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English by Ralph Robinson until 1551, or some years after the author's death, purports to be an account of a newe yle' as taken from the verbal narrative of one Raphael Hythlodaye, described as a sea-faring man'well stricken in age, with a blacke sonne-burned face.' It is, in reality, a philosophic exposition of More's own views respecting the constitution and economy of a state, and of his opinions on education, marriage, the military system, and the like.* The idea was, perhaps, suggested by the Republic of Plato, whose influence, or that of More, may be traced in many subsequent works of a somewhat similar character, e.g. Hall's Mundus Alter et Idem, 1605; Barclay's Argenis, 1621; Bacon's New Atlantis, 1627; Godwin of Llandaff's Man in the Moon, 1638; and Harrington's Oceana, 1656. It should be noted that More's title has given rise to the adjective Utopian,' now commonly used to qualify any fanciful or chimerical project.†

28. Elyot, Latimer, Cheke.-The first of these, Sir Thomas Elyot (1490?-1546), was a physician, and the friend of More. He wrote several works, of which The Governor, 1531, and a professional Castle of Health, 1534, are the best remembered. The former, a treatise on education, is said to have been a favourite book with Henry VIII. Hugh Latimer (1485 ?-1555), the martyr-Bishop of Worcester, and the fervent advocate of the Reformation doctrines, has left a number of sermons, mostly preached before Edward VI., which, for their popular style, homely wit, and courageous utterances, are models, in their way, of a certain school of pulpit eloquence. They are still read for their honest zeal and lively delineation of manners.' Latimer's Sermon on the Ploughers and Sermons before Edward VI., 1549, and the Governor of Elyot, are both included in Mr. Arber's series of English Reprints. Sir John Cheke (15141557), memorable in Milton's verse as the advanced scholar who 'taught Cambridge and King Edward Greek,' survives in English by the Hurt of Sedition, 1519, on the subject of the rising in Norfolk in that year.

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29. Wyatt, Surrey.-These 'first reformers of our English meetre and stile,' as they have been called by Puttenham,§ stand upon the threshold of the school of Sidney and Spenser. Both had formed themselves upon the sweete and stately measure of the Italians,' and both as nouices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste and Petrarch,' considerably advanced the poetic art in

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* Masson, British Novelists and their Styles, 1859, p. 59.

+ See Appendix A, Extract XIX.

See Appendix A, Extract XX.

§ Arte of English Poesie, 1589, p. 74 (Arber's Reprint, 1869).

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England. The priority, in point of culture, belongs perhaps to the Earl of Surrey (1517?-47), 'an English Petrarch' M. Taine calls him, who is regarded as the introducer of blank verse, in which measure he produced a translation of the second and fourth books of the Eneid. The numbers of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42), usually called the Elder, to distinguish him from the unfortunate noble who raised an insurrection in Mary's reign, are not so correct as those of Surrey, but the sentiment of his poetry is sometimes deeper. The verses of both, consisting chiefly of sonnets and amorous poems, were first published in 1557, together with those of Nicholas Grimaid (1519–62), Thomas Lord Vaux (1511–62), and some other minor poets, in Tottel's Miscellany, now easily acces sible to all as one of Mr. Arber's excellent English Reprints (1870). From this collection we transcribe one of Surrey's sonnets as an example of the sonnet-form at this period. The lady celebrated is Surrey's 'Laura'—' fair Geraldine' :—

'From Tuskane came my Ladies worthy race:

Faire Florence was sometyme her auncient seate:
The Western yle, whose pleasaunt shore dothe face
Wilde Cambers clifs, did geue her liuely heate:
Fostered she was with milke of Irishe brest:

Her sire, an Erle: her dame, of princes blood.
From tender yeres, in Britain she doth rest,
With kinges childe, where she tasteth costly food.
Honsdon did first present her to mine yien :

Bright is her hewe, and Geraldine she hight.
Hampton me taught to wishe her first for mine:

And Windsor, alas, dothe chase me from her sight.
Her beauty of kind [,] her vertues from aboue.
Happy is he, that can obtaine her loue.'

30. Early Dramatic Writers.-As the drama attained its most splendid development under Elizabeth and James, its earlier history may fitly be relegated to the succeeding chapter (see p. 57, s. 37, et seq.). It is proper, however, to note that the first two dramatic writers belong to the period of which the present chapter treats. One is Nicholas Udall, M.A. (1504-56), sometimes styled 'the father of English Comedy,' and Master in succession of Eton and Westminster Schools, who wrote not later than 1551, and probably to be acted by the Eton boys, a bonâ fide five-act comedy of London manners, under the title of Roister Doister. The other, John Heywood (d. 1580 ?), Court Jester to Henry VIII. and Mary, and author of a dreary allegory entitled The Spider and the Flie (Protestant and Catholic), produced, chiefly by 1531, six dramatic compositions or Interludes,-of no great literary value. Of these,

the best known, which may serve as a sample of the somewhat gross satirical humour of the rest, turns upon a dispute between the Four Ps of its title,-a Palmer, a Pardoner, a 'Poticary, and a Pedlar as to who can tell the greatest falsehood. The Palmer, following in his turn, and commenting upon some previous statement unfavourable to women, asserts, as if accidentally, that

'Nat one good cytye, towne nor borough
In cristendom, but I have ben thorough,
And this I wolde ye shulde understande,
I have seen women v hundred thousande :
And oft with them have longe tyme taried,
Yet in all places where I have ben,
Of all the women that I have sene,

I never sawe nor knewe in my conscyens
Any one woman out of paciens.'

