How that the judg-e-ment is give
Of death, which shall not be forgive.
The king when it was night anon,
This man hath sent, and bade him gone,
To trumpen at his brother's gate;
And he, which he might do algate[1],
Goeth forth, and doth the king's hest.
This lord which heard of this tempest
That he to-fore his gate blew,
Then wist he by the law, and knew
That he was surely dead," &c.
"But Gower has connected with this circumstance a different story, and of an inferior cast, both in point of moral and imagination. The truth is, Gower seems to have altogether followed this story as it appeared in the Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, who took it from Damascenus's romance of Barlaam and Josaphat. Part of it is thus told in Caxton's translation of that legend, fol. 393.
"'And the kynge hadde suche a custome, that when one sholde be delyvered to deth, the kynge sholde send hys cryar wyth hys trompe that was ordeyned thereto. And on the even he sente the
- ↑ Always.
