Edmund William Gosse

“ The historic and literary importance of The Cuckoo and the Nightingale is great. It is the work of a poet who had studied the prosody of Chaucer with more intelligent care than either Occleve or Lydgate, and who therefore forms an important link between the 14th and 15th centuries in English poetry. ”

“ Professor Skeat points out a unique characteristic of Clanvowe’s versification, namely, the unprecedented freedom with which he employs the suffix of the final -e, and rather avoids than seeks elision. ”