University of Oxford, and tutor to the prince, afterwards Henry VIII. Erasmus must have been a bad judge of English poetry, or must have alluded only to the learning of Skelton, when in one of his letters he pronounces him "Britannicarum literarum lumen et decus." There is certainly a vehemence and vivacity in Skelton, which was worthy of being guided by a better taste; and the objects of his satire bespeak some degree of public spirit *. But his eccentricity in attempts at humour is at once vulgar and flippant; and his style is almost a texture of slang phrases, patched with shreds of French and Latin. We are told, indeed, in a periodical work of the present day, that his manner is to be excused, because it was assumed for "the nonce," and was suited to the taste of his contemporaries. But it is surely a poor apology for the satirist of any age, to say that he stooped to humour its vilest taste, and could not ridicule vice and folly without degrading himself to buffoonery +. Upon the * He was the determined enemy of the mendicant friars and of Cardinal Wolsey. The courtiers of Henry VIII., whilst obliged to flatter a minister whom they detested, could not but be gratified with Skelton's boldness in singly daring to attack him. In his picture of Wolsey at the Council Board, he thus describes the imperious minister: in chamber of Stars " All matters there he mars; He sayeth, How say ye, my lords, Good even, good Robin Hood. Some say yes, and some Sit still, as they were dumb." These lines are a remarkable anticipation of the very words in the fifteenth article of the charges preferred against Wolsey by the Parliament of 1529. "That the said Lord Cardinal, sitting among the Lords and other of your Majesty's most honourable Council, used himself so, that if any man would show his mind according to his duty, he would so take him up with his accustomable words, that they were better to hold their peace than to speak, so that he would hear no more speak, but one or two great personages, so that he would have all the words himself, and consumed much time without a fair tale." His ridicule drew down the wrath of Wolsey, who ordered him to be apprehended. But Skelton fled to the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, where he was protected; and died in the same year in which Wolsey's prosecutors drew up the article of impeachment, so similar to the satire of the poet. [t I know Skelton only by the modern edition of his works, dated 1736. But from this stupid publication I Neve's Cursory Remarks on the English Poets. whole, we might regard the poetical feeling and genius of England as almost extinct at the end of the fifteenth century, if the beautiful ballad of the "Nut-brown Maid" were not to be referred to that period ‡. It is said to have been translated from the German; but even considered as a translation, it meets us as a surprising flower amidst the winter-solstice of our poetry. Sixteenth The literary character of England was not established till near the end of the sixteenth century. At the beginning of that century. century, immediately anterior to Lord Surrey, we find Barklay and Skelton popular candidates for the foremost honours of English poetry. They are but poor names. Yet slowly as the improvement of our poetry seems to proceed in the early part of the sixteenth century, the circumstances which subsequently fostered the national genius to its maturity and magnitude, begin to be distinctly visible even before the year 1500. The accession of Henry VII., by fixing the monarchy and the prospect of its regular succession, forms a great era of commencing civilisation. The art of printing, which had been introduced in a former period of discord, promised to diffuse its light in a steadier and calmer atmosphere. The great discoveries of navigation, by quickening the intercourse of European nations, extended their influence to England. In the short portion of the fifteenth century during which printing was known in this country, the press exhibits our literature at a lower ebb than even that of France; but before that century was concluded, the tide of classical learning had fairly set in. England had received Erasmus, can easily discover that he was no ordinary man. Why Warton and the writers of his school rail at him vehemently I know not; he was perhaps the best scholar of his day, and displays on many occasions strong powers of description, and a vein of poetry that shines through all the rubbish which ignorance has spread over it. He flew at high game, and therefore occasionally called in the aid of vulgar ribaldry to mask the direct attack of his satire. -GIFFORD, Jonson, vol. viii. p. 77. The power, the strangeness, the volubility of his language, the intrepidity of his satire, and the perfect originality of his manner, render Skelton one of the most extraordinary poets of any age or country.