When proud
Edward went to Scotland, he took Baston along with him to sing his
victories. Unhappily, Bruce caged the bird, and compelled him to amend
his finest poems by striking out "Edward," wherever the name of that
revered monarch occurred, and inserting "Robert," which, as I have
said, he was obliged to do,--and a very ridiculous mess the process
must have made of Mr. Baston's productions. This is all I know of
Baston; but is not this enough to melt the toughest heart? No wonder he
prologued his piping after the following dismal fashion:--
"In dreary verse my rhymes I make,
Bewailing whilst such theme I take."
However, Baston was a monk of the Carmelite species, and I hope he bore
his agonies with religious bravery.
And now let us make a skip down to Charles Aleyn, _temp._ Charles I.
"of blessed memory." A Sidney collegian of Cambridge, he began life as
an usher in the celebrated school of Thomas Farnably,--another great
man of whom you never heard, O Don!--a famous school, in Goldsmith's
Rents, near Red-Cross Street, in the Parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate.
Those were stirring times; but Aleyn managed to write, before he died,
in 1640, a rousing great poem, intituled, "The Battailes of Crescey and
Poictiers, under the Fortunes and Valour of King Edward the Third of
that Name, and his Sonne, Edward, Prince of Wales, surnamed The Black.
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