while in Italy, not only Machiavelli and Guicciardini, but a body of able and dispassionate writers-Varchi, Nardi, Segni, and Pitti-were adding fresh links to the great chain of Florentine history and forming the greatest historical literature in the world. § 6. The growth of the Universities produced numerous works on philosophy and education. At Oxford and Cambridge the Tudor foundations are the most celebrated and learned of all the colleges. Lady Margaret Beaufort, Philosophi mother of Henry VII, founded Christ's College in ture, etc. Cambridge, and St. John's College owes its origin to cal litera WILSON (1526?-1581). the terms of her will. Her son put the noble Lancastrian foundation of King's College in the same University on a sound footing; while her grandson, Henry VIII, not only filched from Wolsey the glory of founding Christ Church at Oxford, but amalgamated two large and several small medieval colleges at Cambridge into the present Trinity College. Add to this Bishop Foxe's munificent foundation of Corpus Christi in Oxford, the educational activity of Fisher at Cambridge, the foundation of professorships of Divinity, Greek, Hebrew, and Law in either University, and, finally, the tremendous influence exercised by Erasmus on English scholarship-and then we shall understand what the revival of learning in England implied. Learned works were, of course, innumerable, and we may select only a few. THOMAS WILSON'S treatises on Logic and Rhetoric, published in 1551 and 1553, must be regarded as works far superior in originality and literary correctness to THOMAS anything that had hitherto appeared in England or elsewhere with relation to so important a subject. The writings of SIR JOHN CHEKE, Provost of King's College, Cambridge, a sound classical scholar, tended to the regulation and improvement of prose. He is remembered as the professor who "taught Cambridge and King SIR JOHN Edward Greek." It must not be forgotten, however, (1514-1557). that, before Cheke's time, Erasmus had resided and lectured in Cambridge, and that Sir John merely carried on his work with enormous success. Wilson's and Cheke's excellent precepts concerning the avoidance of pedantry and affectation in prose, and, in particular, their ridicule of the prevalent vice of alliteration and the exaggerated subtlety of antithesis, were exemplified by the sober propriety of their own writings. To the same category belongs ROGER ASCHAM, the pupil of Cheke and the learned and ROGER affectionate tutor of Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. (1515-1568). His treatise entitled The Schoolmaster (1570), and his book Toxophilus (1545), devoted to the encouragement of the national use of the bow, are works remarkable for their reason and pregnancy of thought. Their style is plain, vigorous, and dignified, and would do honour to any epoch of literature. The subject of Toxophilus-a project which has been proved CHEKE ASCHAM Influence of Castiglione on English literature. practicable by our modern rifle is an instance of the courtly Italian spirit that, with the decline of feudalism, found its way into English literature-the tendency to regard every accomplishment from the gentleman's rather than from the soldier's point of view. This change society and of opinion was effected, for the most part, by Baldessar Castiglione's dialogue of The Courtier, written before 1518. One can hardly estimate too highly the European influence of this delightful treatise, the most humorous and readable of all the prose works published during the Golden Age of Italian literature. Professor Courthope has treated this influence in literature with a brilliant completeness in the second volume of his History of English Poetry. It merely remains for us to observe that the use of the treatise and the dialogue is an invariable sign of this same spirit, which, with all its judicious scholarship, aimed at a certain grace and attractiveness of outward form. JOHN $ 7. Although in this period the popular literature of England naturally took, from the force of contemporary circumstances, a polemical, controversial, and, above all, a religious tone, the poetry of the time is nevertheless most important and, in certain cases, engrossing. CerPoetry. tainly no form of literature shows the mark of so rapid, yet so distinct, a transition. It is a long backward step from Ascham and the Tudor scholars to the reign of Edward IV. Somewhere about the beginning of that reign was born JOHN SKELTON, who lived until 1529. This rude genius was a Norfolk man, and is supposed to have acquired (1460-1529). Considerable classical learning at Cambridge, where he graduated in 1484. He became tutor to Henry VIII in later years, and it is interesting to speculate how far his influence