Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/435

Rh 1477-1579.] ENGLISH LITERATURE 415 the end of his reign, the violence and brutality of Henry VIII. exercised a baneful effect on the progress of learning. Instead of conferring together about the Greek particles, Oxford men were obliged to consider what they should think and say about the king s divorce. The fate of More, the finest scholar at Oxford, and a writer of European reputation, of whom Charles V. said to the English ambas sador, &quot; We would rather have lost the best city of our dominions than such a worthy councillor,&quot; dispirited and alarmed all English men of letters. In such dangerous times wariness, quietness, unobtrusiveness, must have seemed to be the one way of safety. When the tyrant died, men breathed indeed more freely ; but the rapacity and indifference to letters of Protector Somerset s govern ment must have filled all university men with the feeling that the tenure of their endowments was anything but secure, and such a state of mind is not good for the pur- jn of suits of learning. Under Mary there was some revival of the English works of Sir Thomas More ; and new editions of Gower and Lydgate were printed. Warton truly observes, that &quot; when we turn our eyes from [this reign s] political evils to the objects which its literary history presents, a fair and flourishing scene appears.&quot; On the other hand, the compulsory revival of the scholastic philosophy at the universities, which involved, as we are told, the depreciation of the new learning, was an un pleasant feature of the times. There is a well-known passage in Ascham s Schoolmaster, where, speaking of Cambridge in Mary s time, he says, that &quot; the love of good learning began suddenly to wax cold, the knowledge of the tongues was manifestly contemned ; the truth being,&quot; he goes on ta say, &quot; that plans were laid by the university authorities to bring back the works of Duns Scotus, and all the rabble of barbarous questionists,&quot; into the academi cal course, in the place of Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and Demosthenes. To throw contempt on the schoolmen, though it was not confined to the Protestants, for More, Erasmus, Colet, Pace, and many other Catholics had expressed more or less of a similar aversion, yet was characteristic of them, for their theologians without excep tion rejected the Schola. Therefore Gardiner and Bonner appear to have resolved to force scholasticism on the young men of their day, simply because they did not like it. Yet at Oxford things cannot have been so bad, for it was in this reign that Trinity College was founded by Sir Thomas Pope, a zealous Catholic, &quot; in the constitution of which the founder principally inculcates the use and necessity of classical literature, and recommends it as the most important and leading object in that system of academical study, which he prescribes to the youth of the new society. For, besides a lecturer in philosophy ap pointed for the ordinary purpose of teaching the scholastic sciences, he establishes in this seminary a teacher of humanity.&quot; l The accession of Elizabeth brought another change. The schoolmen were again ejected, and with contumely, from English seats of learning. By a singular irony of fate, the name of the owner of one of the brightest and most penetrating intellects ever given to man, Duus Scotus, came to be used, in England, as a synonym for a blockhead. Polite literature was now so exclusively culti vated that it destroyed philosophy. The old systems were discredited, but no new system was adopted in their place. Nor has philosophical speculation ever recovered in England that high place in the hierarchy of the sciences which is its due. In the first twenty years of the reign of Elizabeth though exact scholarship did not flourish much, there was a great and very beneficial activity in the work of making 1 Wartou. translations from the classics. The names of Goldiug, Trans- North, Phaier, Marlowe, and Stanihurst indicate the lators. authors of the chief of these. Fairfax and Harrington translated the master-pieces of Tasso and Ariosto. But for the ample store of fresh materials thus supplied, the genius of Shakespeare, who had not a university education, must have displayed itself under comparatively restricted forms. Little need be said of those inferior descriptions of Hawes. poetry which this peiiod produced. Stephen Hawes, in his Pastime of Pleasure, endeavoured, but with very imperfect success, to effect that blending of allegory with romance which was to be the brilliant achievement of Spenser. The mind of Alexander Barclay seems to have been swayed by that Teutonic affinity of which we spoke in a former section ; he turned to Sebastian Brandt rather than to Petrarch, and preferred the grotesque humour of the Narrenschi/e to the sonnets on Laura. In Skelton, Skelton. almost the only poet of the first twenty years of Henry VIII. ; s reign, the coarser fibres of the English nature are offensively prominent. His fondness for alliteration, and indifference to the syllabic regularity of his verse, show that he too belonged to the Teutonizing party among the English writers, and that he may be affiliated to Lang- land and the other alliterators of an earlier age. He occa sionally wrote some pretty little lyrics, witness Jhe musical lines To Maistress Maryary Wentworth, but buf foonery and a coarse kind of satire were what his nature prompted him to, and in these he excelled. His attacks on Wolsey s pride, luxury, and sensuality are well known, nor can it be said that they were not deserved; still, as proceeding from an incontinent priest, they remind us unpleasantly of &quot; Satan reproving sin.&quot; The macaronic verse in which this poet delighted, a farrago of Latin words, classical and barbarous, French words, cant expres sions, and English terms clipped or lengthened at pleasure, was called by our ancestors, for many years after his death, &quot;Skeltonical; &quot; but Warton has shown that he did not invent it, but that it was in common use in his time both in Italy and in France. The end of the reign of Henry VIII. was illustrated by the poetry of Surrey and Wyatt. Surrey, These two writers, having resided long in Italy, and learnt, like Chaucer, justly to appreciate the greatness of Italian literature, which none of their countrymen since Chaucer seemed able to do, &quot;greatly polished,&quot; as Puttenham says, &quot; our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English metre and style.&quot; To Chaucer s heroic verse Surrey restored the syllabic regu larity which it had lost in inferior hands, and stripping it of rhyme, he for the first time produced English blank verse. Into this rhythm he translated part of the ^Eneid. He shares with Wyatt the credit of having naturalized the sonnet in English literature. In Scotland there arose in this period several poets of considerable mark, all of whom, in respect of their turn of thought and the best features of their style, may be pro perly affiliated to Chaucer. Henryson wrote in &quot; rhyme royal &quot; Chaucer s favourite metre the Testament of Faire Creseyde, a sort of supplement to Chaucer s Troylus and Cryseyde. In the poetical remains of Gawain Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, there is much melody and sweetness. In the poems of Duubar the influence of Chaucer is Duubar. especially noticeable. The Thistle and the Rose and the Golden Tcrge are poems of the same class as the Assembly of Foides and the Court of Love ; the allegoric form, and the machinery of dream and vision, are employed in both. Sir David Lyndsay began by being a great admirer and Lyndsay, imitator of Chaucer, but the Teutonic affinities of his mind waxed ever stronger, and he ended by gaining great
 * of literary activity ; a collection was made and published