Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/601

] that kindles, there is a poetry that warms, a spirit that arouses, a bold aggressive truth which must have made his hearers look into their souls and think. We take a short passage from a sermon preached before Edward VI. in 1549—twenty-one years after the composition of More just given, and yet how much more old-fashioned is the language. After telling the king that so plain was his preaching that it had boon called seditious, and that his friends, with tears in their eyes, assured him he would get into the Tower, he says:—"There be more of myne opinion than I. I thought I was not alone. I have now gotten one felowe more, a companyon of sedytyon, and wot ye who is my felowe? Esaye the prophete. I spake but of a lytle preaty shyllynge; but he speaketh to Hierusalem after another sorte, and was so bold to meddle with theyr coine. Thou proude, thou covetous, thou hautye cytye of Hierusalem, argentum tuum versum est in scoriam; thy sylver is turned into what? into testyers. Scoriam—into drosso. Ah, sediciouse wretch, what had he to do wyth the mynte? Why should not he have lefte that matter to some master of policy to reprove? Thy sylver is drosse, it is not fine, it is counterfeit, thy sylver is turned, thou haddest good sylver. What pertayned that to Esaye? Mary, he espyeth a piece of divinity in that policie; he threatened them God's vengeance for it. He went to the rote of the matter, which was covetousness. He espyed two poyntes in it: that eythere it came of covetousnesse, whych became hym to reprove; er els that it tended to the hurte of the pore people, for the haughtyness of the sylver was the occasion of dearth to all thynges in the realme. He imputeth it to them as a great cryme. He may be called a mayster of sedicion in dede. Was this not a sidicyouse varlet to tell them thys to theyr beardes, to theyr face?"

Amongst writers of this age who tended to purify and perfect the language were Sir Thomas Wilson, and Puttenham, who wrote the "Art of English Poesy," which was published in 1582. Wilson wrote his "Art of Rhetorique" thirty years before, only four years earlier than the sermon of Latimer's just quoted; yet what a wonderful advance of both style and orthography:—"What maketh the lawyer to have such utterance? Practice. What maketh the preacher to speako so soundly? Practice. Yea, what maketh women go so fast awai with their wordes? Marie, practice, I warrant you. Therefore in all faculties, diligent practice and earnest exercise are the only thynges that make men prove excellent."

Contemporary with Wilson and More, was Sir Thomas Elyot, whose treatise called "The Governor," is a fine example of vigorous English. Cranmer and Ridley were not less distinguished for their fine style than for their liberal principles; and Roger Ascham, the instructor of Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth, was equally distinguished for his fine caligraphy, his musical talents, his proficiency in the new learning—Greek—for his classical Latin, and his English composition. To relieve the severities of study he practised archery; and wrote his "Toxophilus, the Schole of Shootinge," to recommend that old English art. In it he strongly advocated the old English language, and the abstinence from foreign terms, a recommendation which succeeding generations have wisely declined, to the vast enrichment of the language. But Ascham was a genuine Englishman, and advised his countrymen to follow the counsel of Aristotle, and "speak as the common people do, but think as wise men do." His next principal work was the "Scholemaster: a plaine and perfite way of teaching children to understand, write, and speak the Latin tong"—a work which has become more known than any other of his, because in it he mentions his visit to Lady Jane Grey at Bradgate Park, near Leicester, where he found her deep in Plato's "Phædon" whilst the rest of the family were hunting. But besides these works he wrote on the affairs of Germany; and Latin poems, Latin letters, and his celebrated Apology for the Lord's Supper, in opposition to the mass.

As a prose writer of this period, too, Edmund Spenser, the author of the "Faerie Queene" must be mentioned for his "Discourse on the State of Ireland," which contained many judicious recommendations for the improvement of that country, and presents in its serious statesman-like views a curious contrast to the allegorical fancy of his great poem. But far greater as prose writers of the latter portion of this period stand forth Sir Philip Sidney and "the judicious Hooker." Sir Philip Sidney, who was celebrated as the most perfect gentleman of his time, or as, in the phrase of the age, "the Mirror of Courtesy," was killed at the age of thirty-three at Zutphen, in the Netherlands. Yet he left behind him the "Arcadia," a romance; the "Defence of Poesie," and various minor poems and prose articles, which were published after his death. The person and writings of Sidney have been equally the theme of unbounded panegyric. A writer in the "Retrospective Review" says:—"He was a gentleman finished and complete, in whom mildness was associated with courage, erudition mollified by refinement, and courtliness dignified by truth. He is a specimen of what the English character was capable of producing when foreign admixtures had not destroyed its simplicity, or politeness debased its honour." In his own day he was the object of the most enthusiastic praises, and has been lauded in the most vivid terms by writers of every period since. Near his own times Nash, Lord Brooke, Camden, Ben Jonson, Naunton, Aubrey, Milton, and Cowley, were his eulogists; Wordsworth and the writers of our own day are equally complimentary. Perhaps, after so continuous and high-toned a hymning, a modern reader, taking up his "Arcadia" for the first time, would find it stiff, formal, and pedantic. He might miss that fervid spirit which animates the fictions of the great masters of our own age, and wonder at the warmth of so many great authorities upon what failed to warm him. In fact, it must be confessed, that it is a noble specimen of what pleased the taste of the time in which it was written. It displays imagination, though often on stilts instead of on wings, and breathes the spirit which animated its author, of a refined nature, a chivalrous temperament, a generous heart, and the instincts of the perfect scholar. Of that period it is a noble monument; in this it is a unique work of art, which, however, strikes us as fair, mild, and antiquated. "The Defence of Poesie," with much of the same mannerism, is worthy of a poet, and of a man whose life was the finest poem, from its generous patronage of talent, its high literary taste, and the hero's death, in the very agonies of which he gave