directed the mind and will of that versatile sovereign. Erasmus, a profound admirer of Prince Henry's juvenile sagacity, referred to Skelton, in a Latin dedication to the prince, as "the light and glory of British letters." The laureateship to which Skelton incessantly alludes in his rhymes, was simply, as he says himself, a degree conferred on him at Oxford and Cambridge as a certificate of poetical proficiency, and seems to imply no office at Court. In 1498 he took Holy Orders, and soon afterwards became rector of Diss in Norfolk. So far as we know, he was by no means a model ecclesiastic; his writings alone are enough to show us his contempt for even the superficial decencies of his time. Pre-eminently a coarse and powerful satirist, he used his pen in attacking certain religious and political abuses, and assailed Cardinal Wolsey with an intemperate scurrility. Falling under peril of the minister's wrath, he found protection until his death with Abbot Islip of Westminster. He is buried in St. Margaret's Church at Westminster. His poetical productions may be divided into two categories, the serious and the comic or satiric. The first, consisting of eulogistic poems addressed to patrons and of allegorical disquisitions of the regular type, may be dismissed at once. Although learned and sometimes energetic in style, these pieces are essentially stiff and pedantic. Nevertheless they were probably much admired in the infancy of English literature, when borrowed conceptions were preferred to original ideas, and learning, on account of its rarity, was valued much more highly than invention. But in his comic poems and satires Skelton struck out a very original, if not a very Skelton's comic poetry high, path in literature, in which he had no prede- and satire. cessor and has found no English equal. In spite of their brutality of execution, his furious onslaughts upon Wolsey find very little to compare with them in the history of invective. Their audacity, considering Wolsey's position at Court, is inexplicable; and their apparent impunity, in that age of absolute monarchies and drastic edicts, fills us with amazement. Wolsey is said, however, to have imprisoned Skelton more than once. They are written in a peculiar, short, doggerel measure, the rhymes of which, recurring incessantly and sometimes repeated with an extraordinary violence and rapidity, form an admirable vehicle for unrestrained abuse conveyed in the most familiar and vulgar idiom. Skelton perfectly described and exemplified the character of his "breathlesse rhymes " when he said : All that is coarse, quaint, odd, familiar in the speech of the commonest of the people, combined with a command of learned and pedantic imagery, a wealth of expression almost equal to the exhaustless vocabulary of Rabelais, is to be found in Skelton; and his writings deserve to be studied, were it only as an abundant source of popular English. His freedom of speech and his general archaism give him a little of the interest of Villon; but, while his life was a little more reputable than the career of that scoundrelly rhymer, he had literally nothing of Villon's exquisite poetical genius. His most celebrated poem is the strange extravaganza called The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng, a miniature epic in which he describes Tunning the attractions of a certain ale-wife's brew, and of Elynour, the furious eagerness of her female neighbours to Rummyng." taste it. Dame Rummyng herself is said to have been a real person who kept an ale-house at Leatherhead in Surrey. Elynour, her establishment, and her thirsty customers, are painted with extraordinary humour under an immense variety of coarse, homely, and vividly realistic images. Of "The the humour, knowledge of low life, and force of imagination in the piece, there can be but one opinion. Another very strange "The Book of the the Church. pleasantry is The Book of the Sparrow, a humorous dirge upon the death of a tame sparrow, the favourite of a young lady who was a pupil in a Norwich convent. The bird was killed by a cat; and, after devoting this cat in particular, and the whole race of cats in general, to eternal punishment, the poet proceeds to describe a funeral service performed by all the birds for the repose of Philip Sparrow's soul. In this part of the poem Skelton takes occasion to parody the various parts of the funeral Skelton and ritual a fact which serves to indicate his religious, or, rather, his anti-religious, standpoint. The mixture of Latin and French words with his English, used freely here and in his other works, heightens the comic effects. His purely satiric productions, apart from the attacks on Wolsey, are principally directed against the friars, and against the Scottish king and