-SOUTHEY, Specimens and Quar. Rev. vol. xi. p. 485. Mr. Hallam is not so kind; but till Mr. Dyce gives us his long promised Edition of Skelton, we know the old rough, ready-witted writer very imperfectly.] Warton places it about the year 1500. [It was in print in 1521, if not a little earlier.] of true philosophy was not indeed arrived, and the Reformation itself produced events tending to retard that progress of literature and intelligence, which had sprung up under its first auspices. Still, with partial interruptions, the culture of classical literature proceeded in the sixteenth century; and, amidst that culture, it is difficult to conceive that a system of Greek philosophy more poetical than Aristotle's, was without its influence on the English spirit-namely, that of Plato. That England possessed a distinct school of Platonic philosophy in the sixteenth century, cannot, I believe, be affirmed †, but we hear of the Platonic studies of Sir Philip Sydney; and traits of Platonism are sometimes beautifully visible in the poetry of Surrey and of Spenser ‡. The Italian men, were a mass of metaphysics established in his name, first by Arabic commentators, and afterwards by Catholic doctors; among the latter of whom, many expounded the philosophy of the Stagyrite without understanding a word of the original language in which his doctrines were and had produced Sir Thomas More. The English poetry of the last of these great men is indeed of trifling consequence, in comparison with the general impulse which his other writings must have given to the age in which he lived. But everything that excites the dormant intellect of a nation must be regarded as contributing to its future poetry. It is possible, that in thus adverting to the diffusion of knowledge (especially classical knowledge) which preceded our golden age of originality, we may be challenged by the question, how much the greatest of all our poets was indebted to learning. We are apt to compare such geniuses as Shakspeare to comets in the moral universe, which baffle all calculations as to the causes which accelerate or retard their appearance, or from which we can predict their return. But those phenomena of poetical inspiration are, in fact, still dependent on the laws and light of the system which they visit. Poets may be indebted to the learning and philosophy of their age, without being themselves men of erudition, or philosophers. When the fine spirit of truth has gone abroad, it passes insensibly from mind to mind, independent of its direct transmission from books; and it comes home in a more welcome shape to the poet, when caught from his social intercourse with his species, than from solitary study. Though ultimately overthrown by Bacon, his writings Shakspeare's genius was certainly indebted to the intelligence and moral principles which existed in his age, and to that intelligence and to those moral principles, the revival of classical literature undoubtedly contributed. So also did the revival of pulpit eloquence, and the restoration of the Scriptures to the people in their native tongue. The dethronement of scholastic philosophy, and of the supposed infallibility of Aristotle's authority, an authority at one time almost paramount to that of the Scriptures themselves, was another good connected with the Reformation; for though the logic of Aristotle long continued to be formally taught, scholastic theology was no longer sheltered beneath his name. Bible divinity superseded the glosses of the schoolmen, and the writings of Duns Scotus were consigned at Oxford to proclaimed contempt *. The reign respecting the idea or origin of beauty. Namely in the year 1535. The decline of Aristotle's authority, and that of scholastic divinity, though to a certain degree connected, are not, however, to be identified. What were called the doctrines of Aristotle by the school written. Some Platonic opinions had also mixed with the metaphysics of the schoolmen. Aristotle was nevertheless their main authority; though it is probable that, if he had come to life, he would not have fathered much of the philosophy which rested on his name. Some of the reformers threw off scholastic divinity and Aristotle's authority at once; but others, while they abjured the schoolmen, adhered to the Peripatetic system. In fact, until the revival of letters, Aristotle could not be said, with regard to the modern world, to be either fully known by his own works, or fairly tried by his own merits. and his name, in the age immediately preceding Bacon, had ceased to be a mere stalking-horse to the schoolmen, and he was found to contain heresies which the Catholic metaphysicians had little suspected. † Enfield mentions no English school of Platonism before the time of Gale and Cudworth. [Hallam