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iis opus habet). The Droomme of Doomesday is, in part, a translation of Innocent III's De Contemptu Mundi sive de Miseria Humanae Conditionis, and A Delicate Diet, for daintie mouthde Droonkardes has nothing to distinguish it from the religious tracts of the time.

In the dedication of The Droomme of Doomesday, Gascoigne wrote (2 May 1576) that he was 'in weake plight for health as your good L. well knoweth,' and he was unable, through illness, to correct the proofs. On 10 August, in the dedication of A Delicate Diet, he wrote to Lewis Dyve, of Broomham, Bedfordshire, 'soone after Mighelmasse (by Gods leave) I wyll see you.' He died on 7 October 1577, after an illness of some months. All this casts some doubt upon the generally accepted theory that he was the George Gascoigne who wrote to the lord treasurer from Paris on 15 September 1576, that he was about to set forth for Flanders, and who, in November, received £20 for 'bringinge of Letters in for her Majesties affaires frome Andwarpe to Hampton Court.' In November there was printed anonymously The Spoyle of Antwerp Faithfully reported by a true Englishman, who was present at the same. The pamphlet was 'seene and allowed,' and it was issued by the printer of A Delicate Diet and The Princelye Pleasures; but one does not see why, if it were Gascoigne's, he should depart from his custom of acknowledging his work. 'Master Gascoigne' (he made his first printer say, or said himself) ‘hath never beene dayntie of his doings, and therfore I conceale not his name.' In spite of the weight of critical opinion in favour of Gascoigne's authorship of this pamphlet, the evidence stops short of proof.

In many departments of literature Gascoigne wrote the first work of its kind that has come down to us-the first prose tale of modern life, the first prose comedy, the first tragedy translated from the Italian, the first maske, the first regular satire, the first treatise on poetry in English. He was a pioneer, and, as a pioneer, he must be judged. Two of his contemporaries and immediate successors passed upon him just and yet considerate verdicts. Tom Nashe in his prefatory address in Greene's Menaphon, 'to the Gentlemen Students of both Universities,' writes

Maister Gascoigne is not to bee abridged of his deserved esteeme, who first beate the path to that perfection which our best Poets have aspired to since his departure; whereto he did ascend by comparing the Italian with the English as Tully did Graeca cum Latinis1.

1 R. B. McKerrow, Works of Thos, Nashe, vol. I, p. 319.

His Achievements

209

and R. Tofte says 'To the Courteous Reader' of The Blazon of Jealousie (1615):

This nice Age, wherein wee now live, hath brought more neate and teirse Wits, into the world; yet must not old George Gascoigne, and Turbervill, with such others, be altogether rejected, since they first brake the Ice for our quainter Poets, that now write, that they might the more safer swimme in the maine Ocean of sweet Poesie.

These moderate estimates of Gascoigne's achievements have stood the test of time, and the recent trend of criticism has been in his favour. His poems give the impression of a distinct, though not altogether pleasing, personality. He is the homme moyen sensuel of the time, with added touches of reckless debauchery in his youth, and of too insistent puritanism in his later days of illhealth and repentance; even in his 'middle age' he is too much inclined to recount his amatory adventures with a suggestive air of mystery, bound to excite the curiosity of his readers and make things uncomfortable for the ears of the ladies; his manners in this respect are as bad as his morals. He was probably a better soldier than lover, but one has a suspicion that his own account of his exploits in the Netherlands does not tell the whole truth; he was obviously intolerant of discipline and little inclined to conciliate the burghers whose cause he had come to serve. As a writer, he was distinguished among the men of his own time by his versatility. N. R., writing in commendation of the author of The Steele Glas, after running over a list of the great poets of antiquity, says :

Thus divers men, with divers vaines did write,
But Gascoigne doth, in every vaine indite.

This dissipation of his energies over different fields of literature prevented him from attaining excellence in any one kind, for he had only moderate ability: the surprising thing is that he was able to do many things well-most of them better than they had been done by his predecessors, though in all he was easily outstripped by the writers of the age that followed. His prose style is easy and generally free from affectation, though he indulges now and again in the curious similes and balanced alliteration which, later, became characteristic of euphuism. As a metrist, he has a facility which extends over a wide range, but his fluency is mechanical, the regular beat of his verse often giving the effect of water coming out of a bottle. His long poems, whether in blank verse or rimed measures, soon become monotonous and tedious. The caesura in The Steele Glas occurs almost invariably after the

E. L. III. CH. X.

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fourth syllable, and is regularly marked by Gascoigne with a

comma :

When vintners mix, no water with their wine,
When printers passe, none errours in their bookes,
When hatters use, to bye none olde cast robes1,

and so on.
In Dan Bartholmew of Bathe, in spite of a variety of
stanza forms, some of them elaborate enough, the general effect is
still monotonous. Gascoigne is seen at his best in trifles-short
poems which do not call for great depth of thought or sustained
interest, and in which his excessive fluency is kept within bounds.
Even in these he rarely hit upon a pregnant thought or striking
phrase; but he succeeded in introducing into English poetry from
the Italian models whom he studied (Ariosto seems to have been his
especial favourite) a greater ease and smoothness than had been
attained by Wyatt and Surrey. The following sonnet is a good
example of his characteristic virtues :

That selfe same tonge which first did thee entreat
To linke thy liking with my lucky love:

That trustie tonge must nowe these wordes repeate,
I love thee still, my fancie cannot move.

