wrote an allegorical, and not very interesting, poem called The Pastyme of Pleasure, or the Historie of Grande Amour and La Bel Pucel, 1517. Scott calls him 'a bad imitator of Lydgate, and ten times more tedious than his original.' Alexander Barklay (d. 1552) is even below Hawes. Under the title of the Shyp of Folys, 1509, he translated the Navis Stultifera of Sebastian Brandt (1458-1520), a citizen of Basle, incorporating with it his own remarks upon the manners and customs of his contemporaries. He was also the author of some Eclogues, perhaps the earliest in the language. John Skelton, a priest (1460–1529), if not great, was certainly a far more vigorous and original writer than either of the last-mentioned poets. His name is chiefly associated with the short-footed headlong metre which he used in his voluble and almost Rabelaisian invectives against Henry VIII.'s great Cardinal. 'His attempts

at serious poetry,' says Mr. Hallam, are utterly contemptible; but the satirical lines on Cardinal Wolsey were probably not ineffective.' They were, at all events, effectual in obliging the audacious satirist to fly from Wolsey's anger into sanctuary at Westminster, where, in 1529, he died. His principal works are Phyllyp Sparowe, a humorous and fanciful dirge over a tame bird killed by a cat in the Nunnery of Carow, in Yorkshire, and including a commendation of the goodly maid,' its mistress, a certain Joanna Scroop; the Tunning of Elynour Rummyng, a portrait in the Dutch taste of a noted Leatherhead alewife, celebrated for her liquor; and three satires, mainly directed against Wolsey, entitled respectively:- Why come ye Not to Courte, the Bowge of Court (Court Diet), and Collyn Cloute. How Skelton could hit off the imperious favourite may be judged from the following sketch of Wolsey in the Star Chamber. The spelling, in this instance, has been modernised:

Sit still as they were dumb;

Thus thwarting over thumb,
He ruleth all the roast

With bragging and with boast,' &c.

(Why come ye Not to Courte.)

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25. The Scotch Poets.-In the temporary declension of England, Scotland gave birth to a poet who has been styled her Chaucer— her greatest before Burns. This was William Dunbar (14601530), who commenced life as a Franciscan friar and mendicant preacher. He is supposed to have been employed in some of the negociations for the marriage, in 1502, of James IV., of Scotland, and Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., upon which theme he wrote his poem of The Thistle and the Rose. After this he appears to have led a court life. His remaining works of importance are The Golden Terge, a parody on the Popish litanies; The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins through Hell, a vivid Callotesque conception, and The Merle and the Nightingale, a dispute concerning earthly and spiritual love. Dunbar's range was a wide one. He essayed allegory, morality, and humorous poetry with nearly equal success; but his comic verse-witness the Freirs of Berwick and the Twa Married Women and the Widow-is, like Chaucer's, decidedly open to the charge of coarseness. Gavin Douglas (1474-1522), Bishop of Dunkeld, translated the Æneid, producing the first metrical version of any ancient classic that had yet appeared in the dialect of either kingdom.' He also wrote The Palace of Honour, an apologue for the conduct of James IV., and King Hart, a poem on human life. Sir David Lyndsay, of the Mount (1490-1557), the favourite of James V., and a vigorous assailant of the clergy, was rather a pungent and plain-spoken satirist than a poet. The Dreme, The Complaynt of the King's Papingo (Peacock), The Play (or Satire) of the Three Estates (King, Barons, and Clergy), The History of Squire Meldrum, and The Monarchie, all written between 1528 and 1553, are his best known works. The antiquated dialect, prolix narrative, and frequent indelicacy of Lyndsay's writings, have thrown them into the shade; but they abound in racy pictures of the times, in humorous and burlesque description, and in keen and cutting satire.' * Last in importance, but preceding the foregoing in point of time, comes Robert Henryson (d. before 1508), author of the Testament of Cresyde, a sequel to Chaucer's poem (see p. 35, s. 17). 26. Translations of the Bible.-The first of these in point of date after Wiclif's (see p. 40, s. 18), was the New Testament of William

*Chambers's Cyclop. of Eng. Lit., by Carruthers, 1858, i. 55.

Tyndale (1481?-1536), printed, in 1525,* partly at Cologne and partly at Worms, for which he ultimately paid the penalty of his life, being strangled and afterwards burnt at Vilvorde, near Brussels, by imperial decree. It was re-issued in 1534; and has been described by Mr. Marsh as the most important philological monument of the whole period between Chaucer and Shakespeare having more than anything else contributed to shape and fix the sacred dialect, and establish the form which the Bible must permanently assume in an English dress.' In 1530, Tyndale printed a translation of the Pentateuch. While abroad, he is said to have been assisted in his labours for a short time, in 1532, by Miles Coverdale (1487-1568), later Bishop of Exeter, who afterwards published, in 1535, a translation of the Old and New Testament out of the Doutche and Latyn,' memorable as the first English Bible allowed by royal authority. By royal proclamation copies were ordered to be placed in the quires of parish churches for common use. The Bibles of Tyndale and Coverdale were followed, in 1537 and 1540, by the translations known respectively as Matthew's and Cranmer's Bibles.

