Nor of his clothynge one wryncle stode a-wrye; In London he lerned to go so manerly. Hygh on his bonet stacke a fayre broche of tynne, His pursys lynynge was symple, poore, and thynne; But a lordes stomake and a beggers pouche Full yll accordeth, suche was this comely slouche. In the towne and cyte so longe getted had he That frome thens he fledde for det and poverte. No wafrer, taverne, halehous, or taverner, To hym was there hydde, whyle he was hosteler. Fyrst was he hosteler, and than a wafrer, Than a costermonger, and last a taverner. Aboute all London there was no propre prym But long tyme had ben famylyer with hym; But whan coyne fayled no favour more hadde he, Wherfore he was gladde out of the towne to fle. But shepeherde Faustus was yet more fortunate, For alwaye was he content with his estate, Yet nothynge he hadde to conforte hym in age Save a melche cow, and a poore cotage; The towne he used and grete pleasure hadde To se the cyte oft-tyme whyle he was ladde; For mylke and botter he thyther brought to sell, But never thought he in cyte for to dwell, For well he noted the madde enormyte, Envy, fraude, malyce, and suche inyquyte, Whiche reygne in cytes; therfore he ledde his lyfe Up londe in vyllage, without debate and stryfe. Whan these two herdes were thus together met, Havynge no charges nor labour them to let, Theyr shepe were all sure, and closyd in a cote, Themselfe laye in lyttre, pleasauntly and hote; For costly was fyre in hardest of the yere,

Whan men have most nede, than every thyng is dere ; For passynge of tyme, and recreacyon,

5

6

7

1 Shepherds. 2 Was called. 3 Husbandman. Displayed himself. * Seller of fancy biscuits. 6 Dainty girl. 7 In the country. 8 Argument. This is but poor work compared with the best verse in the same vein of Barclay's fellow-countrymen, but it added a fresh element to English poetry, and for this Barclay deserves his share of honour.

Of the three poets whose work we have been reviewing, Stephen Hawes attained only a meagre popularity in his own century; the poems of Skelton and Barclay, on the other hand, were frequently reprinted. With the exception of Skelton's shortline poems, the Skeltonical verse to which he has

given his name, the works of all three are now read only by literary antiquaries; and several of those of Hawes and Barclay, for lack of a modern editor, are not accessible even to these. Despite snatches of music in Skelton, which invite a kinder verdict, the importance of all three poets is indeed mainly historical. But although their own works can hardly be said to live, they brought fresh life into English poetry, introducing new subjects and new ideas, and, in the case of Skelton, some metrical enrichment. Moreover, they made an experiment, which had to be made, though it was foredoomed to failure. Partly from the practice of translation, partly from the increased reading of foreign languages, especially classical Latin, new words were pouring into the English language, and the poetical value of these 'inkhorn terms' had to be tested by use. If we look down a page of the stanzas of any of these poets, the eye is struck at once with the length of the words with which the lines end. If a reckoning were made, it would probably be found that of the rhyme-words in these stanzas quite fifty per cent. are of Latin origin. 'I am but a yong mayd,' Miss Scrope is made to remark in Phylyp Sparowe:

But it was precisely this 'ennewing' by means of 'wordis elect' and 'pullysshed termes' that Hawes, Skelton, and Barclay aimed at in their serious poetry.

Chaucer, that famous clerke,
His termes were not darke,
But plesaunt, easy and playne;
No worde he wrote in vayne,

sang Skelton; but he goes on to explain that
Lydgate wrote 'after an hyer rate'-that is, he
used Latinisms instead of homely English or
words which, if they had come from the French,
had yet been made pliable by use in ordinary talk.
Words like these, it was thought, were good enough
for humorous poetry, but elegance was only to be
attained by the use of a much more learned and
'curious' vocabulary. The court poets, the writers
of interludes, the poetical preface-writers like
Robert Copland, all aimed at this high-sounding
phraseology, and in proportion to the amount of
it which they introduced succeeded in making
their works unreadable. It was fortunate that the
experiment was not made at a time when there
was finer poetic material to be spoilt.

ALFRED W. POLLARD.