That dreadlesse hart which durst attempt the thought
To win thy will with mine for to consent,

Maintaines that vow which love in me first wrought,
I love thee still, and never shall repent.
That happie hande which hardely did touch,
Thy tender body to my deepe delight:

Shall serve with sword to prove my passion such
As loves thee still, much more than it can write.
Thus love I still with tongue, hand, hart and all,
And when I chaunge, let vengeance on me fall2.

Next to his love poetry, his verses in compliment to the queen are perhaps most worthy of attention, especially those which he wrote for the princely pleasures at Kenelworth Castle.' He directed his muse, with amazing ingenuousness, to the goal of professional advancement, and this combined with other reasons to prevent any lofty flight or permanent achievement; but, as the first of the Elizabethan court poets, he is notable as the precursor of an important movement.

1 Cambridge edition, vol. II, p. 171.
2 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 92.

CHAPTER XI

THE POETRY OF SPENSER

THE life of Spenser extended from the years 1552 to 1599, a period which experienced a conflict of elementary intellectual forces more stimulating to the emotions and imagination than, perhaps, any other in the history of England. Throughout Europe, the time-honoured system of society which had endured since the age of Charles the Great was undergoing a complete transformation. In Christendom, so far as it was still Catholic, the ancient doctrines of the church and the scholastic methods of interpreting them held their ground in general education; but the weakening of the central basis of authority caused them everywhere to be applied in different ethical senses. A change of equal importance had been wrought in the feudal order of which the emperor was the recognised, but now only nominal, chief, since this universal constitution of things had long been reduced to insignificance by the rise of great independent nations, and the consequent beginning of wars occasioned by the necessities of the balance of power. Feudalism, undermined partly by the decay in its own spirit, partly by its anarchical tendencies, was giving way before the advancing tide of commercial intercourse, and, in every kingdom of western Europe, the central authority of the monarch had suppressed, in different degrees, the action of local liberty. In a larger measure, perhaps, than any country, English society was the stage of religious and political conflict. As the leader of the protestant nations, England was surrounded by dangers that presently culminated in the sending of the Spanish armada. Her ancient nobility, almost destroyed by the wars of the Roses, had been supplanted by a race of statesmen and courtiers called into existence by the crown, and, though the continuity of Catholic tradition was still preserved, the sovereign, as head of the church, exerted almost absolute power in the regulation of public worship. The conscience of the nation wavered in this struggle between old ecclesiastico

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feudal forms and the infant ideas of civil life; and confusion was itself confounded by the influence of art and letters imported from the more advanced, but corrupt, culture of modern Italy. To the difficulty of forming a reasonable view of life out of these chaotic conditions was added the problem of expressing it in a language as yet hardly mature enough to be the vehicle of philosophical thought. Wyatt and Surrey had, indeed, accomplished a remarkable feat in adapting to Italian models the metrical inheritance transmitted to them by Chaucer; but a loftier and larger imagination than theirs was required to create poetic forms for national aspirations which had so little in common as those of England with the spirit of Italy in the sixteenth century.

The poet whose name is rightly taken as representative of the general movement of literature in the first half of Elizabeth's reign was well fitted by nature to reflect the character of this spiritual conflict. A modest and sympathetic disposition, an intelligence philosophic and acute, learned industry, a brilliant fancy, an exquisite ear, enabled Spenser's genius to respond like a musical instrument to each of the separate influences by which it was stirred. His mind was rather receptive than creative. All the great movements of the time are mirrored in his work. In it is to be found a reverence for Catholic tradition modified by the moral earnestness of the reforming protestant. His imagination is full of feudal ideas, warmed into life by his association with men of action like Sidney, Grey, Ralegh and Essex, but coloured by a contrary stream of thought derived from the philosophers of the Italian renascence. Theological conceptions, originating with the Christian Fathers, lie side by side in his poetry with images drawn from pagan mythology, and with incidents of magic copied from the medieval chroniclers. These imaginative materials are, with him, not fused and assimilated in a form of direct poetic action, as is the case in the poetry of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton; but, rather, are given an appearance of unity by an allegory, proceeding from the mind of the poet himself, in a mould of metrical language which combines native words, fallen out of common use, with a syntax imitated from the great authors of Greece and Rome. An attempt will be made in the following pages to trace the correspondence in the work of Spenser between this conflict of external elements and his own poetic genius, reflecting the spirit of his age.

In respect of what was contributed to the art of Spenser by his personal life and character, it is often difficult to penetrate to

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