A History of English Literature

n presses on historians of a limited and definite period, whether of literary or of any other history. That difficulty lies in the discussion and decision of the question of

nces of the kind to connect the present volume with its fo

h vestiges of it long survived, and in the form of a reluctance to be known to write for money, may be found even within the confines of the nineteenth. The humbler means and lesser public of the English booksellers have saved English literature from the bewildering multitude of pirated editions, printed from private and not always faithful manuscript copies, which were for so long the despair of the editors of many French classics. But the manuscript copies themselves survive to a certain extent, and in the more sumptuous and elaborate editions of our poets (such as, for instance, Dr. Grosart's Donne) what they have yielded may be studied with some interest. Moreover, they have occasionally preserved for us work nowhere else to be obtained, as, for instance, in the remarkable folio which has supplied Mr. Bullen with so much of his invaluable collection of Old Plays. At the early period of Tottel's Miscellany it would appear that the very idea of publication in print had hardly occurred to many writers' minds. When the book appeared, both its main contributors, Surrey and Wyatt, had been long dead, as well as others (Sir Francis Bryan and Anne Boleyn's unlucky brother, George Lord Rochford) who are supposed to be represented. The short Printer's Address to the Reader gives absolutely no intelligence as to the circumstances of the publication, the person responsible for the editing, or the authority which the editor and printer may have had for their inclusion of different authors' work. It is only a theory, though a sufficiently plausible one, that the editor was Nicholas Grimald, chaplain to Bishop Thirlby of Ely, a Cambridge man who some ten years before had been incorporated at Oxford and had been elected to a Fellowship at Merton College. In Grimald's or Grimoald's connection with the book there was cert

was born in 1503, entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1515, became a favourite of Henry VIII., received important diplomatic appointments, and died in 1542. Lord Henry Howard was born (as is supposed) in 1517, and became Earl of Surrey by courtesy (he was not, the account of his judicial murder says, a lord of Parliament) at eight years old. Very little is really known of his life, and his love for "Geraldine" was made the basis of a series of fictions by Nash half a century after his death. He cannot have been more than thirty when, in the Reign of Terror towards the close of Henry VI

her hand, with all his vigour, represents the English tendency to prosaic doggerel. Whether Wyatt and his younger companion deliberately had recourse to Italian example in order to avoid these two dangers it would be impossible to say. But the example was evidently before them, and the result is certainly such an avoidance. Nevertheless both, and especially Wyatt, had a great deal to learn. It is perfectly evident that neither had any theory of English prosody before him. Wyatt's first sonnet displays the completest indifference to quantity, not merely scanning "harber," "banner," and "suffer" as iambs (which might admit of some defence), but making a

of his love complaineth that the dr

am, according

nce, or else a

etness, make

s of thy false

ct in such a

not her into t

ite to live, my c

pest her delig

, the sprite

h' one, the ot

s! did it not

urn to leap

as at wish, co

reams do turn t

n of elision for slur or hiatus (found in Chaucerian MSS.) passed l

but some of his short poems in short lines recover rhy

Elizabethan period-do we find evidence of the want of ear, or the want of command of language, which makes Wyatt's versification frequently disgusting. Surrey has even no small mastery of what may be called the architecture of verse, the valuing of cadence in successive lines so as to produce a concerted piece and not a

r she knew of his love kept h

aw my lady

ck, in cold no

new my grief was

ncies driveth

f I do the th

es did wound my

e mine eyes mo

knew I did her

esses clad al

oks that hid[e

ains which I d

cornet gove

in winter's b

ts of her fair l

his. I have ventured to change "hid" to "hides" in line 10, and to alter the punctuation in line 13. If the reader takes "that" in line 5 as = "so that,"

: in winter's b

d a reference to line 2 will show the real meaning. The h

bsence of her lover

that have your pl

me take a place, and

eir lords do set

skills them not what

e hath bound by

ose good deserts none

again and set y

sorrows great, no tong

of the first and Alexandrine line. It is the Alexandrine which Mr. Browning has imitated in Fifine, not

] night; the sou

earth the wear

aging seas, were

rs had half their

: beasts and fow

t in the broad

he bushy thick

leep by silenc

cares, mindless

pirit of thi

at on no sleep

s rest enter i

e: love doth rise

ith swelling st

found in text seems better away; [] that somethi

Thic

not common, and is pro

ery inferior to Wyatt and Surrey. Grimald, the supposed editor, though his verse must not, of course, be

d, you have min

wherefore you

to use a rejuvenated heroic, either in couplets or in various combined forms, the simplest of which is the elegiac quatrain of alternately rhyming lines, and the most complicated the sonnet; while between them various stanzas more or less suggested by Italian are to be ranked. Of this thing there has been and will be no end as long as English poetry lasts. The attempt to arrange the old and apparently almost indigenous "eights and sixes" into fourteener lines and into alternate fourteeners and Alexandrines, seems to have commended itself even more to contemporary taste, and, as we have seen and shall see, it was eagerly followed for more than half a century. But it was not destined to succeed. These long lines, unless very sparingly used, or with the ground-foot changed from the iambus to the anap?st or the trochee, are not in keeping with the genius of English poetry, as even the great examples of Chapman's Homer and the Polyolbion may be said to have sh

