NICHOLAS OF

See also:

• GUILDFORD

GUILDFORD (fl. 1250)  , English poet, the supposed author of The Owl and the Nightingale, an English poem of the 13th century . This work, which displays genuine poetical and imaginative qualities, is written in the south-western dialect, and is one of the few 13th-century English poems not devoted entirely to religious topics . The nightingale sitting on a branch covered with blossom sees the owl perched on a bough overgrown with ivy, and proceeds to abuse him for his general habits and appearance . The birds decide to refer the consequent dispute to Master Nicholas de Guildford, who is skilled in such questions, but they first of all engage in a regular debat in the French fashion . The owl is the best logician, but the nightingale has a fund of abuse that equalizes matters . Finally, when the argument threatens to become a fight, the wren interferes, and the two go to the house of Master Nicholas at Portisliam in Dorset . He judges, they say, many right judgments, and composes and writes much wisdom, and it is lamentable that so learned and worthy a man should gain no preferment from his bishop . The poet, whoever he was, wrote the octosyllabic couplet with ease and smoothness . He borrows something from Alexander of Neckham's De naturis rerum, and was certainly familiar with contemporary French poetry . The piece is a general allegory of the contest between asceticism and a more cheerful view of religion, and is capable of a particular application to the differences between the regular orders and the secular clergy . The nightingale defends her singing on the ground that heaven is a place of song and mirth, while the owl maintains that much weeping for his many sins is man's best preparation for the future . There are two MSS. of the Hule amd the Nightingale, MS .

Cotton Caligula A ix . (British Museum), dating from the first half of the 13th century, and MS . Arch . I . 29, Jesus College, Oxford, written about half a century later . In the Jesus College MS. the poem is immediately preceded by a religious poem entitled La Passyun Jhu Christ, which, according to a note on it, once possessed an additional quatrain implying that it was written by John of Guildford, perhaps a relation of Nicholas . The Owl and the Nightingale has been edited from the Cotton MS. chiefly for the Roxburghe Club (1838) by Joseph Stevenson, and for the Percy Society (1843) by T . Wright; the best edition is by F . H . Stratmann (Krefeld, 1868), who collated the two MSS . See also B . Ten Brink, Early English Literature (trans .

H . M .

Kennedy, pp . 214.-218); Courthope, History of English Poetry; and J . W . H . Atkins in the Cambridge History of Literature, vol. i . For some textual criticism see A.E . Egge in Modern Language Notes(Baltimore,January, 1887) .