When Chaucer was drawing from the new wells of Italian literature, the great movement was in progress which was ere long to transform not merely literatures but social and religious ideals throughout Europe. The Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was rather a revolt than a rebirth-a revolt against medieval dogma, against ecclesiastical tradition, against all that fettered the free-play of intellectual interests and impulses; against prejudice, routine, and stupidity, as well as against some better things. Passionate determination to know and enjoy to the full all the treasures of the classical tongues was accompanied by an outburst of new literary effort, so that pedantry was overborne by originality. As reverence for the Holy Roman Empire and its rival the Papacy declined, as feudalism yielded to the demand for liberty, the spirit of nationality developed, the national languages were cherished and cultivated. If in the East the Turk increased his power at the expense of Christendom, yet the fall of Constantinople stocked Italian towns with accomplished Greek scholars and invaluable Greek manuscripts; and in the West the Saracens were driven out of Spain. The Cape was rounded, America discovered; Copernicus prepared the way for Galileo; books were printed; and philosophy, science, and art were vivified. The Middle Ages were past, and the old world had become new.

The Humanism of France was not as that of Italy, and in Germany, in the Low Countries, and in England the Revival of Letters ran a different course. In Italy the Renaissance paganised religion, dulled moral insight, and tolerated if it did not create a new type of princely and oligarchic❘ tyranny. In France the religious outcome was checked by reaction and systematic repression. In Germany, the Low Countries, and England the love of learning was closely associated with religious earnestness and an eager desire for reforms in Church and State, in education, national economy, and human life. Biblical studies were fostered; and the outcome was the New Learning and the Reformation-though in all countries there were earnest reformers who held with Erasmus and More rather than with Luther or Calvin, and in the Reformation saw the triumph of narrower over more truly liberal ideals.

England was later than the great Continental countries to be drawn fully into the current of the Renaissance, and the forces which made for secular culture were swiftly followed by those which heralded the religious revolt. It is difficult to say how far Lollardy remained a living power; some of the roots of the new movement were certainly of native growth. William Grocyn (c. 1446-1519) and Thomas Linacre (1460–1524) brought literary humanism back with them from

Italy, and by the end of the fifteenth century had established the study of Greek at Oxford. Cambridge followed a little later, and Erasmus, the friend of More and Colet, lectured there for a short time. William Lilly (c. 1468–1522) taught Greek in London early in the sixteenth century as he had learnt it in Italy from Constantinopolitan refugees. But John Colet (1467-1519), who also went to meet the new light in Italy, was more drawn to Savonarola than to Pico and Ficino, to the Bible more than even to Plato and the Pseudo-Dionysius; and on his return gave at Oxford the famous lectures on St Paul and his Epistles which departed utterly from the traditional verbal and allegorical exegesis. At London as Dean of St Paul's he continued to preach, in English as well as in Latin, on the Gospel story, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. Though doubts of his orthodoxy were raised, and though he demanded many and sweeping reforms, he, like his friend More, was in no wise disposed to break with the historical Church, and he died before the crisis came. Sir Thomas More was the most conspicuous representative of the movement founded by Linacre and directed by Colet. Ascham, though he cautiously took sides with the governing powers, had more in common with Erasmus than either with Colet or with Luther.

From 1517 the eyes of all Europe were fixed on the great world-drama being enacted in Germany, where the audacity of the Augustinian monk Luther had renewed in another shape the old-established hostility between Pope and Emperor, between Church officialism and national and personal independence, between Latin and Teutonic Europe. As the opposition became more direct and the breach widened, Wittenberg became for a time the centre of European interests. English and Scottish students pilgrimaged thither; and Lutheran books, in Latin, French, German, and English, were imported into Britain. The bishops impounded these heretical works, printed or written, and More supported Wolsey in trying to keep them out, Tyndale's Testament amongst the rest; Cambridge first and then Oxford were infected by Lutheranism; the king, the Lord Chancellor, and Bishop Fisher wrote against Luther and his sect in vain; and heresy asserted itself more and

more.

What the course of the Reformation in England might have been but for the masterful and erratic personality of Henry VIII. and the political currents and accidents of the time it is idle to conjecture; nor can its history be traced here. By 1532 the breach with Rome was complete, and the best English energies were largely absorbed in the religious and political controversies and struggles of the time. The culmination of the Renaissance

movement in England fell well within the sixteenth century—into the spacious and glorious times of Queen Elizabeth, when-though not without dissentients the nation had as a whole thoroughly made up its mind.

