cally throughout his career; they were overwhelmingly
predominant in his earliest work, not only in metrical
forms and titles such as the Compleynt (a love poem of
mournful intent usually addressed to a pitiless lady), but
in the plan and spirit of his work. And all these things
continued in the poets that followed Chaucer and vowed
fealty to him. But if Chaucer, with all his grace, melody,
and powers of observation, is not essentially lyrical, no
more lyrical is any one of his immediate disciples and
successors. The trilingual moral Gower, feebly sprawl-
ing Occleve, Lydgate, biographical if not subjective in
his satirical flash, "London Lyckpenny" (if the critics
will allow it to be his), the author of Wallace, King James
with his Kingis Quair, prolonging a plaint of love to 1400
lines--none of these is lyrical. It is not, indeed, until we
reach Henryson, Dunbar, and Skelton that the lyrical
note breaks forth among these learned poets; in them,
with all their morality, satire, and allegory, the lyric is
like a sparse and belated blossom of the gorse, otherwise
of foliage harsh, dark, and thorny. To Henryson, as we
have seen, we owe the earliest English pastoral poem,
"Robene and Makyne," an amœbæan lyric of delightful
naïveté. With Skelton and Dunbar, who was the first
British poet to see his works in print, we reach a new
age, and with these names to carry over we may fittingly
conclude this chapter.

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