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27. Berners, More. It is as contemporaries only that it is convenient to link these names, for, in respect of literary excellence, they cannot be compared. John Bourchier, Lord Berners (1474-1532), Governor of Calais, was, however, a translator of the highest rank; and he has given us an admirably faithful and characteristic rendering of the picturesque pages of SIR JOHN FROISSART (1337-1410), the 'Livy of France,' who, as resident in England from 1361 to 1366, and writing inter alia of English History, might almost be claimed as a national author. His Chronicle, embracing the affairs of England, Scotland, France, and the Low Countries, extends over the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II. (1327– 1400); the translation of it by Lord Berners, published in 1523–5, was undertaken at the request of Henry VIII. Sir Thomas More (1480-1535), a zealous Roman Catholic, and Lord Chancellor in 1529, was beheaded for denying the legality of Henry VIII.'s marriage with Anne Boleyn. His two principal works are the Life and Reign of Edward V., printed in 1557, and his Happy Republic, or Utopia (ov, no, TÓTоs, place; in Latin, Nusquama). The latter, first published at Louvain, in Latin, in 1516, and not translated into

* v. Arber's Fac-simile (1871) of the unique fragment of Tyndale's Testament in the Grenville Collection.

+ Lectures on the English Language, 1863, v. p. 113. See Appendix A, Extract VIII.

English by Ralph Robinson until 1551, or some years after the author's death, purports to be an account of a newe yle' as taken from the verbal narrative of one Raphael Hythlodaye, described as a sea-faring man 'well stricken in age, with a blacke sonne-burned face.' It is, in reality, ' a philosophic exposition of More's own views respecting the constitution and economy of a state, and of his opinions on education, marriage, the military system, and the like.* The idea was, perhaps, suggested by the Republic of Plato, whose influence, or that of More, may be traced in many subsequent works of a somewhat similar character, e.g. Barclay's Argenis, 1621 ; Bacon's New Atlantis, 1635; Godwin (of Llandaff's) Man in the Moon, 1638; Hall's Mundus Alter et Idem, about 1640; and Harrington's Oceana, 1656. It should be noted that More's title has given rise to the adjective Utopian,' now commonly used to qualify any fanciful or chimerical project.†

28. Elyot, Latimer, Cheke.-The first of these, Sir Thomas Elyot (1495-1546), was a physician, and the friend of More. He wrote several works, of which The Governor, 1531, and a professional Castle of Health, 1534, are the best remembered. The former, a treatise on education, is said to have been a favourite book with Henry VIII. Hugh Latimer (1491-1555), the martyr-Bishop of Worcester, and the fervent advocate of the Reformation doctrines, has left a number of sermons, mostly preached before Edward VI., which, for their popular style, homely wit, and courageous utterances, are models, in their way, of a certain school of pulpit eloquence. They are still read for their honest zeal and lively delineation of manners.' Latimer's Sermon on the Ploughers and Sermons before Edward VI., 1549, and the Governor of Elyot, are both included in Mr. Arber's series of English Reprints. Sir John Cheke (15141557), memorable in Milton's verse as the advanced scholar who 'taught Cambridge and King Edward Greek,' survives in English by the Hurt of Sedition, 1549, on the subject of the rising in Norfolk in that year.

29. Wyatt, Surrey.-These 'first reformers of our English meetre and stile,' as they have been called by Puttenham, § stand upon the threshold of the school of Sidney and Spenser. Both had formed themselves upon 'the sweete and stately measure of the Italians,' and both as nouices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste and Petrarch,' considerably advanced the poetic art in

* Masson, British Novelists and their Styles, 1859, p. 59.

+ See Appendix A, Extract XIX.

See Appendix A, Extract XX.

Arte of English Poesie, 1589, p. 74 (Arber's Reprint, 1869).

England. The priority, in point of culture, belongs perhaps to the Earl of Surrey (1516?-47), an English Petrarch' M. Taine calls him, who is regarded as the introducer of blank verse, in which measure he produced a translation of the second and fourth books of the Eneid. The numbers of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–42), usually called the Elder, to distinguish him from the unfortunate noble who raised an insurrection in Mary's reign, are not so correct as those of Surrey, but the sentiment of his poetry is sometimes deeper. The verses of both, consisting chiefly of sonnets and amorous poems, were first published in 1557, together with those of Nicholas Grimald (1519–62), Thomas Lord Vaux (1520–62), and some other minor poets, in Tottel's Miscellany, now easily accessible to all as one of Mr. Arber's excellent English Reprints (1870). From this collection we transcribe one of Surrey's sonnets as an example of the sonnet-form at this period. The lady celebrated is Surrey's 'Laura'-'fair Geraldine' :

'From Tuskane came my Ladies worthy race:

Faire Florence was sometyme her auncient seate:
The Western yle, whose pleasaunt shore dothe face
Wilde Cambers clifs, did geue her liuely heate:
Fostered she was with milke of Irishe brest:

Her sire, an Erle: her dame, of princes blood.
From tender yeres, in Britain she doth rest,
With kinges childe, where she tasteth costly food.
Honsdon did first present her to mine yien :

Bright is her hewe, and Geraldine she hight.
Hampton me taught to wishe her first for mine:

And Windsor, alas, dothe chase me from her sight.
Her beauty of kind [,] her vertues from aboue.
Happy is he, that can obtaine her loue.'

30. Early Dramatic Writers.-As the drama attained its most splendid development under Elizabeth and James, its earlier history may fitly be relegated to the succeeding chapter (see p. 57, s. 37, et seq.). It is proper, however, to note that the two first dramatic writers belong to the period of which the present chapter treats. One is Nicholas Udall, M.A. (1504-56), sometimes styled 'the father of English Comedy,' and Master in succession of Eton and Westminster Schools, who wrote not later than 1553, and probably to be acted by the Eton boys, a bonâ fide five-act comedy of London manners, under the title of Roister Doister. The other, John ywood (d. 1565), Court Jester to Henry VIII. and Mary, and or of a dreary allegory entitled The Spider and the Flie (Proint and Catholic), produced, previous to 1534, six dramatic positions or Interludes,-of no great literary value. Of these,