nation, over whose defeat at Flodden the railing satirist exults most ungenerously. Those who are curious to peruse his diatribes against Wolsey, will find them in the poems entitled Why Come Ye not to Court? Colin Clout, and Speak, Parrot. The reason of his enmity to the Cardinal is not clear; but it was of a growth subsequent to Wolsey's rise to power, for the Book of the Three Fools contains eulogistic verses addressed to the popular minister. Skelton's egoism reaches its climax in his Garland of Laurel, a poem in praise of himself, which was written at Sheriff Hutton Castle, near York, before 1520. STEPHEN 1530). Two almost contemporary poets deserve mention for their influence upon the intellectual character of their age, although their writings are fallen into neglect. STEPHEN HAWES was a native of Suffolk and a member (d. before of the University of Oxford, and most of his life was spent as groom of the king's chamber. Warton described him as the "only writer deserving the name of a poet in the reign of Henry VII." This, however, is not great praise, and his work, a somewhat colourless attempt to carry on the traditions of feudal literature, will not be found very absorbing. Hawes was a student of chivalrous poetry and prose, and depended for the leading ideas of his Pastime of Pleasure (1506) upon such books as Lydgate's Temple of Glass and Sir Thomas Malory's version of the Arthurian legends. His sources were very numerous, and his work is remarkabie rather for its wholesale and laboured borrowing than for any originality of its own. The last of the allegorical poets was ALEXANDER BARCLAY, a Benedictine monk, ALEXANDER and, after the dissolution, a secular priest. (1475?-1552). was not improbably a Scotsman, but his life was spent in England, and he was at one of the Universities. While a secular priest of Ottery Saint Mary in Devon, BARCLAY He he made his translation of Sebastian Brandt's Ship of Fools (1508), which, although a somewhat dull and ponderous satire, had obtained, in those days of rare books, an immense celebrity. Brandt was a learned civilian of Basel, whose humour took the shape of a contempt for all kinds of ineptness in the shape of vice and crime. The Ship of Fools, which had appeared in 1494, soon received a companion in Erasmus' Praise of Folly (1513). Barclay's version was an excellent paraphrase of the unreadable satire, while his stanza was flexible and far more harmonious than the rough rhymes of his predecessors. We feel that we are gradually approaching the days of the Italianised stanza and its rhythmic melody. All Barclay's original work, including his Virgilian Eclogues, adapted from Æneas Sylvius and Mantuanus, is rough and strongly allegorical; his tone is didactic, and his morality is a great contrast to the grossness of Skelton, whom he appears to have hated. He was for some time a monk of Ely. After the dissolution he held the livings of Much Badew in Essex, and Wookey in Somerset. He died soon after his appointment to the rectory of All Hallows, Lombard Street, and is buried at Croydon. SIR THOMAS WYATT § 8. We are now come to the significant names of Surrey and Wyatt, the pair of friends whose poetry sounds the first full note of a new era. They stand at the point where allegory and chivalrous romance ceases to have any meaning, and the elaborate involution of Pagan and (1503-1542). semi-Christian mythology disappears before a more correct style-the style of the Court and the ladies' bower. The form of poetry, too, is changed: the epic is set aside for the sonnet. Its spirit is equally altered: love-songs take the place of moral disquisitions. SIR THOMAS WYATT, of Allington Castle, in Kent, was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, proceeding to his Master's His life. degree in 1520. His acquaintance with foreign literature certainly arose from a period spent in travel. But from 1525 onwards, with the exception of his embassy to Spain in 1537, the chief part of his life was spent at Court. He was the personal friend of Henry VIII, who delighted in his caustic witticisms, and of Cromwell, whose novel and radical opinions he certainly shared; and he was one of Wolsey's numerous enemies. It is reasonable to suppose that, as a perfect courtier he spent a good deal of his time in making love, and his love-poems belong to this second and happy period of his life. In 1536 he was imprisoned in the Tower. There is a story, founded on the title of his verses To his Love called Anna, that he had an intrigue with Anne Boleyn, and that this led to his incarceration; but all we know for certain is that he was the victim of a Court cabal, headed by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Next year, however, he was knighted, and sent to Spain as am |