CHAPTER I THE GREAT ELIZABETHAN PROSE WRITERS WHEN, on the memorable November 17, 1558, the tidings came to Queen predecessor, nothing seemed to indicate the glories, either in arms or arts, of a reign destined to unprecedented glory in both. The last two reigns had been unfortunate; one distracted by the struggles of ambitious ministers seeking to govern in the name of a boy-king; the other infamous for cruelty at home, and shameful for disaster abroad. Even in 1553 the sagacious Venetian envoy had noted the alarm of the English at the alliance of France and Scotland, and the national spirit and resources had since sunk lower still. Economic causes, in that age hard to comprehend and harder to remedy, aggravated the general depression. The great additions made and daily making to the world's stock of the precious metals had Queen Elizabeth From a scarce print by Crispin de Passe after a raised prices, rents, and by consequence taxes, to a degree previously unknown. Henry VIII. had allowed himself to be seduced into the expedient of debasing the currency, a practice continued by his successors, and the state of the finances was now nearly desperate. Since Henry's death, no one with any pretensions tc statesmanship, Cranmer alone excepted, had had a share in the government, except in the most subordinate capacities; the ablest men were merely VOL. II A Political and liter ary outlook at the accession of Elizabeth Influence of the Reforma tion on Elizabethan literature energetic like Northumberland, or merely astute like Gardiner. The blight on politics had extended to literature. More and Surrey and Wyatt seemed to have left no successors; at Elizabeth's accession her dominions contained hardly one author of recognised eminence. From every point of view the vessel of State seemed drifting on the rocks, but a breeze was to spring up unexpectedly, and bear her back to prosperous voyage on the open sea. Not less manifestly than in the day of the Armada, afflavit Deus. The key to the marvellous change which was to ensue lies in the two watchwords we have already found so potent, Reformation and Renaissance. Nothing Launceston Church From a drawing by F. Lyson is more undeniably evident than the happy fate of the countries which embraced the Reformation in comparison with those which rejected it, except the further observation, less agreeable to the reformers, that they were rather indebted for this felicity to their rulers than to their preachers. Wherever the principles of the Reformation were adopted by the sovereign, the Reformation triumphed; wherever, with the single exception of Scotland, more apparent than real, the monarch sided with the Church, the Reformation was crushed. By virtually adhering to the Reformation Henry VIII. had saved the country from a civil war as terrible as that which, at Elizabeth's accession, was rendering the hereditary enemy, France, a cipher in European politics. At the same moment the Reformation gained the upper hand in Scotland, and the alliance of France and Scotland which had occasioned English statesmen so much anxiety fell away of itself. Thus were the two great sources of apprehension removed as though by enchantment, while at the same time England was, as it were, placed under bonds to adhere steadily to the Reformation as a condition of the friendship of Scotland, and the sympathies of French Huguenots, Dutch Protestants, and whoever else was helping to ward off the attacks which she might apprehend from continental powers. The principles of the Reformation do not here concern us, otherwise than in their connection with literature: but it is manifest that the mere assumption of a hostile attitude towards so much that had for centuries passed as REFORMATION AND RENAISSANCE 3 beyond discussion must have been a most potent intellectual stimulus, and provocative of mental activity in every direction. the Renais sance Nor was the influence of the Renaissance less extensive or less salutary. influence of It had not, as in Italy, produced any development of the arts; no Englishman of the period is remembered as architect, painter, or sculptor. When a great artist was wanted, a Torregiano had to be imported from Italy, or a Holbein from Germany. Even in the thirteenth century the magnificent statuary in Wells Cathedral had in all probability been executed by Italian sculptors: what native art could perform in Henry VIII.'s time may be seen in the rude though vigorous exterior sculpture of Launceston Church. Just as little was the reaction towards classical paganism, so conspicuous in Italy, visible in a country united to the ancient world by no affinities of blood, and remote from the silent preaching of ruined temples and monuments of ancient worship. The influence of the Renaissance in England was mainly educational, it did not immediately create a school of literature, but prepared the way for a new school uniting the best elements of the Renaissance school with the romantic. It had thoroughly permeated the upper classes of society, and transformed the fighting aristocracy of the Middle Ages, with just enough culture to appreciate the songs of a minstrel, into a society of polite After the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery and accomplished ladies and gentlemen. The high standard of cultivation attained in