Page:Works of Edmund Spenser - 1857.djvu/21



on English Literature are unanimous in assigning to the reign of Elizabeth, the title of the Augustan age; an application in every way just, as, to her encouragement and example may be attributed the revival of letters in this country. From the death of Chaucer to the birth of Spenser, a period of nearly two centuries, but few, and those not important names had been added to the records of our literary history. The writings of Gower, Occleve, Lydgate, and Caxton, with some few monkish legends, and the poems of Surrey, Wyatt, and Sackville, may be enumerated as among the chief additions to our poetry during that stormy period when the public mind was agitated by the struggles between the followers of the Church of Rome, and the advocates of the