Hence it is well to reckon the Newer English Literature from the marvellous outburst in Elizabeth's reign; though here, as elsewhere, it is impossible to draw sharp dividing-lines across the intellectual history of a nation. The Newer English is sometimes held to begin with the sixteenth century some books dating from the close of the fifteenth century are clearly more modern than others written well on in the next, survivals in temper and style from the older world. His epoch-marking (if not epoch-making) miscellany was issued in 1557 by the printer Tottel, who was still publishing industriously after masterpieces by Spenser and Sidney, by Peele and Greene, had seen the light. Ascham sent Toxophilus to the press under Henry VIII., and had not quite finished the Scholemaster at his own death in 1568. Though there is no magic in the figures 1558, yet it is on the whole remarkable how many of the writers who shed its peculiar glory on Elizabeth's reign began their distinctive work after and not before her accession. And so it is best to group the writers in the following sub-section, transition authors all of them, at the end of the oid rather than at the beginning of the new.

Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII., has had the honour of being reckoned the first writer of classical English prose-a prose not merely modern in contrast with that of his predecessors, but simple, direct, nervous, rhythmical, natural, and entertaining. Born in London, 7th February 1478, More was a son of a justice of the King's Bench, and as a boy was page in the household of Archbishop Morton, by whom he was sent to Oxford, and so was drawn to the New Learning then being forwarded by Grocyn and Linacre. Having completed his legal studies at New Inn and Lincoln's Inn, and seen much of Colet and Lilly, he was for three years reader in Furnival's Inn, and spent the four years 1499-1503 in the Charterhouse in 'devotion and prayer,' with thoughts of becoming a priest. But in 1504 he was returned to Parliament, and in 1505 he married his first wife. On the accession of Henry VIII. (1509) a brilliant prospect was opened up to More, though he had no natural inclination for public life. Introduced to the king through Wolsey, he became under-sheriff of London (1510), Master of Requests (1514), Treasurer of the Exchequer (1521), and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1525). He was Speaker of the House of Commons, and was sent on missions to Francis I. and Charles V. On the fall of Wolsey in 1529, More, against his own strongest wish, was appointed Lord Chancellor. In the discharge of his office he displayed a primitive virtue and simplicity. The one stain on his character as judge is the harshness

of his sentences for religious opinions; he was unquestionably guilty of great severities in individual instances. Foxe treats him as a blinded papist and cruel persecutor. Even Froude, panegyrist of Erasmus, calls More 'a merciless bigot.' He no doubt was conscientiously of opinion that it was better that heretics should die than that they should continue in heresy. Like many of his friends, he would have welcomed a more reasonable theology and desired reform in the manners of the clergy, but never dreamt of defying the Church or disputing its dogmas. He saw with grave disapproval the successive steps which led Henry to the final schism from Rome, and in 1532 he resigned the Chancellorship. In April 1534, for declining the oath of adherence, which he thought would impugn the papal supremacy and sanction the royal divorce, he was sent to the Tower, and after a harsh imprisonment of over a twelvemonth, cheerfully met his fate by beheading on Tower Hill, 7th July 1535. From the writings of his friend, Erasmus, we realise all his virtues and all his attractions, but gather also that he was a charming friend rather than a commanding personality. His family life was singularly beautiful. In 1886 he was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1510 More published a Life of Pico of Mirandola, from the Latin. His (incomplete) History of Richard III. (written c. 1513) has been called the first book in classical English prose; it is sometimes said to have been based on a Latin work by Archbishop Morton, not extant. More's greatest work is the sociological and satirical romance, written in Latin, the Utopia, which, describing an imaginary model country and people, added to the English language a term for any very 'advanced' scheme of national improvement. First printed at Louvain in 1516, it was received with enthusiasm by Tunstall, Erasmus, and the educated public; a second edition appeared in 1517. It was then revised by More, and sent, through Erasmus, to Frobenius at Basel to print (1518).

The plan of Utopia was no doubt suggested by the Atlantis described by Plato, and has something in common with Plato's Republic and Augustine's City of God. More works out a system of social arrangements whereby the happiness of the people might be secured to the utmost, idealising beyond what he really conceived to be possible to human nature; he expounded a kind of Socialism or Communism he explicitly disowned. One very important design of his imagined state was to exhibit a startling contrast to existing conditions in England and elsewhere, and so bring home to his contemporaries a serious satire on the avarice of the rich and the gross lives of the people. In his imaginary island all are contented with the necessaries of life; all are employed in useful labour; in clothing no man desires aught but durability; and since wants are few and everybody must labour, no one need work more than six hours a

day. Neither laziness nor avarice finds a place in this happy region. Instead of severely punishing theft, More would so elevate the morals and improve the condition of the people as to take away the temptation to crime. In Utopia war is never waged but for some gross injury done to the Utopians or to their allies; and the glory of a general is in proportion, not to the number, but to the fewness of the enemies whom he slays in gaining a victory. Criminals are punished with slavery, not by death, even for the greatest misdeeds. It is one of the oldest laws of the Utopians, that no man ought to be punished for his religion-it being a fundamental

them, that a man cannot make himself believe anything he pleases; nor do they drive any to dissemble their thoughts by threatenings, so that men are not tempted to lie or disguise their opinions among them; which, being a sort of fraud, is abhorred by the Utopians.' Every man may endeavOur to convert others to his views by the force of amicable and modest argument, without bitterness against