is equally silent.] In one of Spenser's hymns on Love and Beauty, he breathes this Platonic doctrine. Every spirit, as it is most pure This last thought was probably suggested by the lines in "In qual parte del ciel', in quale idea Muse communicated a tinge of that spirit to our poetry, which must have been farther excited in the minds of poetical scholars by the influence of Grecian literature. Hurd indeed observes, that the Platonic doctrines had a deep influence on the sentiments and character of Spenser's age. They certainly form a very poetical creed of philosophy. The Aristotelian system was a vast mechanical labyrinth, which the human faculties were chilled, fatigued, and darkened by exploring. Plato, at least, expands the imagination, for he was a great poet; and if he had put in practice the law respecting poets, which he prescribed to his ideal republic, he must have begun by banishing himself. The Reformation, though ultimately beneficial to literature, like all abrupt changes in society brought its evil with its good. Its establishment under Edward VI. made the English too fanatical and polemical to attend to the finer objects of taste. Its commencement under Henry VIII., however promising at first, was too soon rendered frightful, by bearing the stamp of a tyrant's character, who, instead of opening the temple of religious peace, established a Janus-faced persecution against both the old and new opinions. On the other hand, Henry's power, opulence, and ostentation, gave some encouragement to the arts. He himself, monster as he was, affected to be a poet. His masques and pageants assembled the beauty and nobility of the land, and prompted a gallant spirit of courtesy. The cultivation of musical talents among his courtiers fostered our early lyrical poetry. Our intercourse with Italy was renewed from more enlightened motives than superstition; and under the influence of Lord Surrey, Italian poetry became once more, as it had been in the days of Chaucer, a source of refinement and regeneration to our own. I am not indeed disposed to consider the influence of Lord Surrey's works upon our language in the very extensive and important light in which it is viewed by Dr. Nott. I am doubtful if that learned editor has converted many readers to his opinion, that Lord Surrey was the first who gave us metrical instead of rhythmical versification; for, with just allowance for ancient pronunciation, the heroic measure of Chaucer will be found in general not only to be metrically correct, but to possess consider able harmony*. Surrey was not the inventor of our metrical versification; nor had his genius the potent voice and the magic spell which rouse all the dormant energies of a language. In certain walks of composition, though not in the highest, viz. in the ode, elegy, and epitaph, he set a chaste and delicate example; but he was cut off too early in life, and cultivated poetry too slightly, to carry the pure stream of his style into the broad and bold channels of inventive fiction. Much undoubtedly he did, in giving sweetness to our numbers, and in substituting for the rude tautology of a former age a style of soft and brilliant ornament, of selected expression, and of verbal arrangement, which often winds into graceful novelties; though sometimes a little objectionable from its involution. Our language was also indebted to him for the introduction of blank verse. It may be noticed at the same time that blank verse, if it had continued to be written as Surrey wrote it, would have had a cadence too uniform and cautious to be a happy vehicle for the dramatic expression of the passions. Grimoald, the second poet who used it after Lord Surrey, gave it a little more variety of pauses; but it was not till it had been tried as a measure by several composers, that it acquired a bold and flexible modulationt. [* Our father Chaucer hath used the same liberty in feet and measures that the Latinists do use: and whosoever do peruse and well consider his works, he shall find that although his lines are not always of one self-same number of syllables, yet being read by one that hath understanding, the longest verse and that which hath most syllables, will fall (to the ear) correspondent unto that which hath in it fewest syllables, shall be found yet to consist of words that have such natural sound, as may seem equal in length to a verse which hath many more syllables of lighter accents.-GASCOIGNE. But if some Englishe woorde, herein seem sweet, Yf any verse, doe passe on plesant feet, It is a disputed question whether Chaucer's verses be rhythmical or metrical. I believe them to have been written rhythmically, upon the same principle on which Coleridge composed his Christabel-that the number of beats or accentuated syllables in every line should be the same, although the number of syllables themselves might vary. Verse so composed will often be strictly metrical; and because Chaucer's is frequently so, the argument has been raised that it is always so if it be read properly, according to the intention of the author.