descriptions are as circumstantial without selection | of the contemporary poctical writers. Thus, while as theirs; and his language, partaking of a ruder dialect, is still more removed from our own." (Hallam.) It has been remarked above (see p. 67) that Surrey and Wyatt's poems were published in Tottel's Miscellany, which was the first printed poetical miscellany in the English language. Among the other contributors to this collection, though their names are not mentioned, were SIR FRANCIS BRYAN, the nephew of Lord Berners, the translator of Froissart, and one of the brilliant ornaments of the court of Hlery VIII.; GEORGE BOLEYN, VISCOUNT ROCHFORD, the brother of Anne Boleyn, beheaded in 1536; THOMAS, LORD VAUX, Captain of the Island of Jersey under Henry VIII., some of whose poems are also printed in the collection called the "Paradise of Dainty Devices" (see p. 85), and who is described by Puttenham in his Art of Poesie as "a man of much facilitie in vulgar makings;" and NICHOLAS GRIMOALD (about 1520-1563), a lecturer at Oxford, whose initials, N. G., are attached to his "Songes" in Tottel's Miscellany. He was a learned scholar, and translated into English some of the Latin and Greek classics. To this period, rather than to that of Elizabeth, belongs TпOMAS TUSSER (1527-1580), one of the earliest of our didactic poets, who was born at Rivenhall in Essex, was educated at Cambridge, and passed two years at court under the patronage of William, Lord Paget. He afterwards settled as a farmer at Cattiwade in Suffolk, where he wrote his work on Husbandry, of which the first edition appeared in 1557. under the title of "A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie." He practised farming in other parts of the country, was a singing man in Norwich cathedral, and died poor in London. His work, after going through four editions, was published in an enlarged form in 1577, under the title of "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie, united to as many of Good Huswiferie." It is written in familiar verse, and “is valuable as a genuine picture of the agriculture, the rural arts, and the domestic economy and customs of our industrious ancestors." (Warton.) B. - MINOR PROSE WRITERS. One of the chief prose writers of the fifteenth century was PECOCK (fl. 1450), Bishop of Asaph, and afterwards of Chichester. Though he wrote against the Lollards, his own theological views were regarded with suspicion, and he was, in 1457, obliged to recant, was deprived of his bishopric, and passed the rest of his life in a conventual prison. His principal work, entitled the Repressor of overmuch blaming of the Clergy, appeared in 1449. There is an excellent edition of this work by C. Babington, 1863. With respect to its language, Mr. Marsh observes that, "although, in diction and arrangement of sentences, the Repressor is much in advance of the chroniclers of Pecock's age, the grammar, both in accidence and syntax, is in many points nearly where Wicliffe had left it; and it is of course in these respects considerably behind that these latter authors, as well as some of earlier date, employ the objective plural pronoun them, and the plural possessive pronoun their, Pecock writes ai ways hem for the personal and her for the possessive pronoun. These pronominal forms soon fell into disuse, and they are hardly to be met with ir any English writer of later date than Pecock With respect to one of them, however, the objec tive hem for them, it may be marked that it has not become obsolete in colloquial speech to the present day; for in such phrases as I saw 'em, I told 'em, and the like, the pronoun em (or 'em) is not as is popularly supposed, a vulgar corruption of the full pronoun them, which alone is found in modern books, but it is the true Anglo-Saxon and old English objective plural, which, in our spoken dialect, has remained unchanged for a thousand years." SIR THOMAS MALORY (fl. 1470), the compiler and translator of the Morte Arthur, or History of King Arthur, printed by Caxton in 1485. Caxton, in his preface, says that Sir Thomas Malory took the work out of certain books in French, and reduced it into English. It is a compilation from some of the most popular romances of the Round Table. The style deserves great praise. See also p. 32, B. JOHN FISHER (1459–1535), Bishop of Rochester, put to death by Henry VIII., along with Sir Thomas More. Besides his Latin works he wrote some sermons in English. SIR THOMAS ELYOT (d. 1546), an eminent scholar in the reign of Henry VIII., by whom he was employed in several embassies. He shares with Sir Thomas More the