speare, vol. iv. p. 261.) The Saxon element is a "To sing a song that old was sung, To glad our ear and please our eyes." Pauli gives the following outline of the work: | to the reader." (W. W. Lloyd in Singer's hak "The poem opens by introducing the author himself, in the character of an unhappy lover in despair, smitten by Cupid's arrow. Venus appears to him, and after having heard his prayer, appoints her priest called Genius, like the mystagogue in the Picture of Cebes, to hear the lover's confession. This is the frame of the whole work, which is a singular mixture of classical notions, principally borrowed from Ovid's Ars Amandi, and of the parely medieval idea, that as a good Catholic the unfortunate lover must state his distress to a father confessor. This is done, in the course of the confession, with great regularity and even pedantry; all the passions of the human heart, which generally stand in the way of love, being systematically arranged in the various books and subdivisions of the work. After Genius has fully explained the evil affection passion, or vice under consideration. the lover conteses on that particular point, and frequently urges his boundless love for an unknown beauty, who treats him cruelly, in a tone of affectation which would appear highly ridiculous in a nian of more than sixty years of age, were it not a common characteristic of the poetry of the period. After this profession, the confessor opposes him, and exemplifics the fatal effects of each passion by a variety of apposite stories, gathered from many sources. At length, after a frequent and tedious recurrence of the same process, the confession is terminated by some final injunctions of the priest -the lover's petition in a strophic poem addressed to Venus-the bitter judginent of the goddess, that ne should remember his old age, and leave off such fooleries; "For loves lust and lockes hore In chambre accorden neuer more "— his cure from the wound caused by the dart of love, and his absolution, received as if by a pious Roman | Catholic. "The materials for this extensive work [more than 30,000 lines], and the stories inserted as examples for and against the lover's passion, are drawn from various sources. Some have been taken from the Bible; a great number from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which must have been a particular favorite with the author; others from the medieval historics of the siege of Troy, of the feats of Alexander the Great-from the oldest collection of novels, known under the name of the Gesta Romanorum, chiefly in its form as used in England - from the Pantheon. and Speculum Regum of Godfrey of Viterbo, from the romance of Sir Lancelot and the Chronicles of Cassiodorus and Isidorus." (Introd. Essay, pp. xxxiii. xxxiv.) There is also a vast amount of alchemical learning from the Almagest, and an exposition of the pseudo-Aristotelian philosophy of the middle ages. The author's fancy lies almost buried under the mass of his learning, and his laborious composition shows none of Chaucer's humor, or passion, or love of nature. In the language of the new school of poetry, to which Chaucer's genius had given birth, Gower embodies most of the faults of the romance writers. Still he has his merits. "The vivacity and variety of his short verses evince a correct ear and a happy power, by the assistance of which he enhances the interest in tale, and frequently terminates it with satisfaction The Confessio Amantis was first printed by Caxton, Lond. 1483, fol. (the British Museum has two copies of this rare work), and by F. Berthelette, Lond. 1532, fol., reprinted 1554, fol. (both in black letter). None of the modern editions deserve mcr tion in comparison of that by Dr. Reinhold Pau.i Lond. 1857, 3 vols., 8vo., whose Introductory Essay contains all that is known of the poet and his works. C.-WICLIFFE AND HIS SCHOOL. The revolution effected by Chaucer in poetry was accompanied and aided by an entirely new development of religious literature, which, besides its higher fruits, rendered a similar service to our prose literature. The new liberty of thought, which found expression in popular literature, showed itself also in a sifting of ecclesiastical pretensions, which ted to a direct appeal to Scripture; and the reforming teachers satisfied this demand by translating the Bible into the mother tongue. In the other Protestant countries of Europe, the revival of national literature has been connected with a similar work, and, if the German Bible of Luther, and the Danish version of 1550, exerted a more powerful influence over the respective languages than the Wicliffite translations, one chief reason is, that they appeared after the invention of printing, by which art they were immediately and indefinitely multiplied. In England this great work is ascribed to JOHN DE WICLIF, WICLIFFE, or WYCLIFFE (b. about A. D. 1324, d. A. D. 1384). He was born at Wicliffe, near Richmond, in Yorkshire; studied at Oxford; be came the priest of Fylingham, in Lincoln; and successively Master and Warden of Balliol College and Canterbury Hall, Oxford. He began early to attack the corruptions of the Church; and after his deposition from the latter post by Archbishor Langham, and the Pope's rejection of his appeal, ne gave all his energics to the work of reform, both by his writings and by theological lectures at Oxford. For a long time he was not only unmolested, but was regarded as a champion of the Anglican Church. In 1874 he was a member of a commission sent to Avignon, which obtained concessions from the Pope on the question of induction into benefices. He was rewarded by the crown with a prebend at Worcester, and the vicarage of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, which he held till his death, being secured from the storm of persecution, which soon arose, by the protection of the king' son, John of Gaunt. It was in the retirement of Lutterworth, after he had been driven from his chair at Oxford,* that Wicliffe, aided by his friends and disciples, undertook the