Elizabeth's time by the nobility and upper class of gentry is attested by a witness above suspicion, the simple and sober-minded William Harrison, author of the invaluable description of England published along with Holinshed's Chronicles in 1577. He is not backward to stigmatise the vices of the court; but of its merits he says: 4 Sir Nicholas Bacon This further is not to be omitted to the praise of both sorts and sexes of our courtiers here in England, that there are very few of them which have not their use and skill of sundry speeches, besides an excellent vein of writing before time not regarded. Troth it is a rare thing with us now to hear of a courtier which hath but his own language. And to say how many gentlemen and ladies there are that beside sound knowledge of the Greek and Latin tongue are thereto no less skilful in the Spanish, Italian, and French, or in some one of them, it resteth not in me, sith I am persuaded that as the noblemen and gentlemen do surmount in this behalf, so these come very little or nothing at all behind them in their parts, which industry God continue, and accomplish that which otherwise is wanting. The "excellent vein of writing before time not regarded" was when Harrison wrote on the point of overflowing from literary exercises and private correspondence into published literature. Style had begun to be sought as a distinction in the days of Henry VIII., and by Harrison's time the conception of literary merit apart from worth of matter was fully formed, and even carried to extravagant lengths by Lyly and his school. Spenser, Raleigh, and Hooker were then about twenty-four, Bacon sixteen. Shakespeare thirteen. Du Bartas, writing about the same time, could find no Birth of illustrious men near the accession of Elizabeth Namnich and changed its name to YORK HOUSE in the reign of Queen one to extol in contemporary English literature except the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, whom Nash indeed names among "the chief pillars of our English speech," but who does not appear to have composed anything except speeches and legal arguments. English prose had long been capable of expressing the highest thoughts, but the high thinkers had delayed to appear, and its resources, even in our own land, were comparatively unappreciated. Beyond the British Isles it was an entire dead letter. So, indeed, it was long to remain but the reproach was about to be transferred from the barrenness of native genius. to the stolidity, or rather perhaps the incuriousness, of foreign criticism. No foreigner, at the end of the sixteenth century, had the smallest idea that in the middle period of that century, within twelve years of each other (15521564), six men had been born in England, two of whom greatly surpassed, while the others fully rivalled, the genius, and in the long run the fame, of any OUTBURST OF GENIUS UNDER ELIZABETH 5 European contemporary, Cervantes alone excepted. It is remarkable that this great period is exactly bisected by the accession of the great Queen, who cannot, indeed, be reckoned among the especially munificent, or the especially discerning, patrons of literature, but without whom it may well be doubted whether Shakespeare would have written, or Bacon meditated, or Spenser sung. Circumstances, rather than deliberate intention, made her and her country the standard-bearers of the cause of freedom in Europe, and the most efficient instruments of the choice which Europe was called upon to make between the medieval and the modern spirit. The perception of issues so momentous could in that age be but dim; yet its influence is shown by the vast development of men's conceptions, and the sudden outburst of original genius. Retracing the period, we ourselves are distinctly conscious of an atmosphere never breathed before, of a great elevation of ideals, public and private, and at the same time of tangible objects of ambition tending in the direction of national glory and aggrandisement. This alliance of the practical and the romantic is the special charm of the age, and not merely in England; but it was the peculiar happiness of England to be contending in the cause of the world as well as her own. Something not very dissimilar was seen at a later day when she fought single-handed against Napo Lord Burghley After a portrait attributed to Mark Gheeraedts leon, and this period also was signalised by an extraordinary outburst of original genius. writers It is, nevertheless, a remarkable fact that this later outbreak The four was confined to poetry and its ally fiction. Apart from Scott and Miss great prose Austen, not a single prose writer deserving to be accounted great appeared in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, while the blaze of poetical genius, leaving Shakespeare and Milton out of the question, surpassed everything that England had previously known. It was far otherwise in the reign of Elizabeth, whose highest literary glory indeed is to have given the world its greatest dramatic poet, but whose four great prose writers would alone have rendered it illustrious in the history of letters. Bacon and Raleigh's most important productions belong to the reign of James, but the men had not only grown but ripened as Elizabethans. Hooker and Sidney fall entirely within Queen Elizabeth's period. To treat these |