characteristic of the medieval debate. They could not fail, indeed, to be touched by many more nearly contemporary influences in that age of quickened life, though they followed the medieval tradition in the main. Such a production as the Spanish Celestina, which appeared in an English adaptation perhaps as early as 1530, was rather a series of dialogues than a drama, and must have been known to most English writers of that time. And Castiglione's Il Cortigiano, translated as The Courtyer in 1561, and by general agreement the finest of Renaissance dialogues, must have been widely known, for it was mentioned1 in 1591 as one of the two books most commonly read by those who wished to learn Italian.2 This, though more dramatic, and of livelier narrative interest, continued the tradition of Cicero in certain ways, that tradition being, of course, an element of medievalism. Both of these foreign dialogues combined with the influences of Elizabethan court-life to add to the more serious mediæval manner the tone of the life of pleasure.

Thus the medieval debate, developed in one special direction, became the courtly and artificial dialogue or interlude of the sixteenth century. From it we now turn to the more vital polemical dialogue of the same period.

1 In Florio's Second Frutes, 1591.

2 The other was 'Guazzo his dialogues'.

III.

THE POLEMICAL DIALOGUE

When the dialogue appeared in its new guise as a polemical pamphlet in the early years of the sixteenth century, it had not broken entirely with mediæval tradition. It was part of the glory of the Renaissance in England that it gathered up into itself the life and thought of medieval times, as well as the newer impulses which came from the classic nations of the past. Indeed, we cannot think of the classic and mediæval influences which mingle in the English literature of that age as altogether distinct, for the thought of medieval times had itself grown from a blending of the forces of Christianity, the racial traditions of the Teutons and Celts, and the riches of Greek and Roman civilization. Such a medieval form as the débat in France or in England, or the fourteenth century elucidary or catechism, however far removed even from Cicero, could hardly have been what it was had Cicero been entirely unknown to the Middle Ages. And so when the classical impulses grew strong in England through the inspiration of Erasmus, More, Colet, Linacre, and their band of fellow-laborers, those impulses combined with a tradition already made up in part of the same original elements.

Yet the classic influence was important as a new factor in the development of a form of expression adequate to meet certain demands of a rapidly changing age. The coming of Erasmus to England in the

year 1499 is a suggestive circumstance in the history of the English dialogue, as it is suggestive of much that came to England in those early years of the Tudor rule. It relates itself to the history of the English dialogue through the fact that Erasmus brought with him the direct inspiration of Lucian. Both he and More translated several of Lucian's dialogues from Greek into Latin; and the original Latin dialogues of Erasmus, called Colloquia, show plainly the influence of Lucian. This book of Colloquia was begun, like Elfric's Colloquium, as a textbook for schoolboys, but the simple interchange of conventional phrases of the earlier dialogues soon grew into the dramatic characterization of the later ones. The book was widely read, according to all accounts. It is said,1 indeed, to have been the most popular book of the century, and this is easily believed when one reads that it went through ninety-nine editions before 1546. No complete English translation of it was made before 1733, but the dialogues must have been so widely known in their original form as to have been a real influence in the early sixteenth century.

Save for their greater didacticism, the influence they exerted is of the same strain as Lucian's. Just as Lucian had laughed at the weakness of the gods of Olympus, Erasmus laughed at the corruptions of the church and priesthood of his day, and the natural result followed when he scandalized the more orthodox of his time. A Latin dialogue," written in the early years of the century, bears witness to the ire he roused among some worthies. 'Nunc iste latinizator Erasmus dicit, quod nostra Biblia nihil valet,' is the declaration of certain narrow-minded doctors who fur1 Cf. Cambridge History of English Literature 3. 22. 2 Dialogus Novus et Mire Festivus

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nish much amusement to Erasmus and Reuchlin. His satire was keen and well directed, and his colloquies are almost as readable and modern in tone, in their English form, as those of Lucian himself; they are lively, familiar, and often decidedly dramatic. Since, however, they represent chiefly an older influence revived, we refrain from discussing them more fully, and content ourselves with merely noting their merit and their popularity, and the influence which must have resulted therefrom.

Side by side with this influence, and that of the classic past which it represented, came parallel impúlses from Germany. The literary relations of England and Germany were close1 during the Tudor period, and the polemical dialogue, as written by various Germans of that age, attained almost classic excellence. The lively dialogues of Hans Sachs, mingling satire with vivid pictures of the life of the tradesman; the highly dramatic Krankheit der Messe of the Swiss Niklaus Manuel, in which doctors stand at the bedside of the death-doomed Mass, and Pope and Cardinal tremble; and the keen and vehement dialogues poured forth by Hutten, are among the best examples of the German satires which had a far-reaching influence in those Reformation days. The struggle of religious thought in Germany drew to itself the eyes of thoughtful men in England and elsewhere; and personal intercourse, too, was sure to be close at a time when English reformers often wrote their treatises in Germany, and issued them from German printing-presses. Thus the spirit of satire, employing the dialogue-form as an instrument, passed readily from the Germans to the English.

1 Cf. Herford, The Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge, 1886.

With Hutten, as with Erasmus, the classic influence was strong; but such dialogues as those of Hans Sachs and Niklaus Manuel take us back to the medieval debate and the morality play. The influence of the debate, fostered through the Middle Ages by the arguments of the Schoolmen and the subtleties of the Courts of Love; the influence of the church catechism, itself a conventionalized debate; and the influence of the morality play, were all strong in England, too, in the early sixteenth century. Contrasting abstractions had given way to actual persons as speakers in very many of the English contention-poems; only the elements of satire, therefore, and of a vital subject-matter, were needed to change the medieval debate into a polemical dialogue.

The impulses of humanism, which led back to Plato and Cicero and Lucian, among many others, and the closely related impulses which came from Erasmus and the German satirists, combined with the mediæval tradition already existing, then, to produce the pamphlet-dialogues of the sixteenth century, and to these the conflicting tendencies and beliefs of that stirring age gave the vitality of human interest. As we glance over the two centuries that followed the accession of Henry VII, we find several groups of dialogues that give an invaluable picture of the time. They differ in value; for though some few of them are of real, intrinsic merit, others are chiefly valuable as human documents, while only a few of them have anything like the literary distinction of contemporary German dialogues.

They served the purpose of pamphlets or tracts: their interests were political, social, literary, or, most often, religious. Pamphleteering flourished apace, and pamphlets innumerable came hot from the pens of