit him.

Then follows in this volume the playful treatment of a quarrel