Your shepe that were wont to be so meke and tame, and so smal eaters, now, as I heare saye, be become so great deuowerers and so wylde, that they eate vp and swallow downe the very men themselves. They consume, destroye, and deuoure whole fieldes, howses, and cities. For looke in what partes of the realme doth growe the fynest, and therfore dearest woll, there noblemen and gentlemen: yea, and certeyn abbotes, holy men no doubt, not contenting them selfes with the yearely reuenues and profytes, that were wont to grow to theyr forefathers and predecessours of their landes, nor beynge content that liue in rest and pleasure, nothing profiting, yea much noyinge the weale publique : leave no ground for tillage, thei inclose al into pastures: thei throw doune houses: thei plucke doune tounes, and leaue nothing standynge, but only the churche to be made a shepehowse. And as thoughe you loste no small quantity of grounde by forestes, chases, laundes, and parkes, those good holy men turne all dwellinge places, and all glebeland, into desolation and wildernes. Therfore that one couetous and vnsatiable cormaraunte and very plage of his natyue contrey may compasse aboute and inclose many thousand akers of

those of other opinions; but whoever adds reproach and violence to persuasion is to be condemned to banishment or slavery. Unhappily More did not in practice illustrate the principles he had so attractively expounded; religious zeal, his hearty abhorrence of the new theological doctrines, and the sense of public responsibility having modified his view of what was possible and necessary in the interests of the religious and moral welfare of the people.

The Utopia was translated in 1551 by Ralph Robinson, a Lincolnshire man, bred at Corpus Christi, Oxford, who held a small post in Cecil's service. The following, from Robinson's translation, shows that More as Utopist regarded sheep-farming with as little goodwill as Highland Land League reformers:

grounde together within one pale or hedge, the hus bandmen be thrust owte of their oune, or els either by coueyne and fraude, or by violent oppression, they be put besydes it, or by wronges and injuries thei be so weried, that they be compelled to sell all: by one meanes therfore or by other, either by hooke or crooke, they must needes departe awaye, poor selye, wretched soules, men, women, husbands, wiues, fatherlesse children, widowes, wofull mothers, with their yonge babes, and their whole houshold, smal in substance and much in numbre, as husbandrye requireth manye handes. Awaye thei trudge, I say, out of their knowen and accustomed houses, fyndynge no place to reste in. All their householde stuffe, whiche is verye litle woorthe, thoughe it myght well abide the sale; yet beeynge sodainely thruste out, they be constrayned to sell it for a thing of nought. . . . They go aboute and worke not: whom no man wyl set a worke, though thei neuer so willyngly profre themselues therto.

For one shephearde or heardman is ynoughe to eate vp that grounde with cattel, to the occupying wherof aboute husbandrye many handes were requisite. And this is also the cause why victualles be now in many places dearer. Yea, besides this, the price of woolle is so rysen, that poor folkes, which were wont to work it, and make cloth therof, be nowe hable to bye none at all.

Coueyne, covin, collusion; selye, simple; departe, remove.

More's other Latin works include epigrams, a translation of some of Lucian's dialogues, and pamphlets against the Lutherans. Of his English controversial works the most important is the Dyaloge against Lutheranism and Tyndale, in five books, two defending Catholic practice as to images, relics, and pilgrimages; a third denouncing Tyndale's New Testament (as a faulty translation with heretical glosses; see pages 130, 131); and a fourth attacking Luther heartily. Tyndale replied, and the controversy between More and Tyndale was a notable event in the English Reformation, each of the protagonists being accepted as a fit spokesman for his cause. In Tyndale's reply to More there was a large element of personal bitterness, for Tyndale, failing to understand More's attitude, thought him a time-server, suppressing his real convictions for professional reasons. And More, in his confutations of Tyndale's answer, descended to scurrility, believing, as he said, Tyndale's Wicked Mammon to be 'a very treasury and well-spring of wickedness.' In the main More stood for the supreme authority of the Church, Tyndale for the right of private judgment. The Dyaloge of Comfort against Tribulation dates from the time spent in the Tower.