work of Bible translation. Their version was the basis of that of Tyndale, as the latter was of the Authorized Versions of 1535 (Coverdale's) and 1611 (King James's, which is still in use); but three centuries and a half elapsed before the original translation of the New Testament, and nearly five centuries before the whole, appeared in print. The New Testament was oited by the Rev. John Lewis, 1731, fol.; by the Rev. II. H. Baker, 1810, 4to.; and in Bagster's English Hexapla, 1841 and 1846, 4to. The Old Testament has only lately been published, in the splendid edition of the Rev. J. Forshall and Sir Frederick Madden, Oxf. 1850, 4 vols. 4to. The authorship of the several parts has long been the subject of discussion. According to the latest editors, the Old Testament and Apocrypha, from Genesis to Baruch (in the order of the LXX.), was translated by a priest named HEREFORD, and the rest of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, as well as the whole of the New Testament, by Wicliffe. The whole work was revised, in a second edition, by PURVEY, who has left us a very interesting essay on the principles Regular professorships not being yet established, Wicliffe taught at Oxford by that right which, though now dormant, is still inherent, as their names imply, in the Degrees of Doctor and Asgister. of translation. The first version seems to have been completed about A. D. 1380, and the edition of Purvey before 1390; so that this English Bible was generally circulated, so far as the jealousy o the church would permit, by the end of the fourteenth century. Its excellence is to be ascribed to two chief causes, the religious sensibility of the translators, whose spirit was absorbed in their work, and the simple vocabulary and structure of the language, which presented itself newly formed to their hand. Translated as it was from the Vul. gate, it naturalized, chiefly in a Latin form, a large stock of religious terms, almost confined before to theologians, and at the same time enlarged and modified them. Above all, by preserving the uniformity of diction and grammar, suited to the sacred dignity of the work, and which is not found in nearly so high a degree in Wicliffe's own treatises, it laid the foundation of that religious or sacred dialect, which has contributed to secure dignity and earnestness as prevailing characters of our common speech. While satires of the type of Piers Ploughman gratified the popular disgust at the corruptions in high places, the newly-opened well-spring of truth taught them the cure for these evils; and their eager reception of both classes of works enriched their language as well as influenced their thoughts. Chaucer, imbued with popular sympathies, and connected with the political party that protected Wicliffe, could not but be subject to these influencos. CHAPTER III. FROM THE DEATH OF CHAUCER TO THE AGE OF ELIZA. BETH. A. D. 1400-1558. 1. Stew progress of English literature from Chaucer to the age of Elizabeth Introduction of printing by CAXTON. Improvement of prose. § 2. Scottis iterature in the fifteenth century: KING JAMES I.; DUNBAR; GAWIN DOUGLAS; HENRYSON; BLIND HARRY. § 3. Reign of Henry VII., sterile in literature. HENRY VIII.; SIR THOMAS MORE. §4. Religious Literature: Translations of the Bible; Book of Common Prayer; LATIMER; FOXE. § 5. Chroniclers and Historians: LORD BERNERS' Froissart; FABYAN; HALL. § 6. Philosophy and Education: WILSON's Logic; SIR JOHN CHEKE; Ro GER ASCHAM's Schoolmaster and Toxophilus. § 7. Poets: SKELTON; BAR KLAY and HAWES; WYATT and SURREY. § 8. Ballads of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: their sources, metre, and modes of circulation. Moderr. collections by Percy, Scott, &c. Influence on the revival of romantic literature. Ballads of the Scottish borders and of Robin Hood. § 1. THE progress of English Literature, inaugurated in so splendid a manner by the genius of Chaucer, though uninterrupted, was for a long time comparatively slow. Many social and political causes contributed to retard it for a time, or rather to accumulate the nation's energies for that glorious intellectual burst which distinguishes the Age of Elizabeth, making that period the most magnificent in the history of the English people, if not in the annals of the human race. The causes just alluded to were the intestine commotions of the Wars of the Roses, the struggle between the dying energies of Feudalism and the nascent liberties of our municipal institutions, and the mighty transformation resulting from the Reformation. In point of splendor, fecundity, intense originality, and national spirit, none of the most brilliant epochs in the history of mankind can be considered as superior to the Elizabethan. In universality of scope and in the influence it was destined to exert upon the thoughts and knowledge of future generations, no other epoch can be brought into comparison with it. Neither the age of Pericles nor that of Augustus in the ancient world, nor those of the Medici and of Louis XIV. in modern history, can be regarded as approaching in importance to that period which, independently of a multitude of brilliant but inferio: iuminaries, produced the Prince of Poets and the Prince of Philoso phers -- William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon. But the interval between the end of the fourteenth century and the latter part of the sixteenth, though destitute of any names comparable for creative ener gy to that of Chaucer, was a period of great literary activity. The importation into England of the art of printing, first exercised among us by CAXTON, who was himself a useful and laborious author, and who died in 1491, unquestionably tended to give a more regular and literary form to the productions of that age; the increase in the number of printed books seems in particular to have been peculiarly efficacious in generating a good prose style, as well as in enlarging the circle of readers and extending the influence of popular intellectual activity, as for example by disseminating the