It is needless to add that the speaker is at once held to have attained the maximum of mendacity.

31. Ballad Poetry.-In his description of the 'Seven Deadly Sins,' the author of Piers the Plowman makes the priest, Sloth, confess his ignorance of his paternoster, as the prest it syngeth,' but acknowledge his familiarity with 'rymes of Robyn hood and Randolf erle of Chestre.'* Numbers of such rymes' or ballads, chanted or recited from house to house by minstrels of the humbler order, were current during this period, though the majority of them are lost to us. But, even now, those collected by Ritson with reference to the Sherwood outlaw (so popular even in Bishop Latimer's day as to make the good prelate complain bitterly that his sermons were neglected for the 'traytoure' Robyn Hood †), make a book by themselves. For Chevy Chace, Sir Patrick Spence, The Gaberlunzie Man, The Not-Browne Mayde, and the remainder of those which Time has spared, the student is referred to the Reliques of Bishop Percy, the Border Minstrelsy of Scott, the Ballad Book of William Allingham, and the collections of Motherwell, Jamieson, Bell, Aytoun, and others,

Piers the Plowman, Edited by Skeat, 1886: B-text, Passus T. See the entire passage in Appendix A, Extract XI.

+ Sixth Sermon before Edward VI., 1549, 173–4 (Arber's reprint, 1869). See also Appendix A, Extract XX.

CHAPTER IV

THE AGE OF SPENSER, SHAKESPEARE, AND

BACON.

1550-1625.

32. SUMMARY OF THE PERIOD.-33. THE POETS: GASCOIGNE, SACKVILLE.--* 34. SIDNEY.-35. SPENSER.-36. THE MINOR POETS.-37. THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA.-38. EARLY ENGLISH PLAYS.-39. THE PRECURSORS OF SHAKESPEARE: MARLOWE, ETC. 40. SHAKESPEARE. 41. THE CONTEMPORARIES OF SHAKESPEARE: JONSON, WEBSTER, BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, MASSINGER, ETC.-42. THE PROSE WRITERS: ASCHAM.43. LYLY.—44. HOOKER, RALEIGH.-45. BACON.-46. BURTON, SELDEN, LORD HERBERT.-47. THE MINOR PROSE WRITERS.-48. THE AUTHORISED VERSION OF THE BIBLE.

32. Summary of the Period. By the end of the first half of the sixteenth century, if not a little earlier (see p. 3, n.), the days of Middle English' may be considered as past, for certainly with the advent of Spenser, Bacon, and Shakespeare-all born soon after 1550-the period of 'Modern English' had already begun. This continues to the present day; for, generally speaking, the English of the Victorians does not essentially differ from that of the Elizabethans. The more material alterations in the grammar and vocabulary of the language had been effected when the two great revolutions had done their work. It must, however, be once more repeated that the dates here given for the commencement and termination of these successive stages of transition are at the best approximate. During the second revolution, that breaking-up of the grammar which is the main characteristic of the first, would still proceed, though less appreciably; and, if it be asserted that no so-called linguistic revolution has taken place since 1550, it does not by any means follow that our language has undergone no changes in structure or substance during the period that intervenes. The dates used simply denote or limit the epochs during which the two great movements were in most noticeable activity. Time, says one of the great writers of this era (Lord Bacon), 'Innovateth greatly, but quietly, and by degrees,

scarce to be perceived;'* and the alterations of a language are effected in the same imperceptible yet resistless manner.

The foregoing chapter extended over two centuries; the present includes seventy-five years only. But these seventy-five years constitute the most prolific period in our literature. Never, in England at least, has been witnessed so magnificent an outburst of the creative faculty, so rare an assembling of splendid and diverse powers. Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon--the luminous names alone out-dazzle all around them. Yet the plays of Webster and Marlowe (to take a pair at random), the verse of Sackville and Sidney, the prose of Hooker and Raleigh, might well have sufficed to make a time illustrious; and behind these again there is a host of contemporaries scarcely less gifted.

The three great writers of this 'golden age' of English historyfor, be it remembered, it was also the age of Drake, of Cecil, and of Walsingham-serve to centralize the different groups of poets, playwrights, and prose-writers. Spenser's brief life ended in 1599, and the majority of his poems were produced in the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth. To the close of the same period, and the early years of James, belong the plays of Shakespeare; while Bacon's works are confined, almost exclusively, to James' reign. Romantic poetry may therefore be said to have reached its zenith first, dramatic poetry next, and prose last. Hence, the writers of the period under consideration fall easily into the succession adopted in this chapter. If a classification be desirable, s. 33 to s. 37 may be said to treat of 'Spenser and the Poets,' s. 37 to s. 42 of Shakespeare and the Dramatists' and s. 42 to s. 48 of Bacon and the Prose Writers' But such an arrangement can be adopted solely for convenience sake, as some of the so-called poets wrote plays and prose, and many of the dramatists are famous by works that are purely poetical.

33. The Poets: Gascoigne, Sackville.-The Steele Glas, a by-no-means 'toothless satire,' in blank verse, on contemporary fashions and follies, is the most important of the poetical works of George Gascoigne (1525 ?-1577), who, after a life varied by law studies, foreign travel, parliamentary duties, insolvency, soldiering, contributed, by his Princelye Pleasures at Kenelworth, to the entertainment given by Leicester to Queen Elizabeth in 1575 (see also p. 61, s. 38). The literary reputation of Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1536-1608), Lord High Treasurer of England, rests * Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, 1625, p. 527 (Arber's reprint, 1871).

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