mitted through the Latin poets of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, who had caught a faint tone of the muse of Homer and Virgil, ere it was lost for ages to western Europe in the crash of the Roman empire. The authors and dates of many of the Saxon remains are unknown. The state of society and manners which ensued in Europe after the establishment of the northern nations, in its southern and western provinces, and the form which the existing Christianity, or that which was called so, had assumed, produced in Europe classes of Literature totally dissimilar in scope, spirit, and character, from those which had subsisted in the pre-Christian period in the nations of the east and west. The traditions of the Church, the scholastic philosophy, founded on that of Aristotle, which had been corrupted and filtered through Arabian translations, - these influences and others conspired to give a new complexion to literature, in various departments. The national associations of the northern tribes, with the faint light that fell on the minds of writers, from the classical remains preserved in the monasteries, coloured in particular the literature of poetry. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries accordingly display the progress of metrical romance, the subjects being derived from ancestral traditions, or from the legends of Greece and Italy. The Provençal poetry of the south, and the Norman poetry of the north of France, gave in these directions the tone to the literature of western Europe. The crusades opened up a new field of association and subject, and these two centuries accordingly exhibit the perfection of romantic ballad poetry. The minstrels constituted a regular order, and princes delighted to honour the votaries of the gay science; but in the age of Chaucer this taste had begun to decline, or rather had assumed a more practical shape in other channels. The romances were gradually surrendered to prose; the Italian literature received an impulse from the Provençal (especially when the seat of the papacy had been removed to Avignon), and it shone with sudden and perfect lustre in the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The grand epic complexion of the Italian poetry contrasts powerfully with the meagre and minute poetised chronicles of the north-west. Chaucer, in the latter half of the fourteenth century-though with no models in his own language, except the rhyming chronicles and the Norman metrical romances, many of which must be counted English products though written in French-had the of english poetry. xxi benefit of the better Italian models, and of the extended knowledge which the intercourse of nations, the results of the crusades, the progress of Italian commerce, and the wars of Edward III. had communicated to western Europe. Hence his writings display a vast fund of varied knowledge, beyond that of his ruder predecessors; his mind expatiates with greater ease in a more expanded field, his language is enriched with a wealthier fund of epithet, picture, and description than is to be found in the lumbering tedium of the romances that preceded and followed him in English literature. Whatever be the external circumstances which act upon genius, they may act on it without immediately affecting the mass of the people, on whom influences work more slowly than on the rapidly-germinating mind of genius. Thus, although Chaucer displayed the most varied forms of poetry, in all the sprightliness of Italian vivacity, in an enriched tongue and in melodious verse; although he must have poured on the literary mind of his day a multitude of new ideas and images,-yet his coming was followed by no corresponding improvement in poetry: Warton's comparison of Chaucer to "a genial day in spring," whose promise of sunny skies is so frequently broken by succeeding cheerless weather, is well known. Campbell, besides noticing the deficiency of patronage of literature in England,—for we had no Nicholas Fifths nor Medicis,— hints at the stern repression of novelty in the persecution of the Lollards, as one of the causes that blighted the poetic blossom; and there may be something in this opinion, for the poets, and among others Chaucer himself, were dangerous satirical enemies to the clergy. The Church had more than once looked dark on the minstrels, and they retaliated in no measured strains; witness "The Vision of Piers Ploughman" by Langland, Chaucer's contemporary. That the clergy were sagacious in their hostility, may be seen in the results of Skelton's and of Sir David Lyndsay's writings in a future century, and of Butler's, in a still later period. The Wars of the Roses distracted the island during the latter portion of the succeeding century, and England retrograded in literature far behind the continental nations. The contemporaries and successors of Chaucer are hardly to be named in distant comparison with him; Gower himself, who, though conjectured to be younger, claims the honour of having been 1 Laurence Minot, an author discovered by Tyrwhitt, who displayed remarkable vigour of thought and excellence of language, was a contemporary of Chaucer. He wrote poems in celebration of the victories of Edward III. Chaucer's master in poetry, is immensely inferior in grasp and dignity to his alleged pupil. He wrote in French and Latin, but his greatest work, his Confessio Amantis, is in English. Gower's latest editor, Dr Reinhold Pauli, remarks that "in 1362 parliament was first opened by a speech in English, and the Courts of Law subsequently adopted the same language; Chaucer had already begun to write, and Gower, whose earlier works had been composed in French and Latin, used his mother tongue." He was followed by Occleve and Lydgate, both inferior to Gower, but helping, like him, to fix the English language, and extend its popularity. The reign of Henry VII. presents a promise although a feeble one, of improvement. The vigour and prudence of that wise but unamiable prince, had secured his throne and crushed every effort of the vanquished House of York to regain their position. The nation, notwithstanding the long family contest for the crown, had yet prospered in the advance of its industry and wealth. Printing,' during the conclusion of the "Rose" convulsions, had been introduced by Caxton (1471). The feudal age, with its peculiarities of manners, government, and literature, was rapidly passing, and the period was one of stirring political enterprise among the continental