Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/437

Rh 1477-1579.] ENGLISH L I T E II A T U II E 417 orthography, this would be at once manifest. Our prose style was much improved by the various works of Roger Ascham, who taught Latin to Elizabeth, and held learned conversations with Lady Jane Grey. The religious convulsions by which the country was shaken to its centre during this period are of little direct interest to the historian of literature ; for the lines of literary development which the activity of preceding ages had marked out were not seriously deflected, nor did the theological controversy produce on either side works which, like Hooker s Ecclesiastical Polity or Bossuet s Variations, may claim, on account of perfection of style or power of treatment, a permanent place in literature. The Reformers of Henry the VIII. s reign were the heirs and continuators of &quot; Lollardy,&quot; but joined to it, from the armoury of Luther and Calvin, new views on predestination, the futility of works, justification by faith alone, and the final assurance of the elect, which had indeed a practical bearing of the most important kind, but were not set forth by our native writers in particularly forcible terms ro. or attractive forms. William Tynclale, who carried on a Hi long and acrimonious controversy with Sir Thomas More, is irs. perhaps the most important writer on that side. Cranmer s writings show much learning, considerable grasp of in tellect, and a certain beadth of style ; they are deficient, however, in sincerity and manliness. The homely wit and rough satirical power of Latimer are well illustrated in many of his sermons. He, and most of the English Reformers, exemplify in a marked way the Teutonic affinity of which we have more than once spoken ; the desire to be sturdily independent, coupled with a sense of teeming latent energy, of a potentiality of great achieve ment on this side and on that, indicate in them at once the strength and the blemish of the Teutonic genius. After the accession of Elizabeth, the leading men among the clergy, refusing to take the oath of supremacy, were for the most part driven into exile, and for many years waged war, in heavy treatise or light pamphlet, against the new settlement of religion. The names of Sander, Harpsfield, Harding, Stapleton, and many others occur in this connexion. But as they wrote for the most part in Latin, for the sake of Continental readers, their efforts produced little effect, and are now scarcely remembered. Jewel, the Protestant bishop of Salisbury, who had been in exile at Strasburg under Mary, and contracted a close friendship with Peter Martyr, wrote an Apology (1562) in reply to these disputants, from whom the work drew forth loud charges of inaccuracy and unfairness of quota tion. The Apology was ia Latin, but the Defence of the Apology, written in answer to Harding, was in English. The laborious exercise of thought on these topics, and the warfare with pen and tongue which was the result, could not fail to increase the elasticity and enlarge the adaptivity of the language, and so far tended to improve it as an organ of literature. VI, The Old Civilization in conflict with Puritanism, 1579-1660. -Regarding the position of the Roman see in the Christian church as a &quot; separable accident,&quot; the accept ance or rejection of which made no essential difference, the literary men of the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, while rejecting, chiefly on political grounds, the authority of that see, had no quarrel in other respects with the religion which had come down to them from their fore fathers, nor with the forms of civilization and efforts towards a higher culture which that religion had encouraged. Both in Spenser and Shakespeare we notice a decided re pugnance towards Rome, and a disposition to deny her claim to obedience (compare the description of Duessa in the Faerie Queene, and the denunciation of papal power put by Shakespeare in the mouth of King John) ; but with this exception they belong to the old school ; they might have been Englishmen of fifty years before, instead of twenty or thirty years after, the Reformation. This has been pointed out in detail by Mr Thornbury and others in the case of Shakespeare ; they have shown how alien the notions of Puritanism were to his heart and mind, except in the one point of opposition to&quot; Rome. Spenser s description of the house of Coelia, and his invective against the Blatant Beast, not to refer to many other passages, show that the same thing held good of him. But it is not our object to dwell on this ; the point to which we would call attention is, that the poets and dramatists of this period, as well as a large body of the clergy, clave heartily to the civilization and culture which they had inherited from the past. To this form of civilization the Puritan or ultra-reforming party, which began to show its strength under the lax rule of Archbishop Grindal, was radically opposed. The culture which had gathered treasures from every side, and welcomed all that was good and beautiful in paganism, was tainted and abominable in their eyes. To them it seemed that a Christian society should be exclusively formed and built up on models furnished by the Old and Xew Testaments. To come to the particular tendencies of Puritanism with which we have now to do, it looked with sour displeasure on the English poetry and drama of the day, and, according as it possessed power, suppressed them. What meant these loose and profaue sonneteers by writing about their mistresses in language that was little short of idolatrous, and celebrating Bacchus, Venus, and Apollo in terms which could hardly be acquitted of blasphemy 1 Why, if they must rhyme, could they not compose comfortable hymns of Zion, and if they must have music, sing the Psalms of David? Expression was given to these sentiments in a pamphlet breathing a spirit of comparative moderation, the School of Abuse of Stephen Gosson (1579). Sir Philip Sidney in his able reply, the Defence of Poesy, vindicated Sidney, the legitimacy of the taste for literature and art which Englishmen had inherited from their forefathers. Again, innumerable allusions in the works of the dramatists of this and the next reign, including Shakespeare, prove the animosity which subsisted between them and the Puritans, whom they rightly regarded as the implacable enemies of their art. On the outbreak of civil war the Puritans, gain ing the upper hand in London, immediately shut up the theatres. It is not, therefore, without reason that we have characterized the epoch which we are considering as that of the &quot; conflict between Puritanism and the old civilization.&quot; Poetry, which does not, like the drama in its more developed stages, require any local establishment in order to produce its effects, pursued its flight in defiance of Puritan censure. It was not, however, unaffected by it. The disapproval of him and his works, entertained by a large section among the most virtuous of his countrymen, irritated the poet by its exaggeration, and often made him out of recklessness import an additional degree of licence into his language. Yet morality was in the end the gainer. For in spite of narrowness, and exaggeration, and occasional hypocrisy, there was real earnestness and virtuous intention in the great body of the Puritans ; and to these qualities society eventually did homage by refusing to tolerate, in poetry at least, what was openly and scandalously immoral. In spite of one or two who leap over the line, poetry in the 18th century, and still more in the 19th, has not permitted her votaries to write as they please, but has prescribed to them measure and seemliness. This may indeed be attributed to the increasing refinement of European life , but that refinement itself, so far as it is moral, is to a large extent the work of the Puritan spirit. VIII. - 53