Playful Poems | Page 3

my name;
I am the
more nis;
But while I was at hame
My mother, in her game,

Cleped me Beaufis.'

"Then said Arthour the king,
'This is a wonder thing
By God and
Saint Denis!
When he that would be knight
Ne wot not what he
hight,
And is so fair of vis.
"'Now will I give him a name
Before you all in same,
For he is so
fair and free,
By God and by Saint Jame,
So cleped him ne'er his
dame,
What woman so it be.
"'Now clepeth him all of us,
Li Beaus Disconus,
For the love of me!

Then may ye wite a rowe,
"'The Faire Unknowe,'
Certes, so hatte
he"
John Gower's "Confessio Amantis" was a story book, like the
Canterbury Tales, with a contrivance of its own for stringing the tales
together, and Gower was at work on it nearly about the time when his
friend Chaucer was busy with his Pilgrims. The story here extracted
was an old favourite. It appeared in Greek about the year 800, in the
romance of Barlaam and Josaphat. It was told by Vincent of Beauvais
in the year 1290 in his "Speculum Historiale;" and it 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 between
friends, in Pope's "Rape of the Lock." Lord Petre, aged twenty,
audaciously cut from the head of Miss Arabella Fermor, daughter of Mr.
Fermor of Tusmore, a lock of her hair while she was playing cards in
the Queen's rooms at Hampton Court. Pope's friend, Mr. Caryll,
suggested to him that a mock heroic treatment of the resulting quarrel
might restore peace, and Pope wrote a poem in two cantos, which was
published in a Miscellany in 1712, Pope's age then being twenty-four.
But as epic poems required supernatural machinery, Pope added
afterwards to his mock epic the machinery of sylphs and gnomes,
suggested to him by the reading of a French story, "Le Comte de
Gabalis," by the Abbe Villars. Here there were sylphs of the air and
gnomes of the earth, little spirits who would be in right proportion to
the substance of his poem, which was refashioned into five cantos, and
republished as we have it now in February 1714.
"John Gilpin" was written by William Cowper in the year 1782, when
Lady Austin was lodging in the Vicarage at Olney, and spent every
evening with Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, cheering Cowper greatly by her
liveliness. One evening she told the story of John Gilpin's ride in a way
that tickled the poet's fancy, set him laughing when he woke up in the
night, and obliged him to turn it next day into ballad rhyme. Mrs.
Unwin's son sent it to the Public Advertiser, for the poet's corner. It was
printed in that newspaper, and thought no more of until about three
years later. Then it was suggested to a popular actor named Henderson,
who gave entertainments of his own, that this piece would tell well
among his recitations. He
introduced it into his entertainments, and

soon all the town was running after John Gilpin as madly as the six
gentlemen and the post-boy.
John Gilpin's flight is followed in this volume by the flight of Tam o'
Shanter. Burns wrote "Tam o' Shanter" at Elliesland, and himself
considered it the best of all his poems. He told the story to Captain
Grose,