LYDGATE (John), called the Monk of Bury;
not, as Cibber conjectures, because he was a native of
that place, for he was born about the year 1380, in
the village of Lydgate; but because he was a monk
of the Benedictine convent at St Edmund's-Bury.
After studying some time in our English universities,
he travelled to France and Italy; and, having acquired
a competent knowledge of the languages of those
countries, he returned to London, where he opened a
school, in which he instructed the sons of the nobility
in polite literature. At what time he retired to the
convent of St Edmund's-Bury, does not appear;
but he was certainly there in 1415. He was living
in 1446, aged about 66; but in what year he died
is not known. Lydgate, according to Pitts, was an
elegant poet, a persuasive rhetorician, an expert ma-
thematician, an acute philosopher, and a tolerable di-
vine. He was a voluminous writer; and, considering
the age in which he lived, an excellent poet. His
language
Lydia. language is less obsolete, and his verification much more harmonious, than the language and verification of Chaucer, who wrote about half a century before him. He wrote, 1. History of the Theban war, printed at the end of Chaucer's works, 1561, 1602, 1687. 2. Poemation of good counsel; at the end of Chaucer's works. 3. The life of Hector; London 1594, fol. printed by Gros, dedicated to Henry V. 3. Life of the Blessed Virgin; printed by Caxton. 4. The proverbs of Lydgate upon the fall of princes; printed by Wink. Word. Lond. . . . 4to. 5. Dispute of the horse, the sheep, and the goose; printed in Caxton's Collect. 4to. 6. The temple of brass; among the works of Chaucer. 7. London lickpenny; vide Stowe's history, &c. &c. Besides an incredible number of other poems and translations preserved in various libraries, and of which the reader will find a catalogue in bishop Tanner.