praise of being one of the earliest English prose writers of value. His principal work is The Governor, published in 1531, a treatise upon education, in which he deprecates the ill-treatment to which boys were exposed at school at this period. JOHN LELAND (1506-1552), the eminent antiquary. was educated at St. Paul's School, London, and at Oxford and Cambridge. He received several ecclesiastical preferments from Henry VIII., who also gave him the title of the King's Antiquary. Besides his Latin works he wrote in English his Itinerary, giving an account of his travels, a work still of great value for English topography. GEORGE CAVENDISH (d. 1557), not Sir William, as frequently stated, was gentleman-usher to Cardinal Wolsey, and wrote the life of the Cardinal, from which Shakspeare has taken many passages in his Henry VIII. JOHN BELLENDEN (d. 1550), Archdean of Mo ray, in the reign of James V., deserves mention as one of the earliest prose writers in Scotland. Hir translation of the Scottish History of Boethius, or Boecius (Boece), was published in 1537. JOHN BALE (1495-1563), Bishop of Ossory in Ire land, was the author of several theological works. and of some dramatic interludes on sacred subjecte (see p. 114). But the work by which he is best known is in Latin, containing an account of illus. trious writers in Great Britain frora Japhet to the year 1559. CHAPTER IV. THE ELIZABETHAN POETS (INCLUDING THE REIGN OF JAMES I.). A. D. 1558-1625. 1. Characteristics of the Elizabethan age of Literature. § 2. The less known writers of this period: GASCOIGNE; TURBERVILLE; THOMAS SACKVILLE, Lord Buckhurst. § 3. EDMUND SPENSER: his personal history; the Shepherd's Calendar; his friendship with Harvey and Sidney; favored by Leicester and Elizabeth; disappointments at court; residence in Ireland; misfortunes, and death. § 4. Analysis and criticism of the Faery Queen: brilliancy of imagination; defects of plan; allusions to persons and events. § 5. Detailed analysis of the Second Book, or the Legend of Temperance. § 6. Versification of the poem; adaptation of the language in the metre; Spenser's boldness in dealing with English. § 7. Character of Spenser's genius: his minor works. § 8. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: his accomplishments and heroic death · his Sonnets, Arcadia, and Defence of Poesy. $§9. Other leading Poets of the age: ·(i.) DANIEL; (ii.) DRAYTON; (iii.) SIR JOHN DAVIES; (iv.) Joнş DONNE; (v.) BISHOP HALL; English Satire. § 10. Minor Poets: PHINEAS and GILES FLETCHER; CHURCHYARD; the Jesuit SOUTHWELL; FAIRFAX, the translator of Tasso. § 1. THE Age of Elizabeth is characterized by features which cause it to stand alone in the literary history of the world. It was a period of sudden emancipation of thought, of immense fertility and originality, and of high and generally diffused intellectual cultivation. The language, thanks to the various causes indicated in the preceding chapters, had reached its highest perfection; the study and the imitation of ancient or foreign models had furnished a vast store of materials, images and literary forms, which had not yet had time to become commonplace and overworn. The poets and prose writers of this age, therefore, united the freshness and vigor of youth with the regularity and majesty of manhood; and nothing can better demonstrate the intellectual activity of the epoch than the number of excellent works which have become obsolete in the present day, solely from their merits having been eclipsed by the glories of a few incomparable names, as those of Spenser in romantic and of Shakspeare in dramatic poetry. It will be my task to give a rapid sketch of some of the great works hus"darkened with the excess of light." § 2. The first name is that of GEORGE GASCOIGNE (1530-1577), who, as one of the founders of the great English school of the drama, as a satirist, as a narrative and as a lyric poet, enjoyed a high popularity for art and genius. His most important production, in point of length, is a species of moral or satiric declamation entitled the Steel Glass, in which he inveighs against the vices and follies of his time. It is written in blank verse, and is one of the earliest examples of that kind of metre, so well adapted to the genius of the English language, and in which, independently of the drama, so many important compositions were afterwards to be written. The versification of Gascoigne in this work, though somewhat harsh and monotonous, is dignified and regular; and the poem evinces close observation of life and a lofty tone of morality. His career was a very active one; he