74
LITERATURE.
was brought up at Oxford, under John Bacon- thorpe, who was called the resolute doctor. His abilities recommended him to King Edward III. by whom he was promoted, first to the arch- deaconry of Lichfield, then to the chancellorship of Oxford, and afterwards lo the archhishopiic of Armagh, in 1347. The monks accused him of heresy,andhewascitedto appearbefoi'e the pope at Avignon, where he died in 1360, yet such was the character he had maintained, that on hearing of his deivth, a certain cardinal ojienly declwed, " A mighty pillar of Christ's church was fallen."
1362. Died, at Paris, Petronus Berchorius, a native of Poictiers and author of the Gesla Somanorum, one of the most ancient story-books extant; and the outlines of some of the best stories in Ch3ucer,Gower, Lydgate, ShaLspeare, and their most distant successois, even down to Pamell's Hermit, may he traced in it. Boc- caccio is reported to have laid it under ample contribution. It first appeared in print at Louvane in 1473, in folio, and at Paris, by John Petit, 1515.
1364. In this year the royal library of France, did not errcecd twenty volumes, hut shortly after, Charles V. encreasea it to nine hundred, which by the fate of war, as much at least as by that of money, the duke of Bedford, about 1440, pur- chased and transported to London, where liora- ries were smaller than on the continent.
It is a circumstance worthy of observation, that the French sovereign, CJiarles V. sumamed the Wise, ordered that thirty portable lights, with a silver lamp suspended froin the centre, should be illuminated at ni^ht, that students might not find their pursuits mterrupted at any hour. An objection to night studies in public libraries is the danger of liie, and in our own British museum, not a light is permitted to be carried about upon any pretence whatever.
1372, Nov. 17. Died, at Leige,Sir John Man- deville, the traveller. He was born at St. Albans, in the year 1300, and spent thirty-four years in visiting various countries, and on his retui-n pub- lished a relation of his voyages. In 1455 the first edition was printed at Leige, with the following title, Itinerariit a terra Anglice ad paries Jeroso- lymitanis, 4to. By W^nlin de Worde, in 1499.
1375. XWerf, John Boccacio, a very celebrated Italian writei-, was born at Certaldo, in Tuscany, in 1313. He resided a long time in Naples, where he fell in love with a natural daughter of the lung. At the close of his life he returned to his native place, where he died, aged 76.
Boccacio was the disciple of Petrarch ; and, although principally known and deservedly cele- brated as a writer and inventor of tales, he was, by his cotemporaries, usually placed as a poet in the third rank, after Dante and Petrarch. But Boccacio having seen the Platonic sonnets of his master Petrarch, in a fit of despair, com- mitted almost all his poetry to the flames, except a single poem, of which his own good taste had long taught him to entertain a more favourable opinion. This piece, thus happily rescued from destruction, vas, until lately, so scarce and so
little known, even in Italy, as to have left its author but a slender proportion of that eminent degree of poetical reputation which he might have justly claimed from so extraordinary a per- formance.
It is an heroic poem, in twelve books, entitled, La Teseide, and written in the octave stanza, called by the Italians octavo ritna, which Boc- cacio adoiited from the old French Chansons, and here first introduced among his countrymen.
The story of this admirable production of the gi-eat Tuscan novelist is well known to the English reader, in consequence of its having been selected by Chaucer as the ground-work of his Knighft Tale, the finest of his poems, and the first conspicuous example of the English heroic couplet extant " Diyden's paraphrase of this poem," says Warton, "is the most animated and harmonious piece of versification in the English Language."
1376. Du Cange cites the following lines from a French metrical romance written about this time, which proves that tpaxen tablet* con- tinued to be occasionally used till a late period.
Some with antiquftted atyle. Id waxen tablets proinpUy write;
Other*, with finer pen, the whUe Fonn letters lovelier to the sight.
There are many ample and authentic records of the royal household of France, of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, still preserved, written on waxen tablets.
1376. King Edward III. in the 60th or jubilee year of his reign, granted as an especial favour that judicial proceedings which had been written and administered in Norman French, might pass in English, but that all acts should be enrolled in Latin. Several of the ancient charters, bow- ever, had been written in Anglo-Saxon, and that the knowledge of their liberties might not be lost, some of the British monasteries, particu- larly those at Croyland and Tavistock, still taught the language. Ou this glorious occasion, every public prisoner was released, and the bashed subject was restored to his country. This great monarch also conferred in full parliament upon his second son Lionel of Antwerp, the title of " Duke of Clarence," and upon nis third son John of Gaunt, that of " Duke of Lancaster."
1377, June 21. Edward III. died at his palace of Sheen, (Richmond) and was buried in West- minster abbey. He was born at Windsor, Nov. 13th, 1312, and crowned at Windsor, on the 1st of February, 1327, in his fifteenth year. In 1337, the dignity of duke was first created by him in this country in favour of his son the black prince, as Duke of Cornwall, a. titie which is always vest- ed in the king's eldest son the moment he is bom.
The Chronicle of Rastel, speaking of the third Edward, contains the following apposite passage in relation to our national festival St. George's Day. " About the nmeteenth year of this king, [1345] he made a solemn feast at Windsor, and a great just and tournament, where he derised and perfected substantially the Order of the KnigktM of the Garter; howbeit some e&Tm,
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