When,  after  the  close  of  the  troubled  season  of  the  Roses,
our  poetic  literature  showed  the  first  signs  of  a  revival,  they
consisted  in  a  return  to  the  old  masters  of  the  fourteenth
century.  The  poetry  of  Hawes,  the  learned  author  of  the
crabbed  Pastime  of  Pleasure,  exhibits  an  undeniable  con-
tinuity with  that  of  Chaucer,  Gower,  and  Lydgate,  to  which
triad  he  devotes  a  chapter  of  panegyric.  Hawes,  however,
presses  into  the  service  of  his  allegory  not  only  all  the  Virt-
ues and  all  the  Vices,  whom  from  habit  we  can  tolerate  in
such  productions,  but  also  Astronomy,  Geometry,  Arithme-
tic, and  the  rest  of  the  seven  Daughters  of  Doctrine,  whom
we  cannot,  and  is  altogether  inferior  to  the  least  of  his
models.  It  is,  at  the  same  time,  to  his  credit  that  he  seems
painfully  aware  of  his  inability  to  cope  with  either  Chau-
cer or  Lydgate  as  to  vigour  of  invention.  There  is,  in
truth,  more  of  the  dramatic  spirit  of  Chaucer  in  Barklay's
Ship  of  Pools,  which,  though  essentially  a  translation,
achieved  in  England  the  popularity  of  an  original  work ;
for  this  poem,  like  the  Canterbury  Tales,  introduces  into
its  admirable  framework  a  variety  of  lifelike  sketches  of
character  and  manners — it  has  in  it  that  dramatic  element


it]  EPILOGUE.  193

which  is  so  Chaucerian  a  characteristic.     But  the  aim  of
its  author  was  didactic,  which  Chaucer's  had  never  been.
