thus he must be introduced, for the first time, into the list of our English poets and authors.

There is great probability that the date, mentioned in the old note, is correct: for the author's application of that passage in the 101st (or in the English version, the 102nd) Psalm, "Thou arising, O Lord, shalt have mercy on Sion: for the time of pitying her, yea the time, hath come;"-to holy church, and chivalry, precisely agrees with the disposition of both clergy and laity, and the king too, at the beginning of the Fifth Henry's reign. See stanza lxxxvii., where the following lines seem directly levelled against that brave man and truly Christian martyr, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, who was at that time committed to the flames as a heretic:

"Late nevere knyghthod, aghen the ryght,
Be lost with tresoun and sotylté."

Henry's persecuting resolution, to which he was urged on by the furious clergy, is also painted to the life, when he represents him as presiding in Sion, (the very name by which the monastery, that he founded at Isleworth, was called ;) thus:

66

Syon 'a merour' is, to say,

That God hath bygged,* and sett ful hye:

There sytt our kyng, be trewě fay,†

That shal herétykes alle distrye."‡

* Built.

† By the true faith.

+ Destroy.

(Stanza xc.) He adds, that whosoever full heartily prays for the king, thereby

But for these blemishes, one would think from the general piety that pervades the poem, from the hint given to oppressive tyrants in the 93rd stanza, and from the description of imprisoned sufferers, in the 94th, that the author was a Lollard. But, on the contrary, the editor cannot help conjecturing that he was the author of the poem against Lollardie, which is preserved in the Cottonian MS. Vespasianus, B. XVI, and printed in Ritson's Ancient Songs; the style and metre being very much like those of this paraphrase. Nor can he but observe, for the same reason, a probability that he was the author also of The Ploughman's Tale, which is inserted among the Canterbury Tales, in some old copies, as a supplement to Chaucer's work.

The author's religious notions were what might be expected of that dark age. He represents himself, in an elegant introduction, as restless, rising at midnight from his bed, repeating an antiphona from his breviary, going to his Confessor, and receiving instructions for the relief of his conscience, one of which was, to say over these seven Psalms; which he proceeds to do, verse by

verse, making the first words of his favourite antiphona the burden of his meditation upon every one. Thus confession, absolution, and discipline, are the foundation; and purgatory, the doctrines of hereditary depravity, and of the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary alone, and the notion of a guardian angel constantly attending him, make their appearance, though scantily. (Stanzas XLVIII. LIX. CVIII.) It is remarkable that there is not one invocation of a saint or angel, or any mention of the Virgin Mary, but what has now been noticed. Probably the author designed his book for the instruction of his 'ghostly children,' being a confessor himself; and therefore rather intended to represent one of them, and himself, in those respective characters, in the introductory passages.

The only other copy of this poem, known to the editor, is a fragment in the Harleian collection, No. 1704, of which volume the second MS. (ff. 13 -75) is written on paper, in a hand of the end of the fifteenth century, imperfect at both ends. The first five leaves (ff. 13-17 b) contain 55 stanzas out of the 124; viz. from the 62nd to the beginning of the 116th, inclusively. All the variations are given in the notes, whereby it appears to be in many places inaccurate and corrupt; and it is modernized throughout, after the common fashion of such copies. This fragment

is followed, after an interval of some pages, by a copy of bishop Alcock's famous allegorical "Tretis of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost," (ff. 32b— 49); which circumstance has occasioned a grievous blunder in two eminent literary historians. For Wanley, in his account of this MS.* describes the poem as the fourth article thus, "4. A fragment of a comment upon the VII. Penitential Psalms, in old English verse;" then, as the ninth article, he gives the title of the "Tretis" above mentioned; adding a note, which merely refers to "another copie of this tretis," bearing the author's name, and then briefly notices his history, character, and death. Hence Warton, having confounded two articles, which stand at a considerable distance from each other, and have not the least connexion, enumerating Alcock's works, says: "A fragment of a comment upon the seven Penitential Psalms, in English verse, is supposed to be by Bishop Alcock, MSS. Harl. 1704. 4. fol. 13."+ Ritson improves upon Warton's supposition, by stating it as a fact, thus: "ALCOCK, JOHN, Bishop of Ely, is the author of a comment upon the seven Penitential Psalms, in English verse. (Harl. MSS. 1704, imperfect.) He died in 1500.”‡

* Harleian Catalogue, ii. 177.

† Warton's History of English Poetry, ed. 1824, 8vo. iii. 82. Biographia Poetica, p. 43.

Thus, confusion is the parent of mistake, and the grandmother of falsehood.

Having thus shown, that this work was not written by Bishop Alcock, but in all probability by the person named in the Sloane MS., (which was unknown to Warton and Ritson); it remains to show that this poem must not be confounded with an earlier one of the same kind, said to have been written by Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole, which is preserved in the Bodleian Library among Digby's MSS., No. 18. The first line, as quoted by Tanner* and Warton,t-To Goddis worschippe that dere us boughte; and the first line of the paraphrase on the Psalm "Domine, ne in furore tuo," (xxxvii.)-Lord in thin angre repreve me nought;-are quite different from the first and 31st stanzas of Thomas Brampton's production, printed in the following pages.

The two Appendices of the present publication, were added by the Editor, on a supposition that the second of them was written by the same author as the Paraphrase: though this is by no means certain; yet it may have been an early metrical attempt by the same author. The language is less polished, and the orthography is of an older fashion than the larger poem; and it is perhaps

* Bibliotheca Britannica, p. 375.
History of English Poetry, ii. 100.