-SOUTHEY, Cowper, vol. ii. p. 117.] [ Surrey is not a great poet, but he was an influential The genius of Sir Thomas Wyat was refined and elevated like that of his noble friend and contemporary; but his poetry is more sententious and sombrous, and in his lyrical effusions he studied terseness rather than suavity. Besides these two interesting men, Sir Francis Bryan, the friend of Wyat, George Viscount Rochford, the brother of Anna Boleyne, and Thomas Lord Vaux, were poetical courtiers of Henry VIII. To the second of these Ritson assigns, though but by conjecture, one of the most beautiful and plaintive strains of our elder poetry, "O Death, rock me on sleep." In Totell's Collection, the earliest poetical miscellany in our language, two pieces have been ascribed to the same nobleman, the one entitled "The Assault of Cupid," the other beginning, “I loath that I did love," which have been frequently reprinted in modern times. A poem of uncommon merit in the same collection, which is entitled "The restless state of a Lover," and which commences with these lines, "The Sun, when he hath spread his rays, And shew'd his face ten thousand ways,” Lord Sackville's name is the next of any importance in our poetry that occurs after Lord Surrey's. The opinion of Sir Egerton Brydges, with respect to the date of the first appearance of Lord Sackville's "Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates," would place that production, in strictness of chronology, at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. As an edition of the "Mirror," however, appeared in 1559, supposing Lord Sackville not to have assisted in that edition, the first shape of the work must have been cast and composed in the reign of Mary. From the date of Lord Sackville's birth†, it is also apparent, that although he flourished under Elizabeth, and lived even to direct the councils of James, his prime of life must have been spent, and his poetical character formed, in the most disastrous period of the sixteenth century, a period when we may suppose the cloud that was passing over the public mind to have cast a gloom on the complexion of its literary taste. During five years of his life, from twenty-five to thirty, the time when sensibility and reflection meet most has been ascribed by Dr. Nott to Lord Surrey' strongly, Lord Sackville witnessed the horrors but not on decisive evidence. In the reign of Edward VI. the effects of the Reformation became visible in our poetry, by blending religious with poetical enthusiasm, or rather by substituting the one for the other. The national muse became puritanical, and was not improved by the change. Then flourished Sternhold and Hopkins, who, with the best intentions and the worst taste, degraded the spirit of Hebrew psalmody by flat and homely phraseology; and mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, turned into bathos what they found sublime. Such was the love of versifying holy writ at that period, that the Acts of the Apostles were rhymed, and set to music by Christopher Tye *. one; we owe to him the introduction of the Sonnet into our language, and the first taste for the Italian poets.] *To the reign of Edward VI. and Mary may be referred two or three contributors to the "Paradise of Dainty Devices" [1576], who, though their lives extended into the reign of Elizabeth, may exemplify the state of poetical language before her accession. Among these may be placed Edwards, author of the pleasing little piece, "Amantium ira amoris integratio est," and Hunnis, author of the following song. [See p. 34, and Hallam, vol. ii. p. 303,] "When first mine eyes did view and mark Thy beauty fair for to behold, And when mine ears 'gan first to hark The pleasant words that thou me told, of Queen Mary's reign; and I conceive that it is not fanciful to trace in his poetry the tone of an unhappy age. His plan for "The Mirror of Magistrates" is a mass of darkness and despondency. He proposed to make the figure of Sorrow introduce us in Hell to every unfortunate great character of English history. The poet, like Dante, takes us to the gates of Hell; but he does not, like the Italian poet, bring us back again. It is true that those doleful legends were long continued, during a brighter period; but this was only done by an inferior order of poets, and was owing to their admira I would as then I had been free, And when in mind I did consent O flatterer false thou traitor born, [† 1536, if not a little earlier.] tion of Sackville. Dismal as his allegories may be, his genius certainly displays in them considerable