Sun

In the History, Richard III. is thus described: Richarde, the thirde fonne [of Richarde, Duke of York], was in witte and courage egall with either of [his two brothers], in bodye and prowesse farr vnder them bothe; little of ftature, il fetured of limmes, croke backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard fauored of vifage, and fuch as is in ftates called warlye, in other menne otherwise, he was malicious, wrathfull, enuious, and from afore his birth, euer frowarde. None euill captaine was hee in the warre, as to whiche his difpoficion was more metely then for peace. drye victories hadde hee, and fommetime ouerthrowes, but neuer in defaulte as for his owne parfone, either of hardineffe or polytike order, free was hee called of dyfpence, and fomewhat aboue hys power liberall, with large giftes hee get him vnftedfafte frendshippe, for whiche hee was fain to pil and fpoyle in other places, and get him ftedfaft hatred. Hee was close and fecrete, a deepe diffimuler, lowlye of counteynaunce, arrogant of heart, outwardly coumpinable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kisse whome hee thoughte to kyll difpitious and cruell, not for euill will alway, but after for ambicion, and either for the furetie or encrease of his eftate. Frende and foo was muche what indifferent, where his aduantage grew; he fpared no mans deathe, whofe life withstoode his purpose. He flewe with his own handes king Henry the fixt, being prifoner in the Tower, as menne conftantly faye, and

that without commaundement or knowledge of the king, whiche woulde vndoubtedly yf he had entended that thinge, haue appointed that boocherly office to fome other then his owne borne brother.

Warlye, warlike; coumpinable or companiable, companionable; despitious, for dispiteous, may be either full of despite or pitiless.

The following is an extract from the Dyaloge Concernynge Heresyes:

Of al which [heretikes] that euer sprang in Christes church, the very worst & the most beaftlye, bee these Lutheranes, as their opinions and their lewde liuyng fheweth. And let vs neuer dout but al that be of that fecte if any feme good as verye fewe do, yet will they in conclufion decline to the like lewde liuinge, as their mayster & their felowes do, if thei might once (as by gods grace they neuer fhall) frame the people to their owne frantike fantafie. Whiche diffolute liuinge they be driuen to diffemble, because their audience is not yet brought to the point to beare, whiche they furely trust to bryng about, and to frame this realme after ye fashion of Swycherlande or Saxony & fome other partes of Germanye, where theyr fecte hath already fordone the faith, pulled down the churches, polluted the temples, put out and fpoyled al good religious folke, joyned freres and nunnes together in lechery, defpited all faintes, blafphemed our blessed lady, caft down Chriftes cross, throwne out the bleffed facrament, refufed all good lawes, abhorred all good governaunce, rebelled agaynft all rulers, fall to fighte amonge themfelfe, and fo many thousand flayn that the lande lyeth in manye places in maner deferte and defolate.

They fare as dyd once an olde fage father fole in Kent at fuche tyme as divers men of worschippe assembled olde folke of the countrey to commune and deuyse aboute the amendemente of Sandewyche hauen. At whyche tyme as they beganne fyrfte to enfearche by reason and by the reporte of old menne there about what thing had bene the occafion that fo good an hauen was in fo fewe yeares fo fore decayed, and fuche fandes ryfen, and fuche fhalowe flattes made ther with, that right fmall vessels had nowe muche worke to come in at dyuers tydes, where great fhippes wer wtin fewe yeres paffed accustomed to ryde without difficultie, and fome laying the fault to Goodwyn fandes, fome to the landes Inned by dyuers owners in the Ifle of tenate [Thanet] out of ye chanell, in which the fea was wont to compasse the ifle and bryng the vessels rounde about it, whofe course at the ebbe was wont to fcoure ye hauen whiche nowe the Sea excluded thence, for lack of fuch courfe and fcouring is choked up with fande, as they thus alledged, diuers men diuers causes. There ftarte vp one good old father and faid, Ye, mafters fay euery man what he wil, cha marked this matter wel as fom other. And by god I wote how it waxed nought well ynough. For I knewe it good and haue marked, fo chaue, whan it began to waxe worse. And what hath hurt it, good father? quod the gentlemen. By my faith, maysters, quod he, yonder fame Tenterden steple, and nothyng els, that by ye mafs cholde twere a fair fish pole. Why hath the steple hurt the hauen, good father, quod they? Nay byr Lady, mayfters, quod he, yche connot tell you well why, but chote well it hath. For by God I knew it a good hauen till that steple was bylded, and by the mary maffe cha marked it well, it neuer throue fince. And thus wifely fpake these holy Lutheranes, which fowyng fcifmes and fedycions among