nd speed my prayers
And spare me that I be not spilt;

the best that is in the suppliant shines out thus

Jesu, for them I thee beseech
That wrathen thee in any wise;
Withhold from them thy hand of wreche, _vengeance._
And let them live in thy service.

Jesu, most comfort for to see
Of thy saintis every one,
Comfort them that careful be,
And help them that be woe-begone.

Jesu, keep them that be good,
And amend them that have grieved thee;
And send them fruits of earthly food,
As each man needeth in his degree.

Jesu, that art, withouten lees, _lies._
Almighty God in trinity,
Cease these wars, and send us peace,
With lasting love and charity.

Jesu, that art the ghostly stone _spiritual._
Of all holy church in middle-erde, _the world._
Bring thy folds and flocks in one,
And rule them rightly with one herd.

We now approach the second revival of literature, preceded in England by
the arrival of the art of printing; after which we find ourselves walking
in a morning twilight, knowing something of the authors as well as of
their work.

I have little more to offer from this century. There are a few religious
poems by John Skelton, who was tutor to Henry VIII. But such poetry,
though he was a clergyman, was not much in Skelton's manner of mind. We
have far better of a similar sort already.

A new sort of dramatic representation had by this time greatly encroached
upon the old Miracle Plays. The fresh growth was called Morals or Moral
Plays. In them we see the losing victory of invention over the
imagination that works with given facts. No doubt in the Moral Plays
there is more exercise of intellect as well as of ingenuity; for they
consist of metaphysical facts turned into individual existences by
personification, and their relations then dramatized by allegory. But
their poetry is greatly inferior both in character and execution to that
of the Miracles. They have a religious tendency, as everything moral must
have, and sometimes they go even farther, as in one, for instance, called
_The Castle of Perseverance_, in which we have all the cardinal virtues
and all the cardinal sins contending for the possession of _Humanum
Genus_, the _Human Race_ being presented as a new-born child, who grows
old and dies in the course of the play; but it was a great stride in art
when human nature and human history began again to be