power. But better times were at hand. In the reign of Elizabeth, the English mind put forth its energies in every direction, exalted by a purer religion, and enlarged by new views of truth. This was an age of loyalty, adventure, and generous emulation. The chivalrous character was softened by intellectual pursuits, while the genius of chivalry itself still lingered, as if unwilling to depart, and paid his last homage to a warlike and female reign. A degree of romantic fancy remained in the manners and superstitions of the people; and allegory might be said to parade the streets in their public pageants and festivities. Quaint and pedantic as those allegorical exhibitions might often be, they were nevertheless more expressive of erudition, ingenuity, and moral meaning, than they had been in former times. The philosophy of the highest minds still partook of a visionary character. A poetical spirit infused itself into the practical heroism of the age; and some of the worthies of that period seem less like ordinary men, than like beings called forth out of fiction, and arrayed in the brightness of her dreams. They had "High thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy*" The life of Sir Philip Sydney was poetry put into action. The result of activity and curiosity in the public mind was to complete the revival of classical literature, to increase the importation of foreign books, and to multiply translations, from which poetry supplied herself with abundant subjects and materials, and in the use of which she showed a frank and fearless energy, that criticism and satire had not yet acquired power to overawe. Romance came back to us from the southern languages, clothed in new luxury by the warm imagination of the south. The growth of poetry under such circumstances might indeed be expected to be as irregular as it was profuse. The field was open to daring absurdity, as well as to genuine inspiration; and accordingly there is no period in which the extremes of good and bad writing are so abundant. Stanihurst, for instance, carried the violence of nonsense to a pitch of which there is no preceding example. Even late in the reign of Elizabeth, Gabriel Harvey * An expression used by Sir P. Sydney. was aided and abetted by several men of genius in his conspiracy to subvert the versification of the language; and Lyly gained over the court, for a time, to employ his corrupt jargon called Euphuism. Even Puttenham, a grave and candid critic, leaves an indication of crude and puerile taste, when, in a laborious treatise on poetry, he directs the composer how to make verses beautiful to the eye, by writing them" in the shapes of eggs, turbots, fuzees, and lozenges." Among the numerous poets belonging exclusively to Elizabeth's reignt, Spenser stands without a class and without a rival. To proceed from the poets already mentioned to Spenser, is certainly to pass over a considerable number of years, which are important, especially from their including the dates of those early attempts in the regular drama which preceded the appearance of Shakspeare ‡. I shall, therefore turn back again to that period, after having done homage to the name of Spenser. He brought to the subject of "The Fairy Queen," a new and enlarged structure of stanza, elaborate and intricate, but well contrived for sustaining the attention of the ear, and concluding with a majestic cadence. In the other poets of Spenser's age we chiefly admire their language, when it seems casually to advance into modern polish and succinct ness. But the antiquity of Spenser's style has a peculiar charm. The mistaken opinion that Ben Jonson censured the antiquity of the diction in "The Fairy Queen §,” has been cor † Of Shakspeare's career a part only belongs to Elizabeth's reign, and of Jonson's a still smaller. The tragedy of Gorboduc, by Sackville and Norton, was represented in 1561-2. Spenser's Pastorals were published in 1579; and the three first books of The Fairy Queen in 1590. § Ben Jonson applied his remark to Spenser's Pastorals. [Malone was very rash in his correction: "Spenser, in affecting the ancients," says Jonson, "writ no language; yet I would have him read for his matter, but as Virgil read Ennius." (Works, ix. 215.) Jonson's remark is a general censure, not confined to the Shepherd's Calendar alone. "Some," he says in another place, "seek Chaucerisms with us, which were better expunged and banished.” (Works, ix. 220.) Here we conceive is another direct allusion to Spenser. If Spenser's language is the language of his age, who among his contemporaries is equally obsolete în phraseo logy? The letters of the times have none of his words borrowed of antiquity, nor has the printed prose, the poetry contradistinguished from the drama, or the drama, which is always the language of the day. His antiquated |