Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
This curious product of mediævalism, translated from some Latin treatise by an unknown hand in the latter half of the fifteenth century, carries symbolism to its last stage. It is interesting as showing how the preachers in the abbeys and cathedrals of England found, on occasion, “sermons in stones.” It would seem as if Longfellow must have read this poem; for a part of his Golden Legend, the close of Friar Cuthbert's sermon, is an accurate reproduction of the spirit of this piece.
page 688 note 1 See The Lydgate Canon, p. xxxvi (Philological Soc. Transactions, March, 1908), for rhyme-teats.
page 689 note 1 Opposite these lines the scribe writes “a.” Reconstruct the lines as follows 12834567. Line 2 should end in some word like “vertuous.” The scribe erred through confusion of the “of spirites,” occurring in two separate lines.