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The insular position of England, combined with the nature of the English people, has allowed us to feel the vibration of European movements later and with less of shock than any of the continental nations. Before a wave of progress has reached our shores we have had the opportunity of watching it as spectators, and of considering

how we shall, receive it. Revolutions have passed from the tumultuous stages of their origin into some settled and recognizable state before we have been called upon to cope with them. It was thus that England took the influences of the Renaissance and Reformation simultaneously, and almost at the same time found herself engaged in that struggle with the Counter-Reformation which, crowned by the defeat of the Spanish Armada, stimulated the sense of nationality and developed the naval forces of the race. Both Renaissance and Reformation had been anticipated by at least a century in England. Chaucer’s poetry, which owed so much to Italian examples, gave an early foretaste of the former. Wickiiffe’s teaching was a vital moment in the latter. But the French wars, the Wars of the Roses and the persecution of the Lollards deferred the coming of the new age; and the year 1536, when Henry VIII. passed the Act of Supremacy through parliament, may be fixed as the date when England entered definitively upon a career of intellectual development abreast with the foremost nations of the continent. The circumstances just now insisted on explain the specific character of the English Renaissance. The Reformation had been adopted by consent of the king, lords and commons; and this change in the state religion, though it was not confirmed without reaction, agitation and bloodshed, cost the nation comparatively little disturbance. Humanism, before it affected the bulk of the English people, had already permeated Italian and French literature. Classical erudition had been adapted to the needs of modern thought. The hard work of collecting, printing, annotating

and translating Greek and Latin authors had been accomplished. The masterpieces of antiquity had been interpreted and made intelligible. Much of the learning popularized by our poets and dramatists was derived at second hand from modern literature. This does not mean that England was deficient in ripe and sound scholars. More, Colet, Ascharn, Cheke, Camden were men whose familiarity with the classics was both intimate and easy. Public schools and universities conformed to the modern methods of study; nor were there wanting opportunities for youths of humble origin to obtain an education which placed them on a level with Italian scholars. The single case of Ben Jonson sufficiently proves this. Yet learning did not at this epoch become a marked speciality in England. There was no class corresponding to the humanists. It should also be remembered that the best works of Italian literature were introduced into Great Britain together with the classics. Phaer’s Virgil, Chapman’s Homer, Harrington’s Orlando, Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, Fairfax’s Jerusalem Delivered, North’s Plutarch, Hoby’s Courtier—to mention only a few examples–placed English readers simultaneously in possession of the most eminent and representative works of Greece, Rome and Italy. At the same time Spanish influences reached them through the imitators of Guevara and the dramatists; French influences in the versions of romances; German influences in popular translations of the Faust legend, Eulenspiegel and similar productions. The authorized version of the Bible had also been recently given to the people-so that almost at the same period of time England obtained in the vernacular an extensive library of ancient and modern authors. This was a privilege enjoyed in like measure by no other nation. It sufficiently accounts for the richness and variety of Elizabethan literature, and for the enthusiasm with, which the English language was cultivated.