nations. The expedition of Charles VIII. of France into Italy, so important in its political and historical consequences, was undertaken in 1494; and the great geographical discoveries of the Portuguese and Spaniards distinguish the concluding years of the century. All things denoted the approach of a period of extensive progress and improvement among civilized mankind; but vestiges of rudeness still clung to the age, and the poetry of England received no impulse. But the fifteenth century, if deficient in poetic genius in the south, was rich in the northern portion of the island. It opened with the works of King James I., and closed with Dunbar and Douglas in their full reputation. The progress of taste and learning in Scotland is visible in the foundation of the Universities of St. Andrews and Glasgow, the former in 1411 by Bishop Wardlaw, the latter in 1450 by Bishop Turnbull. Literary improvements more slowly reached the remoter portion of the island, but they produced admirable results. The century is distinguished as the commencement of what in history is 1 The invention of printing is commonly dated 1440. This enterprise is reckoned by Hallam to be the turning point of the subsequent events, and to mark the commencement of modern history. OF ENGLISH POETRY. xxiii termed the "Revival of Learning." The multiplication, by printing, of books, and especially of the Greek and Roman classics, enriched the intellect of Europe, and in the poets of this age we find a strong infusion of words adopted from the Latin. Hence, though poetic genius was at a low ebb in England, the language had begun to assume a form approximating to that of the present time. This fact is displayed in the prose as well as in the verse of the period; it is visible in the work of Sir John Fortescue, on the "Difference between an absolute and a limited monarchy;" and that this improvement had descended into the speech of the country is shewn in the Paston letters. A century after Chaucer's death, the better day, as has been remarked, begins to appear. In Henry VII.'s reign, Hawes, the first writer, according to Warton, who dared to abandon the dull taste of the age for the brilliancy of Chaucer's imagination, whose "House of Fame" he imitates in his "House of Glass," and the learned and daring satirist Skelton, who bequeathed his name to the short doggerel style of his versification, precede the Earl of Surrey, and his brother in verse, Sir Thomas Wyatt, the ornaments of the first half of the sixteenth century. The lauguage had now made an immense stride; that of Surrey is pure and melodious English; the language of Sir Thomas More, the celebrated chancellor of Henry VIII., is admired for its excellence; and the letter of Queen Anne Boleyn to the king on the eve of her execution is given by Hume, with the remark that its phraseology differs little from that of our own day. The cessation of domestic war, and the peaceful and regular government established by the high prerogative of the Tudor princes, enabled literature to expand unmolested. Hence the continental scholarship flowed liberally into our country. The sixteenth century abounds in classical translations, and in those of Italian writers which appeared towards the conclusion of the period. All national movements have the effect of stirring from their depths the heart and intellect of the people; and the English Reformation in the middle of the sixteenth century was just the 1 He was Chief-Justice of the King's Bench in the reign of Henry VI. 2 The "Paston Letters" form a collection of correspondence between the members of the family of Paston of Norfolk, during the wars of York and Lancaster. Incidental notices of the political circumstances of the times are mingled with the more immediate subjects of the letters. Written without the most distant idea of publication, these epistles furnish a very good criterion from which to estimate the language of the upper classes in the fifteenth century. The Paston Letters were first published by Sir John Fenn in 1787 and 1789. vent most likely to awaken and animate the national feeling. The struggle was a severe one, and it was not until the vigour and wisdom of Elizabeth's sway had again restored internal anquillity, that unrepressed genius, in all the luxury of new redom and increased vigour, burst forth in full enjoyment. is difficult, perhaps, to fix the connection of cause and effect in the sequence of the phenomena of literature and political Suffice it to say that the sixteenth century was era that changed by its events the face of the world. The adal system was in ruins; the dominion of the Roman church or one half of Europe was gone; chivalry had become a thing Circumstances. ( the past, but we find its various associations and subjects ssume a more picturesque form for poetry in Elizabeth's reign than they possessed in the prolix and tedious heraldic details of receding poets; they wore somewhat of the antique splendour which they appear to us in the "Marmion" and in the novels of Scott. The scholastic philosophy, with its repressing influences, hd passed away, and the more genial and nurturing philosophy Plato was watering all the schools, though its influence was mewhat later in its full development. The English mind was riched from a thousand sources, especially from the literature Italy, which has acted as literary nurse to all the modern tions of the north. From the time of Henry VIII., when trarch inspired the love-verses of Surrey and Wyatt, translaons of Italian poems and novels had been common. At length, Ariosto was translated by Sir John Harrington, and Tasso by Carew and Fairfax. The work of Fairfax has been pronounced by Campbell "one of the glories of Elizabeth's reign." It did not appear till 1600, and the same year Chapman published the first fifteen books of his translation of the Iliad-also a spirited and highly poetical, though not very faithful version. To both Fairfax and Chapman may be awarded the praise given by Denham to Fanshawe, when contrasting him with poor literal translators They but preserve the ashes; thou the flame, It is an interesting speculation to evolve from the literature of any period the peculiar character of mind, or prevalent bias of taste, or phase of society, that may be embodied in it. Shaw thus speaks of the "four great evangelists of the human mind," Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton.-" Homer is a short expression for the heroic or mythic epoch, taken in its sublimer and |