) the most "introspective" in Europe. There had of course been love poetry before, but its convention had been a convention of impersonality. It now became exactly the reverse. The lover sang less his joys than his sorrows, and he tried to express those sorrows and their effect on him in the most personal way he could. Although allegory still retained a strong hold on the national taste, and was yet to receive its greatest poetical expression in The Fa?rie Queene, it was allegory of quite a different kind from that which in the Roman de la Rose had taken Europe captive, and had since dominated European poetry in all departments, and especially in the department of love-making. "Dangier" and his fellow-phantoms fled before the dawn of the new poetry in England, and the depressing influe

ed by a certain William Baldwin, and for nearly half a century it received additions and alterations from various respectable hacks of letters; but the "Induction" and the "Complaint of Buckingham" which Sackville furnished to it in 1559, though they were not published till four years later, completely outweigh all the rest in value. To my own fancy the fact that Sackville was (in what proportion is disputed) also author of Gorboduc (see Chapter III.) adds but little to its interest. His contributions to The Mirror for Magistrates contain the best poetry written in the English language between Chaucer and Spenser, and are most certainly the originals or at least the models of some of Spenser's finest work. He has had

common then as it is uncommon now (except in the cases of royal princes and a few persons of difficult and inconstant taste), he moved to Cambridge. Then he entered the Inner Temple, married early, travelled, became noted in literature, was made L

the melancholy narrative common in poets for many years before. But the poetical value of the whole is extraordinary. The two constituents of that value, the formal and the material, are represented with a singular equality of development. There is nothing here of Wyatt's floundering prosody, nothing of the well-intentioned doggerel in which Surrey himself indulges and in which his pupils simply revel. The cadences of the verse are perfect, the imagery fresh and sharp, the presentation of nature singularly original, when it is compared with the battered copies of the poets with whom Sackville must have been most familia

e to the horro

kingdoms, and th

s throne where

places, and t

rieks, and sundr

sobs, the deep

all, resounding

babes, and her

ds their sorry

uiltless slain,

elves when noth

s of sorrows he

ears, sobs, shri

s! it was a

h Sorrow, prin

t on top of fo

ow; like wretch

own, that stayed

the thing that

ght: and what th

e to kesar, kin

ave preferred for three reasons. First, it has been less often quoted; secondly, its subject is a kind of commonplace, and, the

badness of bad English metre so well as that application. It is, alongside of their great merits, the distinguishing fault of Wyatt eminently, of Surrey to a less degree, and of all the new school up to Spenser more or less, that they neglect the quantity test too freely; it is the merit of Sackville that, holding on in this respect to the good school of Chaucer, he observes it. You will find no "jawbreakers" in Sackville, no attempts to adjust English words on a Procrustean bed of independent quantification. He has not indeed the manifold music of Spenser-it would be unreasonable to expect that he should have it. But his

er the sketches of external scenery in these brief essays of his, or the embodiments of internal thought in the pictures of Sorrow and the other allegorical wights, are most striking. It is perfectly clear that Thomas Sackville had, in the first place, a poetical eye to see, within as well as without, the objects of poetical presentment; in the second place, a poetical vocabulary in which to clothe the results of his seeing; and in the third place, a poetical ear by aid of which to arrange his language in the musical co-ordination necessary to poetry. Wyatt had been too much to seek in the last; Surrey had not been very obviously furnished with the first; and all three were not

s already referred to seems to have prevented them from cultivating anything better. Yet the pains which were spent upon translation during this time were considerable, and undoubtedly had much to do with strengthening and improving the language. The formal part of poetry became for the first time a subject of study resulting in the Instructions of Gascoigne, and in the noteworthy critical works which will be mentioned in the next chapter; w

d fought abroad, and took part in the famous festival at Kenilworth. His work is, as has been said, considerable, and is remarkable for the number of first attempts in English which it contains. It has at least been claimed for him (though careful students of literary history know that these attributions are always rather hazardous) that he wrote the first English prose comedy (The Supposes, a version of Ariosto), the first regular verse satire (The Steel Glass), the first prose tale (a version from Bandello), the first translation from Greek tragedy (Jocasta), and the first critical essay (the above-mentioned Notes of Instruction). Most of these things, it will be seen, were merely adaptations of foreign originals; but they cert

laby, as

y bring their

by can I

y as can

y they stil

e not much

wanton b

be stilled

aby, my you

time to

d age and

e hav'n wit

y then, you

by content

e quails and

d so beguil

aby, my ga

n were to g

glass may

e furrows

by then wi

by your lo

face, nor be

oft with va

aby, my w

rule now rei

oo late I f

have thy fa

y now take

by thy dou

o this, if

hall obey

little books, which were numerous, and written both in verse and prose, by alliterative titles playing on his own name, such as Churchyard's Chips, Churchyard's Choice, and so forth. He was