figured on the bril liant stage of the court, took part in a campaign in Holland against the Spaniards, and has commemorated some of the unfortunate inci dents of this expedition in a poem in seven-lined stanzas, entitled The Fruits of War; and many of his minor compositions are well deserving of perusal. He was an example of a type of literary men which abounded in England at that period, in which the active and contem. plative life were harmoniously combined, and which brought the acquititions of the study to bear upon the interests of real life. Nearly contemporary with this poet was GEORGE TURBERVILE (1530-1594), whose writings exhibit a less vigorous invention than those of Gascoigne. He very frequently employed a peculiar modification of the old English ballad stanza which was extremely fashionable at this period. The modification consists in the third line, instead of being of equal length to the first, viz. of six syllables, containing eight. It must not, however, be understood from this that Turbervile did not employ a great variety of other metrical arrangements. The majority of his writings consist of love epistles, epitaphs, and complimentary verses. A poet whose writings, of a lofty, melancholy, and moral tonc, undoubtedly exerted a great influence at a critical period in the formation of the English literature, was THOMAS SACKVILLE, Lord Buckhurst (1536–1608), a person of high political distinction, having filled the office of Lord High Treasurer. It was for his children that Ascham wrote the Schoolmaster. He projected, and himself commenced, a work entitled A Mirrour for Magistrates, which was intended to contain a series of tragic examples of the vicissitudes of fortune, drawn from the annals of his own country, serving as lessons of virtue to future kings and statesmen, and as warnings of the fragility of earthly greatness and success. Sackville composed the Induction (Introduction) of this grave and dignified work, and also the first legend or complaint, in which are commemorated the power and the fall of the Duke of Buckingham, favorite and victim of the tyrannical Richard III. The poem was afterwards continued by other writers in the same style, though generally with a perceptible diminution of grandeur and effect. Such collections of legends or short poetical biographies, in which celebrated and unfortunate sufferers were introduced, bewailing their destiny, or warning mankind against crime and ambition, were frequent in literature at an earlier period. Chaucer's Monk's Tale, and the same poet's Legend of Good Women, are in plan and character not dissimilar: nay, the origin of such a form of composition may be traced even to the vast ethical collection of the Gesta Romanorum, if not to a still higher antiquity; for the Heroides of Ovid, though confined to the sufferings of unhappy love, form a somewhat similar gallery of examples. The Mirrour for Magistrates is written in stanzas of seven lines, and exhibits great occasional power of expression, and a remarkable force and compression of language, though the general tone is gloomy and somewhat monotonous. Some of the lines reach a high elevation of somhre picturesqueness, as these, of old age: "His scalp all pilled, and he with eld forlore, His withered fist still knocking at death's door," which is strikingly like what Chaucer himself would have written.* § 3. A period combining a scholar-like imitation of antiquity and of foreign contemporary literature, principally that of Italy, with the force, freshness, and originality of the dawn of letters in England, might have been fairly expected, even à priori, to produce a great imaginative and descriptive work of poetry. The illustrious name of EDMUND SPENSER (1553-1599) occupies a place among the writers of England similar to that of Ariosto among those of Italy; and the union in his works — and particularly in his greatest work, the Faëry Queen — of original invention and happy use of existing materials, fully warrants the unquestioned verdict which names him as the greatest English poet intervening between Chaucer and Shakspeare. His career was brilliant, but unhappy. Born in 1553, a cadet of the illustrious family whose name he bore, though not endowed with fortune, he was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he undoubtedly acquired an amount of learning remarkable even in that age of solid and substantial studies. He is supposed, after leaving the University, to have been compelled to perform the functions of domestic tutor in the North of England; and to have gained his first fame by the publication of the