THE

DANCE OF MACABER.

JOHN LYDGATE, a monk of the Benedlotine Abbey of Bury in Suffolk,, flourished in thereign of Henry VI. He was an uncommon orna-ment of his profession, his genius being so lively,and his accomplishments so numerous, that it ishardly probable the holy father St. Benedictwould have acknowledged him for a genuine dis-ciple. After a short education at Oxford, hetravelled into France and Italy, and returned acomplete master of the language and the litera-ture of both countries. He chiefly studied theItalian and French poets, particularly Dante,Boccaccio, and Alain Chartier ; and became sodistinguished a proficient in polite learning, thathe opened a school in his monastery for teachingthe sons of the nobility the arts of versification,and the elegancies of composition. Yet althoughphilology was his object, he was not unfamiliarwith the fashionable philosophy; he was not onlya poet and a rhetorician, but a geometrician, anastronomer, a theologist, and a disputant. Hemade considerable addition to those amplifications

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