When John Lydgate died in the middle of the fifteenth century, he had long been the most important and most sought-after poet of his time. Geoffrey Chaucer had died in 1400, John Gower in 1408, and the only poet of his own generation with whom he can reasonably be compared is Thomas Hoccleve, who had died in 1426. In the second half of the century and throughout the entire sixteenth century and indeed until the early 1600s, Lydgate, Chaucer, and Gower were grouped together and their praises sung by well-known poets including Gavin Douglas, William Dunbar, Stephen Hawes, Sir David Lindsey, and John Skelton; by lesser-known poets such as George Ashby, Osbern Bokenham, and John Metham; and by many other writers including the important scholar of William Shakespeare's day, Francis Meres. But worldly fame, indeed everything in this life, is transitory, as Lydgate knew and often stated. Before the middle of...