Shepherd's Calendar, a series of pastorals divided into twelve parts or months, in which, as in Virgil's Bucolics, under the guise of idyllic dialogues, his imaginary interlocutors discuss high questions of morality and state, and pay refined compliments to illustrious personages. In these eclogues Spenser endeavored to give a national air to his work, by painting English scenery and the English climate, by selecting English names for his rustic persons, and by infusing into their language many provincial and obsolete expressions. The extraordinary superiority, in power of thought and harmony of language, exhibited by the Shepherd's Calendar, immediately placed Spenser among the highest poetical names of his day, and attracted the favor and patronage of the great. The young poet had been closely connected, by friendship and the com munity of tastes and studies, with the learned Gabriel Harvey a man of unquestionable genius, but rendered ridiculous by certain literary hobbies, as, for example, by a mania for employing the ancient classical metres, founded on quantity, in English verse; and he for some time infected Spenser with his own freaks. Through Harvey, Spenser acquired the notice and favor of the accomplished Sidney; and it was * For a further account of the Mirrour for Magistrates, see Notes and Illus trations (A). at Penshurst, the fine mansion of the latter, that he is supposed to have revised the Shepherd's Calendar, which he dedicated, under the title of the Poet's Year, to "Maister Philip Sidney, worthy of all titles, both of Chivalry and Poesy." Sidney, in his turn, recommended Spenser to Dudley Earl of Leicester, and the powerful favorite brought the poet under the personal notice of Elizabeth herself. The great queen, surfeited as she was with all the refinements of literary homage, certainly had not, among the throng of poets that filled her court, a worshipper hose incense arose before her altar in richer or more fragrant clouds; but the poet, in his court career, naturally exposed himself to the hostility of those who were the enemies of his protectors; and there are several traditions which relate the disappointments experienced by Spenser at the hands of the great minister Burleigh, whose influence on the mind of his mistress was too firmly established to be seriously shaken by the Queen's attachment to her favorites. Spenser has left us a gloomy picture of the miseries of courtly dependence. The poet appears to have been occasionally employed in unimportant diplomatic services; but on the nomination of Lord Grey de Wilton as Deputy or Lieutenant of Ireland, Spenser accompanied him to that country as secretary, and received a grant of land not far from Cork, which he was to occupy and cultivate. This estate had formed part of the domains of the Earls of Desmond, and had been forfeited or confiscated by the English Government. Spenser resided several years at Kilcolman Castle, during which time he exercised various important administrative functions in the government of the then newly-subjugated country. It was during his residence in Ireland that he composed the most important of his works, among which the first place is occupied by his great poem of the Faëry Queen. About twelve years after his first establishment in the province of Munster, the flame of revolt, communicated from the great rebellion called Tyrone's Insurrection, which had been raging in the neighboring province of Ulster, spread to the region which surrounded Spenser's retreat. He had probably rendered himself hateful to the half-savage Celtic population whom the English colonists had ejected and oppressed: indeed the very curious little work entitled A View of the State of Ireland, in which he has described the curious manners and customs of the indigenous race, indicates plainly enough that the poet shared the prejudices of his race and position. Kilcolman Castle was attacked and burned by the insurgents. Spenser and his family escaped with difficulty, and with the loss not only of all they possessed, but with the still more cruel bereavement of a young chi.d which was left behind and perished in the house. Completely ruined, and overwhelmed by so tragic an affliction, the poet returned to London, where he is reported to have died in the greatest poverty, forgotter by the court and neglected by his patrons, in 1599. He was, however, followed to the grave with the unanimous admiration of his country. men, who bewailed in his death the loss of the greatest poet of his age. He was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, near the tomb of Chaucer. |