habit of religious and political discussion. Thus Mandeville, regarded as one of the founders of prose writing in England, and who, at the period of Chaucer, gave to the well the curious description of his travels and adventures in many lands,* was followed by CHIEF JUSTICE FORTESCUE (fl. 1430-1470), who besides his celebrated Latin work "De Laudibus Legum Anglia," also wrote one in English on "The Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy." † § 2. But the most brilliant names which occupy the beginning of this interval are those of Scotsmen. JAMES I. (1394-1437), who was taken prisoner when a child (1405) and carefully educated at Windsor, must be regarded as a poet who does equal honor to his own country and to that of his captivity. This accomplished prince was the author of a collection of love-verses under the title of the King's Quhair (i. c. Quire or Book), written in the purest English and breathing the romantic and elegant grace which the immense popularity of Petrarch had at that time made the universal pattern throughout Europe. His own national dialect, too, was that of the Lowland Scots, then and long after the language of literature, of courtly society, and of theology, and by no means to be regarded as the mere patois or provincial dialect which it has become since the union of the two crowns has destroyed the political independence of Scotland. In it James composed a number of songs and ballads of extraordinary merit, recounting with much humor his own amorous adventures; some, unfortunately, of a character rather too warm for the delicacy of modern times. This intellectual and patriotic prince was assassinated in 1437 at Perth, by the nobles, among whom his own uncle was a chief conspirator, to revenge the king's concessions to the people. Besides King James, Scotland produced about this time several poets of great merit, the chief of whom are WILLIAM DUNBAR (about 1465-1520), and GAWIN OF GAVIN DOUGLAS, Bishop of Dunkeld (1474-1522), the former a truly powerful and original genius, and the second a voluminous and miscellaneous poet, whose example tended much to regularize and in prove the national dialect, and to enrich the national literature. Among Dunbar's numerous poetical compositions we must in particular specify his wild allegorical conception of “The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins," a fantastic and terrible impersonation, with the intense reality of Dante and the picturesque inventiveness of Callot. Gawin *For an account of Mandeville see p. 54. + Sir John Fortescue was originally a Lancastrian. He accompanied Henry VI. into exile; was afterwards taken prisoner at the battle af Tewkesbury in 1471, and was attainted. He obtained his pardon by acknowledging the title of Edward IV. Douglas is now chiefly remembered as the translator of Virgil into Scottish verse, and in both this and his original compositions the reader will be struck by the much greater preponderance of French and Latin words in the dialect of Scotland than in contemporary English writings. This is partly to be attributed to the close political connection maintained by Scotland with France, with which country she generally sided out of hostility to England; and partly, no doubt, to a ind of pedantic affectation, a sort of Scottish estilo culto, like the Gongorism of the Spaniards. ROBERT HENRYSON (d. about 1500), a moak or schoolmaster of Dunfermline, wrote, in imitation of Chaucer, the Testament of Faire Crcseide, and the beautiful pastoral of Robin and Makyne (in Percy's Reliques). Another Scottish poet, known under the appellation of BLIND HARRY or HARRY THE MINSTREL, but concerning the details of whose life nothing accurate has been discovered, wrote, in long rhymed couplets, a narrative of the exploits of the second great national hero, William Wallace. This work is not destitute of vigorous and picturesque passages. BARBOUR and the other writers of the fourteenth century have been already mentioned (p. 55). § 3. The reign of Henry VII., as might have been expected from the sombre character of that politic prince, was by no means favorable to literary activity; but Henry VIII. was possessed of much of the learning of his age, and even distinguished himself by his controversial writings against Luther. The title of "Defender of the Faith," by which the Pope recompensed this sceptred polemic, has been ever since retained in the style of English sovereigns a singular example of the vicissitudes of names. The great and good chancellor Sir Thomas More, the poets Skelton, Wyatt, and Surrey, belong to this memorable reign. Of the three last we shall speak among the poets. Sir THOMAS MORE (1480-1535) is unquestionably one of the most prominent intellectual figures of this reign, whether as statesman, polemic, or man of letters. The ardent attachment which More felt to the Catholic religion, and which he so often testified by acts of persecution, contrary to his gentle and genial character, he firmly maintained when himself persecuted and in the presence of a cruel and ignominious death. His philosophical romarce of the Utopia, written in Latin, is a striking example of the extreme freedom of speculative and political discussion, exercised not only with impunity, but even with approbation, under the sternest tyranny. The fundamental idea of this work was borrowed from the Atlantis of Plato. It is one of the earliest of many attempts to give, under the form of a voyage to an imaginary island, the theory of an ideal republic, where the laws, the institutions, the social and political usages, are in strict accordance with a philosophical perfection. England has been peculiarly fertile in these sports of political fancy. Bacon also left an unfinished sketch of an imaginary republic; and the Oceana of Harrington is a similar attempt to realize the theory of a perfectly happy and philosophic government.* * Of Sir Thomas More's English works, the most remarkable, on account of its style, is his Life of Edward V., which Mr. Hallam pronounces to be "the |