extremely uncertain. Besides a book on Falconry and numerous translations (to which, like all the men of his school and day, he was much addicted), he wrote a good many occasional poems, trying even blank verse. Barnabe Googe, a Lincolnshire man, and a member of both universities, appears to have been born in 1540, was employed in Ireland, and died in 1594. He was kin to the Cecils, and Mr. Arber has recovered some rather interesting details abo

hat you did

r your

helm a bra

to r

you to ha

hath my fei

is have don

ind t

uest you

ancy

loving hea

s all that

lowering heart

olour

length a l

e be

y branch ag

hange for yo

's force c

ranch

hange of lo

iendshi

ne own, and

live and l

y think my

recom

g of the t

ll de

weather th

d winter sp

e meet, to

on my

crave an

] Faith

we both a

you, and y

Refu

rt for "

ngth entitled Cupido Conquered, which Spenser may also have seen. Googe has more sustained power than Turberville, but is much inferior to him in command of metre and in lyrical swing. I

aged

h thy ho

till p

the pain

ppy

obtained s

av'st

rs pale

ove

thy wear

est t

hath labou

ed (later Five Hundred) Points of Husbandry (1557-1573). But he has some piquancy of phrase, and is particularly noticeable fo

a century being very large indeed), and all or many of them were contributors of commendatory verses to each other's work and of pieces of different descriptions to the poetical miscellanies of the time. Of these miscellanies and of the chief translations from the classics some little notice may be taken because of the great part which both played in the poetical education of England. It has been said that almost all the original poets were also translators. Thus Googe Englished, among other things, the Zodiacus Vit? of Marcellus Palingenius, the Regnum Papisticum of Kirchmayer, the Four Books of Husbandry of Conrad Heresbach, and the Proverbs of the Marquis of Santillana; but some of the translators w

combry of Harvey and the felicitous impertinence of Nash have sometimes diverted attention from the actual state of the case. William Webbe (a very sober-minded person with taste enough to admire the "new poet," as he calls Spenser) makes elaborate attempts not merely at hexameters, which, though only a curiosity, are a possible curiosity in English, but at Sapphics which could never (except as burlesque) be tolerable. Sidney, Spenser, and others gave serious heed to the scheme of substituting classical metres without rhyme for indigenous metres with rhyme. And unless the two causes which brought this about are constantly kept in mind, the reason of it will not be understood. It was undoubtedly the weakness of contemporary English verse which reinforced the general Renaissance admiration for the classics; nor must it be

artly because it is, though a caricature, yet a very instructive caricature of the tendencies and literary ideas of the time. This is Richard Stanyhurst's translation of the first four books of the ?neid, first printed at Leyden in the summer of 1582, and reprinted in London a

h part of Holinshed's History, he has always been regarded by the madder sort of Hibernians as a traitor to the nation. His father was Recorder of Dublin, and he himself, having been born about 1547, was educated at University College, Oxford, and

agin, that thee passage was nothing craggye, in as much as M. Phaere hath broken thee ice before me: Thee meaner clarcks wyl suppose my trauail in theese heroical verses too carrye no great

are given literatim to show S

f water of a swayne, or elles al is not wurth a beane. Good God what a frye of wooden rythmours dooth swarme in stacioners shops, who neauer enstructed in any grammar schoole, not atayning too thee paaringes of thee Latin or Greeke tongue, yeet like blind bayards rush on forward, fostring theyre vayne conceits wyth such ouerweening silly follyes, as they reck not too bee condemned of thee learned for ignorant, so they bee

e prevalent mania for English hexameters, and

soom night shade quite

cing, eke against T

soure deiti

laynely thee castl

ings quit topsy

ntayn thee tree d

Coridon rusticks wi

inced, far chopt doo

ing thee branches

ng yt grunts, as

efal, from stock vnt

l lyk a wayward

ing with her howling th

a hopelessly wrong point of view. It never occurred to them that English left to itself could equal Greek or Latin. They simply endeavoured, with the utmost pains and skill, to drag English up to the same level as these unapproachable languages by forcing it into the same moulds which Greek and Latin had endured. Properly speaking we ought not to laugh at them. They were carrying out in literature what the older books of arithmetic call "The Rule of False,"-t

much to the historian of English poetry. Its popularity shows what was expected; its contents show what, at any rate at the date of its first appearance, was given. It is possible that the doleful contents of The Mirror for Magistrates (which was reprinted six times during our present period, and which busied itself wholly with what magistrates should avoid, and with the sorrowful departing out of this life of the subjects) may have had a strong effect on Edwards, though one at least of his contributors, W. Hunnis, was a man of mould. It was followed in 1578 by A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, suppos

of love," is one of the most charming things anywhere to be found. So is, after many years, the poem attributed to John Wooton in England's Helicon (the best of the whole set), beginning "Her eyes like shining lamps," so is the exquisite "Come, little babe" from The Arbour of Amorous Devices, so are dozens and scores more which may be found in their proper places, and many of them in Mr. Arber's admirable English Garner. The spirit of poetry, rising slowly, was rising surely in the England of these years: no man knew exactly where it would appear, and the greatest poets were-for their praises of themselves and their fellows are quite unconscious and simple-as ignorant as others. The first thirty years of the reign were occu